by Tad Williams
Still, she could not bear to sit around waiting for Eneas to summon her, so she bundled up warmly in her hooded travel cloak and went to walk along the edge of the encampment in the first blue light of the morning. The Temple Dogs had selected a small box canyon a short distance off the Royal Highway where the hills were as comfortably close and enfolding as her cloak. Briony walked to the top of the nearest one without ever losing sight of the sentry post, then sat and watched the sun clamber into the sky.
I am no less stubborn than Eneas, she thought to herself. I don't want him coming with me if he is to resent it, even though I am desperate for his soldiers… and happy with his company as well, if I am honest with myself.
But each day spent with Eneas Karallios, the heir to the throne of Syan, was also a sort of lie, or at least so it often seemed. The prince cared for her, he had made that obvious. He would marry her, or at least that was what he seemed to be saying. And there was much to admire about him, as well. Even to hesitate about accepting his affection seemed nearly an act of madness-certainly almost every other woman on the continent of Eion would deem it so. But Briony did not know what she wanted, or even what exactly she thought, and was just stubborn enough not to let good sense rush her into anything.
The sun was tangled in the branches of the trees lining the hillcrest. The dew was almost gone from the grass and the camp below was up and in full preparation for another day on the road-but which direction would they be going? What would the prince decide? And what would she do if he did decide to turn back to Tessis, as she had all but begged him to do?
What I have done all along. I will keep going, she told herself-and half-believed it. I will follow my heart. And, with the help of Zoria's mercy, I will hope not to be too much of a fool.
Still, there was a small part of her that hoped she hadn't been too forceful in making her points to Eneas.
Thinking about the prince made her think of Guard Captain Vansen, as it usually did. How strange that these two, who did not know each other and likely would never meet, should be so twinned in her mind! She could hardly think of two men less alike except in common kindness and decency. In all other ways, in looks, importance, wealth, power, Eneas of Syan was Ferras Vansen's clear superior. And Eneas had made his feelings known, whereas Briony had to admit her notion that Vansen cared for her was based on the flimsiest of interpretations, a few looks, a few mumbled words, none of which could not equally be said to represent the ordinary awkwardness of a common soldier in the presence of his monarch. And he was a common soldier, which made it all the greater an idiocy even to think about him in that way. Even were Vansen to throw himself down at her feet and beg her to marry him, Briony could no more do that than she could marry one of her horse-grooms or a merchant in Market Square.
Not without giving up my throne…
Briony could not even entertain such a mad idea. With her father and brother gone, who would look after her people? Who would make certain that Hendon Tolly received his due and dreadful reward?
She sighed, plucked up a handful of damp grass, and flung it high into the air. The wind lifted and carried the grass for a moment and then, like a bored child, let it fall.
"You sent for me, Highness?" she asked.
Eneas frowned. "Please, Briony. Princess. Do not speak to me as though we have not been friends."
She realized he was right. There was a stiffness in her manner. "I… I'm sorry, Eneas. I meant nothing by it. I did not sleep well."
He showed a rueful smile. "You are not the only one. But now I have decided what I must do-what common sense demands as much as honor." He nodded. "I will stay with you, Briony Eddon. We will continue to Southmarch."
Briony had already begun to tell him she had expected it, and to thank him for all he had done for her; she was even pondering what she could decently ask of him besides the horse and armor he had already given her when she realized what he had said. "What? Stay… with me?"
"I gave my word. And I realized that, with Jino and other friends at Broadhall, I am not so cut off as I might think. Even should something… the Brothers prevent it, the gods all forswear it… should something happen to my father, the kingdom is sound… and the throne is safe." He smiled, although it did not come easily. "If Ananka had given my sire an heir, things might be different."
As Anissa did with my father, Briony thought but did not say. The thought echoed in her head unpleasantly, but she pushed it away for later consideration. "Your Highness… Eneas… I don't know what to say!"
"Then say nothing. And don't assume it is only because of obligation, either. Your company means much to me, Briony-your happiness, too. And I have my own curiosity about what is happening in the north. Now go and make yourself ready, I beg you. We ride out within the hour and I must prepare a letter to be sent back to good Erasmias Jino."
She left him scratching away at a sheet of parchment and walked back to her tent with the feeling that she had stepped unexpectedly from one road to another, and that because of that much had changed and much more would change in days ahead.
3
Seal of War "His parents named him Adis, and when he was old enough they sent him out to watch over the flocks. He was pious and good, and he loved his parents nearly as much as he loved the gods themselves…"
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
Both Chaven and Antimony carried torches, although the young Funderling monk was only carrying his as a favor to the physician. Only a few brands glowed in the whole of the great chamber called Sandsilver's Dancing Room, since the Qar had little more need for light than the Funderlings themselves… or at least that was true for many of them: Chaven had already seen examples of some who needed no light at all because they seemed to have no eyes, as well as huge-eyed folk who blinked and winced at even the dimmest glow. Chaven could not help marveling at the variety.
"How can such things be?" Brother Antimony asked quietly. "The Great God has made men in many shapes and sizes, we know-look at you and me!-but why should he make one kind of creature with so many different shapes?"
Chaven couldn't answer. He would have loved to study every single Qar with a strong lamp and seeing-glass, calipers and folding rule, but at the moment he and Antimony had a more important task, which was seeing to the comfort (and covertly examining the mood) of these new allies. Vansen had asked him to do it, so Chaven had chosen Antimony, the most open-minded of the Metamorphic Brothers, as his companion.
"I was thinking only a moment ago how much we could learn from these folk," Chaven told the Funderling. "Even Phayallos admits that when they lived beside us centuries ago very little proper study was done. Most of the works that purport to describe the Qar from detailed studies sadly turn out to be filled with hearsay and superstition."
"It is not superstitious to fear something whose ways and looks are so different," Antimony said, his voice still low, "and I will be frank, Physician Chaven-I fear these creatures." The cavern seemed filled with roiling shadow, a single moving thing with many parts like something crawling in a tidal pool. "Even if they are sincere in their desire to fight the autarch, who's to say what will happen if we live through it? Even if we somehow beat the southern king and all his thousands and thousands and thousands of men, what if these Qar decide afterward to return to what they were doing-which was killing us?"
Chaven was pleased to see the young man exercising his wits so clearly. He had been right-this one had the makings of a scholar. Pardstone Jasper, the last Funderling who had regularly contributed to the wide conversation of scholars, had died when Chaven was still a young boy. "You ask a good question, Brother Antimony, and Captain Vansen and your Magister Cinnabar are already thinking on it as well. I expect that is all we can do at the moment… think on it. Because even to reach the point of having to deal with that problem will be an astounding and unexpected triumph." He shook his head. "Forgive me-I do not mean to be gloomy."
D
espite his earlier admission, Antimony seemed more fascinated than frightened. "Look at that one-he glows like a hot coal! He looks to be nothing but a fire burning inside a suit of armor-or is that suit of armor a part of him, like the shell of a crab?"
"I could not say, but I believe it is one of the Guard of Elementals."
"How do you know?" asked the monk, impressed.
Chaven shrugged. "Only because Vansen told me-he said they were some of those most likely to cause trouble. Just as not all of our friends are happy with the idea of yoking our fortunes to the Qar, so they have their own disagreements, and apparently these Elementals are among the most… disagreeable." He fought off a shudder. "Still, all the questions of refraction such a thing raises are fascinating at the very least…!"
They stood and watched as a parade of strange shapes filled the great chamber, some far smaller than any Funderling, others that could only be called giants. The Qar had so many forms and sizes that it was often hard to tell which creatures were soldiers and which were beasts of burden. Chaven recognized a few from descriptions in Phayallos or from Ximander; others he could only guess at. Occasionally, a confusing citation in an old book would suddenly march past him in the flesh, even pause to cast a mistrustful eye in the physician's direction. He explained what little he knew about them to Antimony, talking more than was his usual wont, in part because of the pleasure of an intelligent audience (so much more satisfactory than talking to that boob Toby, his so-called assistant, who really had been little more than a particularly useless servant) and partly because he did not want to have to listen to his own troubled thoughts.
Chaven fell silent at last, not because the newest arrivals were any less odd and interesting, but because the emptiness of his own knowledge had begun to grieve him. Here he was in the midst of the most fascinating thing a lover of the physical world could imagine, and yet the chances were good that neither he nor these wonderful and frightening Qar would survive the slaughter that was coming.
So I shall play a part in this war that any fool could play while a chance for true scholarship is wasted…
And the violent fate hurrying toward them even now was not his only worry. Chaven had been long troubled by the loss of what seemed an entire day of his recollections, perhaps more. He had been in Funderling Town on a Skyday, he knew, then had set out for the temple on a Winds-day, but had not reached the temple until Firesday-an entire day and more missing. In truth, he remembered only a little of his time in Funderling Town well, and could no longer recall even the errand that had taken him there. Chaven knew that it had seemed important when he decided to go, so it was more than strange he should not remember it now. It frightened him.
This was not the first time he had lost track in such a way. For several days before Winter's Eve, the night Princess Briony had fled Southmarch with Shaso, he had been gone from the castle, or at least from his house in the outer keep, but he couldn't remember where he had gone that time, either.
Looking again at the cavern before him, at the vast sprawl of huddled, mostly silent shapes, eyes glowing in the shadows like foxfire, he quietly asked Antimony, "If all we are is in our thoughts, how can a man know if he is going mad?"
The young monk was silent for a long time. He was large for one of his folk, but the top of his head was still a hand's breadth below Chaven's shoulder; when he spoke, his voice seemed to rise up from the stony floor, as if the cavern itself was speaking.
"He cannot know. Nor can a king, I suppose… which is what they say of this autarch, that he is a madman. In fact, as I think on it, Chaven, even a god might not know whether he had lost his wits, if he lost 'em."
"And thank you, Antimony," the physician said. "You have given me even more to worry on." He hoped he sounded more amused than he felt.
"I do not mean to be rude," Ferras Vansen began, "but Funderlings-and taller men, too-are not as patient as your people. Your mistress set an hour for the council to take place, and yet not only has she not come, she has not sent word as to why. Hours are passing. People grow worried."
Aesi'uah folded her hands before her mouth, as though to blow life into a tiny flame shielded there. "Please, Captain Vansen, you do not understand…"
"No, your mistress does not understand." He did not like arguing with her. The chief eremite was quiet and graceful, and in her own way, kind; disagreeing with her made him feel clumsy and cruel. "My allies have made a brave concession. They have opened their gates to your people, although only days ago you Qar were killing Funderlings on the doorstep of their own city. Not only that, but they have even given you a place for your army to camp-a place between themselves and their most holy place…"
"That is because of our shared mortal enemy, the Autarch of Xis," she began, but Vansen was still angry.
"Yes, but we were not in immediate danger from the autarch. The people of Southmarch were safe inside our castle walls, the Funderlings down here in the rock. It was your people in their camp above who were most at risk."
She paused, but with the air of someone listening to something he couldn't hear. He suspected she conversed with Yasammez in her head, just as he had once heard the words of Gyir Storm Lantern in the same, silent way, but knowing that did not make him feel any better. It happened to her several times an hour and had been a constant reminder that no matter how courteously she seemed to listen to Vansen, nothing would be done without her mistress' consent.
"Please, Captain," she said at last. "One thousand years or more of hatred and distrust do not vanish with a wave of the hand."
"Oh, trust me, my lady, I know that very well."
"Look there," Aesi'uah said, gesturing with a slender hand toward the crowd of strange shapes that surrounded them, filling the natural stone gallery to the walls-perhaps a thousand Qar in this chamber alone. "Already we have done something here unseen since the earth was young. Understand that my mistress must deal with problems of her own, many of them of a subtlety that I cannot explain to someone who will live only a century."
Vansen was surprised to feel pain at her words, although she only told the truth-he was not like her, not at all. The pain was from what it brought back to his thoughts, the equally unknowable distance between himself and the woman he loved. It was becoming clearer to Vansen every day that it had been madness even to suppose he and the princess lived in the same world.
"Just give your lady to know," he said, "that my people are losing patience. That everybody is losing patience. And they are frightened, too."
"As you said yourself, Captain, trust me." Aesi'uah smiled-at least, he had always assumed it was a smile, since it seemed in many ways to serve the same function as it would have in an ordinary woman, although not always. "My mistress already knows this."
"But, Opal…!"
She fixed him with a stare that could have split granite like a wedge. All the Leekstone women had that eye. "Don't you dare. There should be women there and there will be women there. By the Elders, their general is a woman."
"Exactly! And according to Vansen she has the blood of a god running in her veins and a temper like a cornered rat. She's killed Big Folk by the hundreds…!"
His wife again gave him that shriveling glance. "I'm not planning to take up a sword and fight her, old fool. We're welcoming them. We are allies now."
"Not yet." He knew he was losing, but he could not resist one last attempt to bring some perspective to the conversation. "We're hoping to be allies. This is a sort of parley, remember? There's no promise that they won't change their minds and cut all our throats-which they were trying to do just a few days ago."
"All the more reason to have a few sensible Funderling women on the spot, then," she said with satisfaction. "It will mean that much less chance of Jasper or some other lackwit starting another fight." She nodded. "Now, I have to go. Vermilion Cinnabar has called all the women to a meeting in the Temple library before the Qar arrive."
"In the library? Oh, the brothers will love that."
"The Metamorphic Brothers have had their own way too long, and so has the Guild. That's one of the reasons we're in this slide. Imagine, not telling anyone the Qar have been coming here for years!"
"What? How did you hear of that?"
"Vermilion Cinnabar told us. She heard it from her husband, of course."
"Beat it out of him, more likely." Chert had to laugh. Clearly, things were going to change whether he wished it or not. Better to be on top of the boulder when it decided to roll than in front of it. He gestured toward the boy, curled sleeping in a feral pile of blankets on the floor. "What about Flint?"
A troubled expression flitted across her face. "I was going to bring him with me, but he declares he will go with you instead."
Chert felt bad for her. "He's growing. He wants to be with the men…"
"That's not what's bothering me, you old fool. He's changed. Haven't you noticed?"
"Of course. But he's always been… unusual…"
"Not that. He's changed in some other way… something new. But I can't…" She made a noise of frustration. "I don't have the words for it! But I don't like it." For the first time he saw how upset and frightened his wife really was. "I don't like it, Chert."
He stepped toward her and put his arms around her middle, pulled her close, and kissed her forehead. "I don't like it either, my love, but we'll make sense of it. I missed you, did you know that?"
"Missed me picking up after you," she said gruffly, but did not let go.
"Oh, yes," he said, smelling her hair, wishing they could simply stay that way, standing together, with everything bad still yet to happen. "That as well."
"How do you see it, Captain?" Sledge Jasper asked Vansen as they seated themselves at the table. "Do they speak our tongue, or is it all barble-barble except for that silver-haired baggage?"
"She is not a 'baggage,' Jasper, she is a high-ranking adviser to Lady Yasammez and a powerful figure in her own right."