by Tad Williams
“He has taken my baby!” the creature howled. “Locked me in! Stole my little beauty, Alessandro! Stop him!”
Briony stared. “Anissa . . . ?”
If the princess was astounded, her stepmother was no less so, jumping at the sound of Briony’s voice as though at the howl of a ghost. “Br-Briony? Is that truly you? We . . . we thought ...”
“I am sure you did. What do you mean, he took your baby?”
“My baby Alessandro! Olin’s beautiful son! Hendon Tolly has stolen him! Oh, gods, someone please help!”
Now others of the residence folk began calling out their own tales of woe, voice after voice until Briony could scarcely think. “Quiet!” she shouted. “All of you! Anissa, tell me what happened—tell me everything.”
“He took my baby. He said there was blood—that Alessandros’ blood was magical, I don’t know. To summon the god. I didn’t understand him!” She began to weep loudly and would not stop until Briony shook her violently.
“What are you doing?” demanded Eneas. “Don’t hurt her.”
“She will do this for an hour, and we have no time for her blubbering.” She turned to the queen. “Anissa, look at me. If you want me to save your child you must tell me where Hendon’s gone!”
“But I do not know!” the queen wailed. “He locked me in my rooms!”
“He has left the residence,” said another, equally familiar voice.
Briony turned to find the big man standing just behind her, courtiers and soldiers having made way for him. “Lord Brone,” she said. “So, you live.”
“You do not seem very glad of that, Princess Briony, though I am glad enough to see you.” The old noble was even fatter than he had been, and looked flushed simply from the exercise of making his way down the stairs. His skin had a yellow hue that spoke to her of ill health. “Still, we have no time to argue. One of my men heard Tolly talking about taking the child to summon a god, just as Queen Anissa says. Tolly and some guards left the residence hours ago. ...”
“We saw no sign of him, and our men on the Basilisk Gate have been told to let no one out of the castle,” Briony said. “He must still be here. Eneas, give me some of your men—Sir Stephanas served me well before and I would be glad to employ him again. I will find Tolly.”
“I will go with you,” Eneas said. “In fact, it would make more sense for me to chase the usurper and you to restore order here in your father’s castle ...”
“There will be no order until Hendon Tolly is captured and the king’s son is safe. It is the Eddons who must bring the traitor to justice—and I am the only Eddon here.”
“But that’s foolish, Briony! I couldn’t let you ...”
“No, curse it!” She took a step toward him. “No! You are the prince of Syan, but you are not my husband, my brother, or my father. I’ll take good men with me—I’m not a fool, Eneas. But Hendon is mine.”
His face was tight with anger, but he did not speak until he had mastered it. “Take Helkis, too. I fear this choice of yours, Princess.”
“So do I. Sir Stephanas, you men, come—we must hurry.” But as she turned away, she saw Avin Brone move toward Eneas, the old man so tall that he had to bend even to whisper in the prince’s ear, a bulky shape like a vicious bear trying to pass as human. Briony’s stomach lurched.
“I have changed my mind,” she told Helkis quietly. “You must stay, Miron. You will do more good here than with me.”
The Syannese noble was puzzled and angry. “What do you mean, Princess? I am ordered by my prince to go with you.”
“For once, disobey Eneas and serve him better,” she said. “Do not leave him with Brone—the man is not trustworthy. It might be so subtle a thing as bad advice on whom to let go and whom to keep, but it might be something else . . . something much worse.” But could that really be, she wondered? Would Brone risk trying to strike down Eneas in the middle of his own soldiers? Briony wasn’t certain, but she knew she couldn’t overlook someone who had planned the death of the entire Eddon family. This might be Brone’s last chance ever to strike for power, if that was what the count of Landsend craved. “Just . . . stay with your prince, my lord. Watch over him carefully. If he discovers and protests that you’re not with me, tell him I overruled you.”
Lord Helkis frowned. “Very well.” He did not stay any longer, but hurried to keep Eneas and Brone in sight.
Briony swiftly led Stephanas and the other soldiers out of the residence. She had an idea where Tolly might have gone: the gate to Funderling Town was still defended by his own men, and if there was room enough in the warren of caverns beneath the castle for thousands of fairies and Xixies, there was room enough for Tolly to hide there, too. But that was precisely the problem—how could she hope to find Tolly in all those dark deeps? And what chance was there she could catch him and still find her father, too?
Tolly. The name was a curse on her tongue, foul as black bile. Would he doom her family even in the throes of his defeat? But even through all her anger and hatred a worm of fear gnawed at her: these were deadly times and she had been very lucky so far. Her enemy would never give up and would bite even at the last. Just knowing Hendon Tolly still lived cast a cold shadow over her.
An immense silence hung over the Qar encampment by the side of the great chasm, not only because so many of them shared their thoughts without words, but because so many of them had been killed winning their way here. Saqri was conferring with a few of her advisers, but it seemed a desultory meeting, more an excuse for a moment’s rest, and Barrick had not remained with them long. The feeling among the Qar, and even from the Fireflower voices inside him, seemed one of quiet contemplation and preparation for the unavoidable disaster to come.
“May I speak with you, Barrick Eddon?”
He looked up, startled by the sound of actual speech, and found the chief eremite, Aesi’uah. It is not necessary to use words with me, he told her.
“I know,” she said quietly. “But sometimes it is well not to remind others of what you can and cannot do, Prince Barrick. Then they are more likely to forget and give themselves away if they mean you harm.”
He smiled. “You are clever, Aesi’uah.”
“I would not be the chief adviser of Lady Yasammez otherwise,” she said. “In truth, it is about her I would speak—and one other thing.”
He looked around. He had wanted solitude, so they were far from any others, even the sharp ears of the Changing tribe. It seemed safe to continue. “Go on.”
Aesi’uah took a breath and hesitated as if unsure whether to continue. She would have been beautiful even by human standards were it not for the lifeless, leaden tint to her skin and the deep, almost frightening glow of her blue eyes. “My lady is troubled.”
He almost laughed, despite the gloom that lay over the cavern. The small number of flickering fires only seemed to emphasize the greater darkness. “What does that mean? We fight a hopeless battle against ridiculous odds. Your lady’s father, the god, has died, and we shall all of us probably be dead tomorrow, which will be the end of the Fireflower she’s guarded for so long. Is there truly anything to be cheerful about?”
Another woman might have flushed or stammered or even grown angry at his harsh words, but the eremite was a deep well; she waited for him to finish. “My lady has been preparing all of her stretching life for this—it is not by chance that we refer to our war with your folk as the Long Defeat. But something has changed. She is not just troubled, but ...” Here she leaned forward and lowered her voice, a gesture of such ordinary humanity that for an instant Barrick saw the truth of what he had been told, that human and Qar shared the same ancestors. “... My mistress is confused, Barrick Eddon. I have never felt such things as long as I have served her, and though I am young by her score, I have been with her since your father’s grandfather was a child.”
“Confused? How so? And why do you tell this to me instead of to Saqri, the queen?”
“Because I do not know what it mea
ns—that is why it frightens me. At a time when Yasammez should be most set in her purpose, most determined in her course, I can feel her thoughts darting like startled birds.”
“Is she frightened? Frightened of the end?”
Aesi’uah laughed, a hollow, disturbing noise. “It seems that even one who bears the Fireflower can ask a foolish question. No, she is not frightened for herself and she is not frightened for her people. All her years she has been preparing for this death.” The eremite closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, something subtly different had come into her expression. “As to Saqri—she knows. Her thoughts and Yasammez’s thoughts twine together like two trees that have grown side by side. If she finds it disturbing, Saqri gives no sign. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps it is wrong to doubt such a power as Lady Yasammez. But I am not so calm or so wise as that.”
Barrick could think of nothing to say. Even with the Fireflower, his understanding of the Qar still barely broke the surface. If he lived, he would be years learning anything real about them. “And what would you have me do, faithful servant Aesi’uah?”
“I cannot say, Barrick Eddon. I do not think at this moment there is anything to be done. But I am relieved that someone else knows.”
And that, too, was so human that Barrick could only sit, wondering at the strange world into which he had fallen.
“You said there was something else.”
“Two things, in truth, one small, one large. The first is a question—have you seen Kayyin?”
“I don’t know the name.”
“He is a . . . relative of Yasammez. He was with us for a long time, all through the siege. Now he is gone. Yasammez and Saqri show no concern, but it seems strange to me.”
“I can’t help, I’m afraid.” He dimly remembered the fellow now, a sort of half-Qar, half-human, or at least so he had appeared, who was often seen near Yasammez, but Barrick could not remember speaking with him.
“Ah. Well, perhaps I will have better luck with my other question. How well do you know this Chaven Ulosian whom you brought to join us?”
Barrick’s heart sped, and he was certain that the eremite must sense the difference in him. “Why? I didn’t really bring him. I found him wandering around near the edge of our camp. But I know him well from the old days. He was the royal physician of Southmarch.” Chaven was also in possession of a strange, familiar statue that he now carried in a spare bed-roll, thanks to Barrick’s feeling the object should be kept hidden, but he didn’t mention that to the chief eremite.
“I think he is more than any mere physician. As with you, I can feel the presence of more than one in him.”
“What does that mean?”
“You carry the Fireflower. You no longer seem like a single thing to me, but like a blur of different things. It is hard to explain in mere words.” For a moment she lapsed back into silent communication and he caught something of his own shimmering, refracted nature as it came to Aesi’uah. Just so, she told him. The physician is different, but still more than a single thing—or perhaps less. And now Barrick caught a glimpse of her perception of Chaven, who seemed to carry something shadowy inside him like a second silhouette. Could it be the mere presence of the statue, Barrick wondered? What was the thing? Had he made a terrible mistake keeping it hidden from his allies?
In that instant he almost told Aesi’uah, but he was too ashamed of his deception and his own fascination with the thing; his greed to keep it near him until he could understand his feelings. Instead, he asked her, “Will you tell Saqri about this?”
“I do not know.” Aesi’uah rose, crossed her slender gray hands across her breast, and bowed. “There is little time left. I wonder if I am catching at small things because I am too frightened to look at the large. It will be strange to die, knowing my entire people die with me, that no one will ever again dance on the slopes of M’aarenol or sing at midwinter in the caves above the Cold Sea. Fare you well in the hours ahead, Barrick Eddon. May your death be a swift one.”
And then she was gone, graceful and silent as a phantom drifting through a forgotten churchyard.
In the end, Briony took seven of Eneas’ Temple Dogs with her: Sir Stephanas, another knight named Gennadas, and five foot soldiers. Stephanas seemed pleased to have been asked to accompany her; Briony thought he might be imagining himself as the captor of Duke Hendon, one of the few deeds in this confusing, frightening struggle that would be understood and talked about back home.
The Midsummer’s Day sun had long since crested the sky and was heading down toward the western walls by the time they left the residence. Cannons still boomed and their missiles still crashed into walls and towers, some so close that Briony could hear the whicker of stone fragments flying past overhead, but she could not puzzle out who was firing now. Was it Durstin Crowel’s men in Funderling Town, firing into the inner keep because they knew the Syannese had taken the residence? Or was it one of the two or three damaged Xixian ships still afloat out in Brenn’s Bay, firing at the castle out of general hatred?
A more important question, though, was where was Hendon Tolly? She had assumed that he had escaped the inner keep the day before, when it became clear that the Syannese were not going to be easily turned away, but none of the Eddon supporters at the Raven’s Gate or the Basilisk Gate had seen him go. Which meant Hendon might have escaped in disguise or might still be somewhere inside the inner keep itself, waiting for a moment to sneak out in the confusion. But, as Chert the Funderling had just demonstrated, there were other ways in and out of the castle, ways she had never even guessed. Briony knew that even if she somehow survived and won back the family’s throne, she would never sleep securely again until someone had charted each and every tunnel.
The inner keep was still packed with refugees, homeless subjects from the surrounding countryside, from mainland Southmarch, and from the castle’s outer keep as well; everywhere they went they had to force their way through the stink and gabble of frightened people. Some recognized her, or thought they did—Briony did not stay to confirm their beliefs—and after a while she began wearing a cloth wrapped around her face. She did not want a vulnerable procession of well-wishers and curiosity-seekers following her in her search for Hendon.
She still could not understand why Hendon had taken the infant, Alessandros. Briony’s frightened stepmother had said something about summoning a god, and about magical blood. Her father had said something about it, too. Was Hendon Tolly a victim of the same madness as the Autarch of Xis? Worse, was it something other than madness?
Stupid woman. Stop it. All she was doing was frightening herself. She needed to find Hendon Tolly; she needed no magical terrors to give her reasons to hurry.
Several hours had passed and the light was all but gone from the sky above Southmarch. As Briony, Stephanas, and the others finished a fruitless search of the residence gardens and turned back toward the center of the keep, the wind from the ocean grew stronger. The evening was warm, but the clouds had closed in and darkened the sky. The air was as damp as if a storm was sweeping in.
The cannons were still roaring as they crossed the colonnade and stepped out into the nest of narrow streets between the armory and the Throne hall. Briony’s attention was caught by something stuck in the branches of one of the tall trees near the corner of the hall that contained the Erivor Chapel—a pale shape, reaching and fluttering as though it struggled for the housetops and freedom. She doubted it was anything significant—the castle was full of blowing scraps—but she was still squinting at it in the dying light when the cannonball struck. A slower, louder round had just passed over their heads, shrieking like one of the skeletal daughters of Kernios and disappearing into the commons behind them. A moment later, the wall of the Throne hall burst into pieces as big as hay wagons, crushing Sir Gennadas and three of Briony’s Syannese foot soldiers and spilling bodies out of the building along with the flying rubble.
Stephanas and Briony and the other two soldiers did their bes
t to dig the men out but it quickly became clear it was hopeless. A bedraggled priest, one of the crowd of homeless refugees, came forward and began to pray over the bodies. Others worked by lamplight, trying to dig out the other victims who had either been inside or beneath the walls of the great Throne hall when the cannonball smashed it open.
Overwhelmed by the dust and the smell of blood, Briony at last wandered away to catch her breath. One of the sections of the wall had fallen only an arm’s length from her, taking Gennadas but sparing Briony. She had imagined her death would be a personal thing, something she could face bravely, like a true Eddon. She had never thought of death being so swift and uncaring, an event that could obliterate not just her but also several strangers at the same time.
Briony realized she had wandered away from the destruction, and she was shaking as though the weather had suddenly turned freezing. That wouldn’t do—she was a princess, after all. These were her people, and she had no right to walk away and leave them, however frightened she might be.
As she turned she saw something flapping just to one side—the pale thing in the tree that had caught her attention earlier. Shocked loose by the crash of the cannonball into the Throne hall, it had floated down a short way before catching in the branches again. It was a shawl or something similar, doubtless once some woman’s admired possession, lost now as so many other things had been. She walked toward it and yanked it down, only half looking, marveling that something so delicate and finely made should have survived in the midst of this destructive madness when the great stone walls themselves could not.