Shadowheart

by Tad Williams

  She talked calmly as they walked, as if by coincidence, about the Godwar and the Long Defeat that began when the Qar made the fateful choice to stand and fight with the heavenly clan of Breeze, earning the enmity of the Three Brothers and their Moisture clan and losing sovereignty over many of their own folk, including the very Rooftoppers Barrick had just met.

  Even when it was not the explicit subject of Qar conversation or art, Barrick understood now, the Defeat was still part of them. It was there unspoken in all their poetry, a silent counterpoint in all their songs. The years since Barrick’s ancestors had stolen their princess and driven them back behind the Shadowline had confirmed to most of them that their end was near. That was why Yasammez’ crusade had found so many willing soldiers. If the end was coming in any case, why not face it with courage?

  And what of me? Where do I belong in this Defeat? Why did the gods, or Fate, or whatever rules men’s lives allow the Fireflower to pass to me, if all I can do is die with it inside me?

  Saqri had turned off the main path to follow the curving track that led toward the sea-meadow where he and Briony had spent so many of their childhood hours. She passed across the meadow like a silk scarf being carried on the breeze, then stepped down onto a little winding path that Barrick remembered very well, a “fairy path” as Briony had called it, and which had amused Barrick and his twin because it led nowhere. He caught up with the queen as she reached the place where the descending track ended a little way above the waves of Brenn’s Bay. To his surprise, a smooth-sanded gray fishing boat was bobbing in the water there, with a bare-chested Skimmer youth sitting in it, moving his oars to stay in one place as he looked at Barrick with cautious interest. But when he looked past Barrick and saw Saqri, the young Skimmer rose to his feet, hardly rocking the shallow-drafted boat at all, and made an awkward bow toward her.

  “Told it true, they did.” He sounded amused, but his face said his feelings ran much deeper. “Really are her, you are.”

  “I am pleased you recognize me, Rafe of the Hullscrape,” she said.

  His heavy-lidded eyes widened. “You know me?”

  “I recognize all of our people, even those who grew up in exile . . . but I think you have already had some connection with these doings, have you not?”

  He shrugged. “Suppose. Nothing to take home and feed the family, though, if you know what I mean, Mistress. But some . . .” He suddenly brightened. “Are you coming with all the rest? Is that what this is all about? ”

  Saqri nodded. “As is Prince Barrick.”

  For the first time the Skimmer really seemed to see Barrick. “And are you the true prince of Southmarch, then? Son of Olin the Good?”

  For a moment Barrick was so tangled with thoughts of what he was and what he was not that he could hardly speak. “Yes, I am,” he said at last.

  “Brought here by the holy hand of Egye-Var himself,” said Saqri.

  The Fireflower voices whispered, Erivor . . .

  “Well, then, that is two in the eye for Ena’s da!” said Rafe with sudden exuberance and slapped at the water, although he was careful to direct the splash away from Saqri. “The Queen of the Ancient Folk and the prince of this castle both to ride in my boat! Old Turley will be sour as pickled shark when he finds out . . .” The young Skimmer stopped and flushed in seeming embarrassment, a strange mottled greenish brown that rose from his neck to his small ears. “Pardon, Mistress. You’ll not want to hear me croaking, and of course there’s work to be done. Please, Majesty, let me help you.”

  He stood up and extended a hand to Saqri, stared at it for a moment, then apparently reconsidered. He withdrew it, squatted and dipped his fingers into the water of Brenn’s Bay, then wiped it quickly on his breeches before extending it again. Saqri allowed the Skimmer to help her onto the ladder that Barrick only now realized lay out of sight just below the curve of the ground where they stood. From her effortless balance and the grace with which she stepped onto the rocking craft, Barrick suspected the queen of the Fay had needed no help.

  But why are we in a hurry? he wondered. They said we’d leave when it’s dark and it must be well over an hour until sunset . . . The Fireflower voices offered no answer.

  He let Rafe’s hard-skinned hand help him find the ladder, then turned and climbed down, grateful again for whatever the Dreamers had done to cure his crippled arm.

  Now the young Skimmer pushed the boat out from the shore, but instead of heading out to open water and toward the castle, to Barrick’s surprise Rafe followed the shore around to the quarter of the island opposite the castle, a spot the Eddon family had always left alone because of the tight tangle of trees and thornbushes that grew right down to the waves. Barrick had never really seen it from this angle, and certainly had never seen what appeared next: they were slipping toward a cave, which probably seemed an ordinary overhang of rock at higher tides, and whose entrance even now was scarcely higher than the gunwales of the fishing boat.

  “Heads down,” Rafe said. “No disrespect, but even fairy queens and drylander princes can get their blocks knocked.”

  Barrick bent forward far as he could until he was almost pressing his face against his own knees. After they slid past the overhang, he cautiously raised his head again to discover that the inside of the cavern was astoundingly large. Who could have guessed something like this was hidden under the thorns of the island’s southeastern end?

  Even at low tide the cavern was mostly under water, but above a shore of rocky tide pools, a lantern-lit dock led up from the water to a strip of stony beach and a strange little house, far longer than it was wide, its roof thatched with dried seaweed and beach grasses. After staring for a few moments, Barrick realized that what looked like a separate stone building at the back of it was a huge stone chimney that led straight up to the cavern ceiling and, he assumed, vented somewhere outside.

  It’s a drying shed, he thought. Like the Skimmers have all along the lagoon. But what’s it doing here on M’Helan’s Rock? How do they hide the smoke?

  As if reading his mind, the Skimmer Rafe said, “We only light the fires at night. Smoke comes out of a crack farther down the island—wouldn’t find where it really came from unless you dug for weeks. Not that they light it very often any more. More a . . . what’s it called? Tradition.”

  “An old tradition,” Saqri said. “This is where your people first declared themselves to their master, the Water Lord.”

  He looked at her oddly, apparently both startled and gratified by her knowledge. “I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am. I’m just a fisher.”

  “But you will be headman one day and the girl’s father knows it,” she said. “That is why he is hard on you, Rafe Hullscraper.”

  This left the young Skimmer nearly dumb with surprise; he did not speak again until he had tied the boat to the dock and was helping Saqri and Barrick up the ladder.

  “I’ll go and fetch the little ones while you speak with the sisters,” he told them, then climbed back into his boat.

  As Barrick walked with Saqri up the little causeway toward the long shed he was suddenly struck by an odd feeling of both familiarity and utter strangeness. Something in him recognized this place, recognized its power, but another part of him couldn’t imagine why such an unprepossessing building should spawn such intense sensations. It felt old—old as Crooked’s Hall in the city of Sleep, old as parts of Qul-na-Qar, but although the wood was gray and weathered, nothing he could see seemed more than a hundred years old—a passing moment compared to the antiquity of the great House of the People, which after all had once been a god’s home.

  Two small, bent shapes stood waiting in the doorway of the longhouse, two Skimmer women who looked as old or older than the building.

  “Welcome, daughter of Kioy-a-pous,” said the more upright of the two. Like her sister, she had only a few wisps of hair on the crown of her head and her skin was as wrinkled as dried mud, but as she turned to Barrick, her eyes were sharp. “And to you, manli
ng, son of Olin and Meriel—welcome, too. We were told of your coming. Ah, and you be somewhat more now than your seeming, be you not? We smell it. Gulda am I, and this my sister Meve.”

  Barrick only nodded at the odd greeting, but the reference to his mother surprised him. Still, the two old sisters had certainly been alive when his father had brought his new bride from Brenland. They might even have watched her ride in through the Basilisk Gate with all her dowry and household . . .

  What had she thought about it all, young Queen Meriel? Barrick’s father had always told his children how lively their mother had been, how much she had loved simple, joyful things like singing and dancing and riding. Would she have done anything different if she had known how little time she had to live? He couldn’t imagine a better way she might have spent her days.

  “Great queen, have you come to consult the Scale?” the one called Gulda asked Saqri.

  One of Silvergleam’s tiles, the Fireflower whispered. A mirror that opens a hole to the dreaming lands . . .

  Saqri shook her head. “I dare not. I fear to expose myself to those strong currents just now. In any case, what thoughts I have about the future I would keep secret—I fear what others might learn from me if I opened my thoughts to the Scale here, so far from the seat of my power.”

  Gulda nodded. “It is true that the currents are strong and times are strange. Just last night the great god spoke to us. He sent a dream to me and my sister that heaven’s children were coming back to Shadowmarch—that is what we call the great house across the water from Egye-Var’s Shoulder,” she explained to Barrick. “Our great ocean father dreamed that one of the immortals will walk the earth again and the world will be covered in darkness.”

  “Darkness,” intoned the smaller, frailer sister.

  Gulda folded leathery hands on the breast of her simple, homespun robe. “It was a good dream, despite the fearful things of which Egye-Var spoke. He seemed as he used to be when we were children just learning to hear his voice—not angry, not strange, as he has been of late.”

  “Late,” Meve echoed.

  “He told us he would have been content to sleep,” Gulda continued, “but something had woken him. Someone is trying to fit the key into the door.”

  Barrick did not know what to make of any of this. Talk of the gods woke a cloud of Fireflower shadows in his mind, thick as bats taking flight after being startled in their roost, confused, echoing, and contradictory. The memory of the Qar contained the time when the gods still walked the earth, but even the Fireflower was only the People’s own wisdom—it could not explain the gods and their secrets. “I don’t understand,” he said out loud.

  “Nor will you,” said Gulda. “Not yet. But our lord Egye-Var said this—“Do not despair. I will not desert my children, old or new.”

  “Old,” Meve said quietly.

  “That is all we have to say, Mistress,” her sister said, then bowed toward Saqri. “All the Exiles will do their part. We were wrong in our fear to side with Pyarin the Thunderer and the rest of his godly brood—even the Sea Lord came to regret that division. We were wrong to turn our back on our own tribe. But now we will at least die together, as allies and kin.” And Gulda smiled, a wide, almost toothless grin. “Or, who knows? Perhaps despite everything, we will live!”

  Meve laughed. “Live.”

  Barrick wasn’t exactly certain what was happening. “Are they saying the Skimmers will fight with us? Do they have the power to decide that?”

  “We do not,” said Gulda. “But our lord Egye-Var, the lord of the green waters, does. Our people will fight beside our family once more.”

  “Once more,” echoed Meve.

  Saqri stepped forward until she stood before Gulda and Meve, her pale, dark-eyed face serene and kind. At such moments Barrick thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “Even if these moments are the only victories given us by the Long Defeat, still we have triumphed.” Saqri reached out her hand and touched both of the Skimmer women on their foreheads; Meve sighed loudly at the contact. “Farewell, sisters.”

  Barrick heard a gentle plash of waters and turned. As if summoned by Saqri’s words the fishing boat had appeared and slid toward them across the water, Rafe plying the oars. A large box of some kind sat in the bow of the boat behind him. As the little boat slid closer, Barrick was overwhelmed by a haze of echoes and shreds of meaning from the Fireflower voices ...

  Even the gods regret the Godwar . . .

  . . . The ocean bears no grudges . . .

  Then why did the lord of the green waters change his song?

  . . . But also with the sudden realization that he was going home to Southmarch.

  But is it really my home? Except for the times with Briony, I was never happy. I never felt it in my bones the way I felt in Qul-na-Qar . . .

  Beating heart of the People.

  Rebuilt on the bones of Silvergleam and the ashes of the Dawnflower’s heart . . .

  Our ancient house the People may never see again . . . whispered the chorus.

  . . . Still, Southmarch was always my home, Barrick thought. How could it seem so foreign now . . . ?

  It was not until he felt Saqri’s cool fingers touch his arm that he realized the old Skimmer women had vanished back into the Drying Shed. Rafe had tied the boat up at the end of the dock and was waiting for Barrick and Saqri to come aboard.

  When they reached the bottom of the ladder, Barrick saw that the box in the bow of the fishing boat was a sort of carriage for Duke Kettlehouse and his people—the whole population of Rooftop-over-Sea, apparently, perhaps a hundred of the tiny folk in all, seated on low strips of wood which served them as benches, their children in their arms and their belongings piled around their feet.

  Saqri once again allowed Rafe to steady her arm as she got in, which seemed to make Rafe very proud. Barrick clambered down beside her and settled in, a little awed by the queen’s nearness. He could smell her delicate and quite individual scent, flowers and cinnamon and some darker, stronger note, piney and bitter as temple resin.

  They slipped quietly out of the cavern, Rafe rowing easily and strongly and the anxious Rooftoppers doing their best not to be thrown around by the movement of the boat. The sun had fallen very low in the sky and Barrick wondered how they could have been so long in that place when it had seemed less than an hour. By the time they reached the northern-most end of M’Helan’s Rock the last of the sun was sliding down behind the hills west of Southmarch. They waited in a shallow cove until the day had dwindled to a last bright glow behind the hilltops, then they slid out into open water.

  Darkness billowed over them like a cloak. For a moment the jagged ruin of Wolfstooth Spire gleamed in the last light, then it too dropped into shadow.

  The Last Hour of the Ancestor, a voice whispered to him above the murmur of the Fireflower chorus. I have never seen it since the day of my pilgrimage—except in dreams.

  King Ynnir? Is that truly you?

  The voice came to him, distant as the far side of the water. You called me back, manchild. I could only . . . Barrick had a momentary feeling of something being reassembled, piece by piece—something that had been happier in pieces. I am here.

  And he was, stronger than any of the other voices, more coherent. The king was there, part of Barrick’s own blood and bones now.

  “And now we return at long last, my love,” Saqri said out loud, startling Barrick, until he realized it was not him she was speaking to—not directly, in any case. “At long last, and at the end.”

  “The ending of one thing is the beginning of another,” Barrick found himself saying, but even though it was the dead king speaking, it didn’t feel like a usurpation of his voice, only a prompting to say something he would have liked to say himself had he found the words.

  The Fireflower voices fell silent. Even the crowded Rooftoppers in their box spoke only in inaudible whispers. For a long time Barrick heard only the steady, gentle splash of the oars, and he began
to feel himself slipping into a sort of between-place, neither here and now nor any other time, as though they traveled between worlds—which in a way was true, Barrick thought. Everything that had gone before was done and behind him. Everything that would be lay ahead. Would it be the end of the world, as many around him seemed to think?

  Perhaps. That was all he knew.

  A quiet sound rose, so soft at first that he thought it only another note in the music of the bay and their passage upon it. It was no simple sound of water, though, but a sinuous, exotic melody. Then he heard words, or felt them in his head—at this moment there seemed no difference between the two.

  “I am all my mothers.

  I am perilous! I am beautiful!

  I am all my daughters, too . . .”

  It was Saqri, he realized, singing in a small, clear voice that rang like beaten silver. The melody ran around and around and began again without ever ending, like a snake with its tail in its mouth.

  “I am the swan of the hither shore!

  I am the lamp that lights the way!

  I am the iron bird that ends what should not be!

  Give me my crown!

  Give me my crown!

  Give me my crown!”

  Her voice was sweet and low, but not soothing—this was no lullaby. It was rather a song so old Barrick could almost feel it sounding in his bones, each note a century, each century different, yet also much the same as the one before it, with cycles that came and went, came and went, until that time itself was all circles. And it was a woman’s song, a song of pride in survival, a chant of triumph at the survival of life despite all dangers, all obstacles . . .

  “When days have wound down

  When nights have flickered into gray

  When all stands before the nameless and are afraid to speak

  I am all my mothers!