Shadowheart

by Tad Williams

  At first, Vansen thought Briony was going to scream at the old man—her face had flushed so deeply he feared for her health. But when she spoke, her words were little more than a whisper.

  “Do you have some letter from my father that will prove this?”

  He shrugged. “I have letters from him that allude to the plan. I can assemble them for you. All my papers from the time I served your father are yours now, in any case, Princess, though you might prefer to have someone more trustworthy than myself go through them. But choose that person carefully, Briony.” His smile was mirthless. “I suspect there are traitors around you still uncovered. ...”

  “Get out of my sight, Brone.” She spoke as if she had a mouth full of poison. “I will send guards with you to collect the papers. Until I decide what to do, you will confine yourself to the inner keep. You will most especially not return to your house in Landsend.”

  Avin Brone dipped his head in a small bow, scarcely more than a nod. “You are my sovereign, Princess. Of course I will do what you say.”

  Vansen had finished dividing the guard, keeping double Princess Briony’s standard pair on duty but sending the rest away, and was waiting now as she had asked, but Briony deliberately ignored him as she finished a cup of wine.

  Briony knew she should have been happy Brone had a plausible excuse—she could not remember ever dreading a meeting more—but instead she was just as angry as before but with no certain target for it. A tiny part of her had hoped he would laugh at the accusation, that it would turn out to be so transparently absurd she could soon laugh, too, but the greater part of her certainty had been that Brone was guilty, that his warnings to her to trust no one had been a form of thinly veiled confession. And when he had admitted it, every hard, protective thing inside her had clanged down like the portcullis of Raven’s Gate. Now she was still furious with the old man, but just as angry with herself. If Brone’s story was true, what else should he have done but followed her father’s orders? But if he couldn’t prove what he claimed? What then?

  The chance that he might simply be dissembling—that she might still have to imprison and likely execute him—made things even worse, like being whirled around in a too-fast dance, stumbling and breathless.

  Ferras Vansen was still waiting in the doorway, a look on his face that Briony thought a very annoying picture of noble suffering. She felt almost as unhappy with him as she had with Avin Brone. She beckoned him forward but gave him no indication of what to do. Vansen stopped before the throne, made an awkward bow, and then stood waiting again. After she had regarded him silently for a long moment, he finally said, “Highness?”

  “Yes, Captain. Thank you for staying. I’m a bit weary just now, as you might guess, but I wanted to speak with you. What do you think of Lord Brone’s proposal?”

  He looked quite startled. “Highness?”

  Briony was beginning to fear he would never say anything else. “He suggested you as an able candidate for lord constable, Captain. Lord Constable of Southmarch? You may have heard of the position? Rather well-known in these parts, I’m told.”

  He colored and Briony disliked herself more than she had when the conversation began. So many times she had longed to see this man—why did she find herself treating him in this unpleasant way again?

  “I understood the question, Highness, but I didn’t understand why you were asking me.”

  “Because I want to know if you’re interested, Captain. As I said—and as I sincerely meant—you have done wonderful things for Southmarch. Not simply for my family, but for everyone who shelters under the Five Towers.”

  “I did only what any loyal servant of the Eddons would have done, Princess.”

  “What any would have liked to have done but few would have had the wit or courage to manage. Do not belittle your own deeds.” He was coloring again. How could she have ever thought this man cared for her? Or that if he did, it was a passion any deeper than a little child’s mute love for his nursemaid? How could such a tall, strong man seem so deep one moment, then so foolish the next? Were all his most appealing traits products of her own imagination? “What of the post, man?”

  “I . . . I am no lord, Princess.”

  “A small enough matter. You would not have escaped your heroics without a title and some land in any case, Captain. Shall I make you a marquis? Though I fear you will not relish being a lord. You don’t seem like the type to enjoy the preening and scurrying of court life.”

  “It terrifies me.”

  She laughed a little despite herself. “Poor Captain Vansen. It does seem a terrible thing to do to you. ...”

  He had been looking at the floor. Now he raised his gaze to hers and Briony felt a little shock. Ferras Vansen’s dark eyes were fiercer than she had ever seen—fiercer than she would have imagined possible, like something that can retreat no farther and must now turn and fight.

  “Why do you do this to me, Lady? Why?”

  “What do you mean, Captain Van . . . ?”

  “This! I mean this! This way of talking to me. I liked it better when you hated me. At least then being lashed again and again was no surprise. But now . . . you say you are grateful, you praise my deeds, but all the time you act like . . . like ...” And although he was as flushed as she had ever seen him, anger mottling his cheeks and his forehead, he stopped suddenly. A moment later he said, in a far quieter voice, “Your pardon, Highness. I had no right.”

  “My pardon will not be given—not until you tell me how it is that I act.”

  “Please . . .”

  “No, Captain Vansen, I insist. In fact, I command you—tell me how I act.”

  His eyes roved in desperation as though there might be some way out of the trap into which he had delivered himself, but all of the guards were working hard to seem as though they weren’t listening, that they weren’t even aware other people were in the room.

  Vansen squared himself, took a breath, and said: “You act like a spoiled child given a pet with which she has already grown bored. Instead of simply sending it away when it displeases her, she teases and torments it only for her own amusement.” His voice was thick now. “That is what you do, Briony Eddon. That is the part you act with me.”

  Part of her was enraged that he should speak that way to her, but close behind it stood a larger part that was horrified to realize what she had done to this kind, good man. “But I did not ...” She could not make the words come out properly. “I never ...”

  Vansen, who a moment before had looked so resigned that he might have been a prisoner atop the gallows, now took a step nearer to her. He had a look on his face she could not understand—it looked something like exhilaration but also something like terror. “And I will say more,” he told her in a breathless rush. “No matter what Avin Brone thinks, and even if you yourself do feel something like the gratitude you profess, I can never be the lord constable, nor could I hold a noble’s place in your court—or, if it comes to it, be the captain of your guard. So, with gratitude for what your family have given me and the kindness you yourself have shown me . . . at times . . . I must resign my commission.” He pulled his gloves from his belt and laid them on the floor at her feet, then unstrapped his sword and set it beside them. “May the gods watch over Your Highness and the throne of the March Kingdoms.”

  He had gone only a few steps before she called to him. “But why? Why would you turn your back on the rewards you have justly earned?”

  He turned slowly, knowing that what he said now could never be unsaid. “Because I couldn’t bear working within sight of you the rest of my life, Briony Eddon. I’ve loved you from almost the first moment I saw you, knowing also that moment that the gods in Heaven must be laughing until they wept . . . because who was I? A mere soldier.”

  “No! A brave man,” she said, because it was so much what she had been thinking. “A kind man. A good man.”

  “Why do you speak kindly now when you wouldn’t before, Princess?” He no longer seem
ed to care. “Pity for a fool?”

  “I’m the fool, I think.” She laughed. “But you are a fool, too, Captain! Oh, merciful Zoria, I thought you would never speak your heart. How could I let myself love a man who was too frightened to tell me how he felt?”

  “You care . . . for me . . . ?” She thought he might laugh, or burst out into some kind of great oration like a character in a play, but instead he suddenly called out, “Guards! Go outside and guard the door for a short while. I have a sudden concern about the security of the outer passage.”

  “You don’t have to send everyone away ...” Briony began as the soldiers made their way out into the hall. Briony’s heart was beating fast. She felt a strong urge to giggle like a child. “But I do,” Vansen said. “Even if they are discreet, it’s asking too much that they must pretend to be blind and stupid as well. We common folk still have our pride.” He stepped up onto the dais. “And you may send me to the headsman for it tomorrow, Princess, but I must kiss you—I must! I’ve waited so long ...”

  At first Briony didn’t speak, because it was all so strange and unexpected that she feared it might vanish if the moment was interrupted. She could scarcely breathe as Vansen reached out and drew her up from her chair, but the feel of his warm breath on her face made her realize how far she had kept from him all these months. “Yes, kiss me, Vansen,” she said at last. “Kiss me, please!”

  48

  By the Dark River

  “The kindly Dawnflower thought she had rescued Adis when she stepped into the sun outside the gates of Kernious and the underworld, but when Zoria looked down she discovered she was holding nothing more than one of the Orphan boy’s wooden arms ...”

  —from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”

  BARRICK EDDON SCARCELY HEARD Aesi’uah’s questions as they walked back through the Raven’s Gate and into the outer keep. The guards in the gatehouse carefully looked the other way as the small procession passed, though Barrick could see both curiosity and fear in their postures. It might have been worse, but Barrick had chosen only the most manlike of the Qar to accompany him.

  “Are you angry with us or your other people, Barrick Eddon?” the eremite asked him.

  They stole Sanasu—she who was to have the Fireflower, the Fireflower voices reminded him—as if he needed reminding. They killed her brother who would have been her husband.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He had no answers, and he had more pressing things in his head just now. When he had reached out to lay the offering on his father’s coffin, he had felt a sharp stab of pain in his hand—pain he had not felt for so long he had forgotten how bad it was. It had receded again, but he could not stop thinking about it. Why now, after all this time, should he feel it again?

  Barrick and the Qar continued across the outer keep in silence and into the shade of the harbor wall between the West Lagoon and the new walls. The gates to Funderling Town were guarded by more of Vansen’s men, but Barrick’s onetime companion had prepared the soldiers carefully, and they only saluted respectfully as the Qar passed. For a half a moment, Barrick even wondered if it might be possible for his two peoples to live in harmony again, as they had once centuries ago, but the looks of suspicion and even outright fear that he saw when he looked back at the guards’ faces showed what a foolish dream that was.

  Barrick flexed his aching fingers and thought about Briony.

  The pain had returned to his left hand, and even the muscles themselves seemed to have shrunk again to the way they used to be, tightening like a drying hide so that his hand pulled into a tight clench. It had begun when he touched his father’s coff in . . . no, it had happened a moment after that, as a memory of his father lifting him high in the air to show him the ocean from the top of the Tower of Summer. With the memory had come a wash of sadness, of missing the man he had spent so much time cursing. And with the memory had come the pain.

  He did his best to uncurl his hand. Why should it happen again? Was it just the discomfort of being back among the people of Southmarch? Or of having to argue with his sister, who wanted so much more from him than he had to give . . . But she had always done that, always demanded his love even when he was too weary of life to give it.

  The pain struck him so quickly and so suddenly that he dropped to his knees with a gasp.

  She is your past, the Fireflower voices told him, but they seemed almost fearful. Forget her. Forget this place. Be strong for your new people . . .

  Barrick sat on the stony floor and rubbed his aching hand.

  The Sleepers took something from me in order to heal me, didn’t they?

  Saqri’s sleeping face showed nothing—she was beyond that now, nearly as lifeless as Qinnitan—but he felt her words in his thoughts, thin as a breeze. Everything has its price—life, love, even death. You know that. You know that better than almost any of your kind.

  But the price was my family! My love for my sister! He understood that now, although his feelings for Briony remained curiously distant. They took it from me without asking!

  They did not take it. Her thoughts already grew faint again. They used it. As a river dammed by stones will rise and flood in other directions, they only changed its flow. Love is a thing that cannot be destroyed, you see, only altered . . .

  Barrick knew he could not wait much longer. The queen of the Fay’s strength was failing very swiftly now. He pushed the Sleepers’ gift from his thoughts and knelt by her bed and took her hand. Sunset Pearl and the other healers stood back, doing their best to seem as if they did not disapprove of the strange thing he planned to do.

  Enough of these other matters,” he said. It is time for me to make that journey we spoke of, he told her. To try to save what we can . . . if you will let me.

  He felt a faint sensation of amusement. Why should I not, dear manchild . . . ?

  Two pale warriors of the Unforgiven tribe carried Qinnitan’s bed into the rock chamber and set it beside Saqri’s. The dark-haired girl seemed even smaller than before, as if with every passing hour she shrank farther in on herself, like something being slowly burned away. Her skin was as cold as if her spirit had already fled.

  Leave us alone, he told them.

  No questions, no argument—the Qar immediately left the chamber, leaving only Barrick, the two motionless women, and the unsteady candlelight.

  He thought carefully about what Saqri had taught him back in Qul-na-Qar, as well as what Ynnir had said: “The Fireflower is more than the knowledge of those who went before. It is the map of their journeys, the book of their rituals. But you cannot simply consult it as if it were a dusty scroll in a forgotten niche. You must make it a part of you.”

  Barrick fell back into the darkness inside himself; for a long span he simply floated in that emptiness. When he felt he was ready, he thought about Crooked, who had found a way to travel through so many different kinds of darkness, and then thought of himself and the blood they shared, however distantly.

  I am a great-grandchild of Sanasu, he announced. I travel where I wish in the lands beyond, the dreamlands of the sleeping gods. My blood is my safe-conduct. There would be many in the darkness, though, who had no respect for such rituals.

  A faint light kindled and began to form the void into recognizable shapes—into here and there, up and down. The light was his own, the gleam of the Fireflower on his brow. His feet touched the grassy ground, although he could see little of what was beneath him—two feet, no, four, his weight carried on hard hooves and powerful legs. As Ynnir here in these dreaming lands wore the form of a stag, and Saqri a swan, Barrick found himself in the semblance of a horse—a pale stallion. Overwhelmed by the new sensations, he began to trot, then to gallop.

  Where am I? he wondered. Are these Crooked’s roads through the void, or is it the land of dreams where the gods still live? The country of the dead? Or some other place entirely . . . ?

  Barrick Eddon did not understand enough of the Fireflower herit
age to know the answers, but he knew he was doing what he needed to do. He pushed his fears aside and kept moving, racing from shadow to shadow, through tangles of darkness so thick he thought he would never unmire himself, out into moments of blinding light that dazzled and confused him. Other shadows haunted that place, too—other beings like him, perhaps, or older, stranger things—but he dared not speak to them. It was too easy for a traveler to become lost here, to stray from the path, and although those that flitted around him now might mean no harm, there were others here that fed on solitude and suffering—he could hear them whispering to him as they followed, like the scrabbling of rats behind wooden walls: Barrick Eddon, you owe the People nothing. We will give you the strength to do anything. Raise the girl from the dead. Command the allegiance of every creature you meet. Make yourself the greatest king that ever walked the earth! All will be yours ... Just wait on the path for us. Let us join you ...!