by Tad Williams
Tinwright cleared his throat. He could feel the stone walls looming close around him, and perhaps even the souls of the royal family's dead watching him with dislike, but there was nothing to be done but to read Hendon Tolly's nonsense aloud.
"Vea shen goarubilir sheyyer gelameian o goh en duyak paraasala in ichinde ionet gizhli, vea SYA yeldi goh buk vea shen goarmelimis vea bagh! O buk iscah bir goabegi…"
As Tinwright read, a strange thing began to happen. The words of Ximander's incantation, couched in some awkward, antique desert tongue, began to seem more and more familiar, like a melody from childhood, until Matthias Tinwright began to understand what it was saying, as though the language of the book had somehow changed to his own tongue even as he read it.
"… And You commanded that visible things should come from invisible in the very lowest parts, and SYA came into all that was and You beheld it all and there! From her belly there shone a great radiance…"
The light from the torch dimmed abruptly, as if someone had plucked it from its sconce and was walking away. Tinwright felt himself falling forward, not into the mirror that still stood before him like a window frame, but falling nonetheless, his body almost completely lost to him, his thoughts drawn into the reflection of his own face in the mirror's dark surface.
Except that the reflection was changing, Tinwright realized. Fear dug at him. Somehow the walls of the crypt had all but vanished, although he thought he could still dimly see them. The floor was entirely gone, replaced by a carpet of green grass and the gnarled but slender gray trunk of a tree. It was an almond tree, branches festooned with white blossoms like small stars.
By all of Heaven, it's Zoria, he realized. We're invoking Zoria! Only his fear had kept him from understanding for so long. The almond blossom is hers, first flower of the spring-the year's dawn.
But why? What lunatic sacrilege did Hendon Tolly have in mind? Tolly had said something about marrying a goddess, but could even such a madman believe he might woo and even wed Perin's virgin daughter? Blasphemy!
None of these thoughts changed anything. The Matt Tinwright who read the invocation seemed almost a different person than the Tinwright who had such frightened thoughts. The garden in the mirror before him was like something in a dream, distant even where it was close. He was no longer aware of the words from Ximander's book, though they still flowed unceasingly from his lips; he heard them only dimly, as if someone behind him was whispering.
Now something pale fluttered down and landed on the nearest bough of the almond tree, something as gently rounded as a tiny boat, but alive, with bright eye and soft, powdery feathers. A dove, Zoria's sacred bird.
"Now reach for it," Hendon Tolly whispered. His voice might have been blown to Tinwright's ears down a long, windy valley. "Reach for it! Okros said there must be a sacrifice to open the way-there must always be a sacrifice!"
He didn't want to-the sense of the mirror as a doorway or a window had grown even stronger now, and either way, it was an entrance to a place he did not belong-but he felt his arm moving forward, his fingers spreading as his hand reached out for the mirror's cold surface…
… And passed through.
For a moment Tinwright lost all sense of where he was-outside the mirror reaching in, inside the mirror reaching out, he could no longer say. A chill ran up his hand, a cold as fierce as if he had plunged it into an icy mountain stream.
It seemed that Hendon Tolly was still talking to him. If so, Tinwright's ears could no longer hear him, but his hand could. As if it had a life of its own, it stretched toward the dove, which had tucked its small head beneath one wing. As his thumb and fingers curled around the bird's small, delicate neck, he suddenly realized what he was doing. He tried to stop, but his hand moved as though it were no longer his own. He tried to shout a warning, but the incantation went on in his own voice and no other words passed his lips. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel the horrible fragility of the dove's neck as he squeezed it, and then the terrible percussion of its breaking. Then, as he raged uselessly against whatever held him, he felt something change in the place where the almond tree grew.
The dove was no longer the only other creature inside the mirror.
But just as he had not been able to stop himself from snapping the beautiful, pale bird's neck, now Tinwright could not withdraw his hand from that strange junction, no matter how hard he tried. His own voice droned on in a language that had become meaningless again, but he could not stop it, nor could he make his own sinew and bone act for him in any way. But his hand was not the only thing at risk; all of him, he somehow understood, was now naked and vulnerable to a thing he himself had attracted, some hunting thing that glided through the mirror-world as a ferret shark knifed through the waters of Brenn's Bay. Whatever it was had not found him yet, but it was looking.
He groaned, or tried to. The drone of his own voice had stopped. He tried to make his mouth speak, tried to shout to Hendon Tolly for help, but his voice seemed a thing without air or force. He could not even see Tolly any more: the mirror had become all the world-the blackness surrounding the almond tree branch, the dove with the crooked head clutched in his hand, all only a tiny shadow of reality. Then even those few familiar things began to fade into the growing darkness.
Afraid his very heart would burst, Matt Tinwright found a little voice, somehow, and croaked, "Help me…!" He could hear no response.
The sense of exposure was so great that he now began to weep with terror. This is how Okros must have felt just before his end, watched, hunted…! At the same time he was as light-headed as if a fever had taken him.
Without warning, a sensation crept up his arm from his mirror-hand to his heart, a wild arousal, something too powerful to be called love but too all-compassing to be lust. Tinwright had only a moment to sense the newcomer, to feel its scalding, exhilarating power, before he was flung away from the mirror like a man struck by lightning.
Matt Tinwright felt a moment of terrible loss, as though he had been separated from everything he had ever loved, then his thoughts flew away.
When his senses came back to him, Tinwright was lying on the floor of the Eddon vault, staring up into the shadowy places where the torch's light did not entirely prevail. His shoulder was tingling as if it had fallen asleep, or had been plunged for a terrible length of time in an icy pool, but when he groped at it in panic, he was relieved to find that his arm was still attached to it. He rolled over and found himself staring up at Hendon Tolly-but no Hendon that Tinwright had ever seen. The lord protector stood swaying and moaning before the mirror, his eyes half-closed, his body shaking all over in the grip of some unimaginable pain or ecstasy. His guards could only watch, sweaty and terrified, as their master danced helplessly in the overwhelming embrace of Heaven.
7
The Battle of Kleaswell Market "One of the bandits' women took pity on little Adis and gave him food from her own store. One day she and her man took the boy and escaped from the other bandits…
" -from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
As they drew closer to Southmarch, Briony's heart grew heavier. It had been one thing to talk about recapturing the throne at the Tessian court, surrounded by idlers and courtiers, many of whom sympathized with her (or pretended to), but quite another to contemplate real action. However willing Prince Eneas might be to help her, she had embroiled the son of Eion's most powerful king in her own fight without his father's permission. Even with the best will in the world, what chance did Eneas have to take back high-walled Southmarch, perched on a rock in the middle of a bay, with no ships and fewer than a thousand men at his command?
"Do not fret yourself," the prince told her. "We go to see what we will see, and only then will we concern ourselves with tactics. Your father was a famously clever man-surely he taught you not to make plans without some idea of the land and conditions…"
"Is," she said. "He still is. I know he lives-I know it!"
"Of course, Princess." Eneas looked genuinely pained. "I did not mean… I spoke clumsily…"
"It is not your fault." She shook her head. "Sometimes I speak that way, too, and even think that way. It has been so long since I saw him! My friend Dowan said he felt certain I would see my father again, at least once…" She had to stop speaking for a moment, for fear of crying. The thought of poor, dead Dowan was too much for an already overburdened heart.
Prince Eneas was strong and kind and reassuring. It would have been easy for Briony to give everything over into his care-her promise to take her kingdom back, her other hopes and fears, even herself-but she just could not do it. Something perverse was always at work in her, she feared, the same perversity that had so often put her at odds with her counselors and even her own attendants. She would not let anyone, even someone as reliable as Eneas-especially someone as reliable as Eneas-take her burdens from her. She found it hard enough trusting Dawet dan-Faar to do things she couldn't or wouldn't do herself, but at least the Tuani adventurer did not treat her the way a benevolent uncle would. In fact, Dawet seemed truly to admire her stubbornness.
Briony could not help wondering what kind of husband the dangerous Dawet would make. He would demand his own freedom, but he would give her freedoms of her own…
And what of Ferras Vansen? Was he as shy as he seemed? She could not forget the way he always avoided her eyes. Was she imagining the man's feelings for her? But there had been moments-bright, fierce moments when their eyes had met and she was certain something had passed between them. At the time she had not really understood, but she did not think she was wrong. She had grown since then and felt more certain of her own ideas. The problem was, she was not completely certain how she felt about Vansen, and was even less certain that it was appropriate for her to think of him at all. He was a commoner, was he not? They could have no future.
Which brought her back again in a weary circle to Eneas, who deserved better. He had made it very clear that he cared for her and would make an eminently sensible match. Why, then, she wondered as she looked at him, tall, handsome, at ease with all that was manly and appropriate, did she find herself less than overwhelmed?
Every unmarried woman in Tessis would laugh me to scorn if they knew, she thought. And then trample me into the dust in their hurry to reach him.
Eneas had certainly told the truth when he said his men were trained to move quickly: ten pentecount of foot soldiers and over a hundred well-armored knights, with grooms and other servants making nearly a thousand men altogether, managed some days to travel as far as ten leagues. But even after all that riding, the work of the Temple Dogs was nowhere near finished. Making camp brought with it dozens of other chores. The men were organized ten to a tent-group in the old Hierosoline manner, each group of ten responsible for their own cooking and for contributing sentries, as well as digging their own section of the defensive ditch around the perimeter of the camp, which they did every night, whether they stopped near a tiny Syannese village, beside the walls of a large town, or, as now, in the nearly empty wilderness between settlements.
Briony didn't understand, but Eneas explained. "If I take pity and allow them to go a night without digging the ditch and then nothing bad happens, they will come to think it unnecessary and chafe at the work. Better to make it as familiar as breathing-is that not true, Miron?"
"Yes, Highness," said his earnest lieutenant. "The Duke of Veryon was caught unawares at Potmis Bridge and nearly his entire army was routed and destroyed."
Briony wasn't terribly familiar with Syannese military history but she understood the point.
The men also had to bake their own bread, draw water, and choose lots for the order of sentry duty, all before bedding down for the night. With such long days full of duty and precious little in the way of diversion in this part of the north, it was a credit to Eneas and his generalship that the men looked fit and morale was generally good.
So why am I such a fool? Briony thought. Why can I not love a man like Eneas? And is love even necessary? Father didn't know Mother before the marriage was arranged, but although she died when we were born he still mourns her.
Thus it was that the Syannese troop quickly made its way north from the border of Syan and through the corner of Silverside, crossing far to the west of the trade city of Onsilpia's Veil and into Southmarch itself. It was a part of the country that Briony did not know well, iron and copper and coal country, as her father had taught her, centered around mines in the high hills and sheep country to the west, grass downs where domestic animals far outnumbered the people and whose farmers and herdsmen provided wool to much of the north. Now, though, it looked as though a great wind had come and blown the people themselves away, leaving behind houses, barns, byres, and fields that had gone to weeds. The Qar themselves, in their march down from the Shadowline, had passed at least a league or two to the west, but the effect of their passage seemed to have emptied the land like a plague.
The saddest and most telling example of the exodus was a doll made of straw, a fine piece of craft Briony spotted by the side of the road. It seemed so forlorn there, in the middle of a desolate stretch of rocky meadow that she dismounted and picked it up.
One of the doll's wooden button eyes was missing, and it was discolored from the rains that had swept through in previous days, but otherwise it was unharmed. It had clearly been someone's treasure, dressed in a cleverly made gown and hat, hair of golden thread-a fine court lady in miniature. Only a family in a desperate hurry would have dropped such a thing and not come back to search for it, and Briony could easily imagine the little girl who was doubtless still crying herself to sleep at night over her loss.
As spring days passed, they made their way up through Southmarch toward the Settland Road, which would lead them almost due east to the shores of Brenn's Bay. By the end of the first tennight in Hexamene they had reached Candlerstown, the site of the first attack by the fairy folk on the cities of men. There was little of the town left to see-the walls had been torn down in dozens of places, almost with what seemed like careless malice, as a child might kick down something a rival had built before hurrying home for supper. But the blackened ruins of the houses, softened only slightly by the grasses that had begun to grow up through what had once been well-tended streets to cover the charred wreckage in a fragile net of green, spoke of a malice that was far from careless. By the time they had left the ruins of Candlerstown behind, Briony was shivering as though from a winter chill. The Syannese soldiers, for whom the Qar to this point had been largely abstract, were also wide-eyed and troubled, and even Eneas could not entirely mask his unease.
"These fairy creatures are monsters," he said as they made camp that night, well out of sight of the blackened, lifeless city. "Worse than monsters."
"Worse than monsters, yes, but only because they are as clever as we are-maybe more so." She thought of the tale the merchant Raemon Beck had told her, how the creatures had appeared almost from nowhere. "Don't underestimate them, Eneas. They're not beasts."
Over the next two days they crossed eastward through the Dale country. They made early camp one evening in a river valley to give the soldiers a chance to bathe, and also because the narrow outlet from this valley to the next made Eneas cautious: the narrow pass seemed a very good place for an ambush, leaving them largely defenseless against anyone who might be lurking above the road with arrows or even stones.
The first set of scouts came back in a hurry, excitement plain in the way they rode, and the Temple Dogs' sergeants-called "penteneries," also in the old Hierosoline manner-had all they could do to keep the men who were setting up camp working in an orderly fashion.
"Fighting, sir," Miron reported when he had taken the scouts' reports. "At the far end of the next valley there's a hill town with good-sized walls, but there's not much left of it. Looks like the fairies tore it down. But if they did, they're still there and they're fighting with ordinary men right on the valley road!"
"Kleaswell Market," Briony said, heart beating fast. She had thought she was ready to meet the Qar face-to-face, but suddenly she was not so sure. "That's the name of the town. People come from all over this part of Southmarch for the holiday market. I mean, they used to come…"
"How many of each?" Eneas demanded.
Miron thought hard. "Seems as though neither force is as large as ours, Highness, although it's hard to be certain-by the time the scouts got far enough up the valley to see the town, it was getting near dark and they didn't want to risk going closer and being noticed by the goblins. You said they can see a long way."
"Very well. There is nothing we can do tonight. Put the sentries on quiet watch, and we will move out in the watch before dawn-that way we have a chance of getting close before the sun is above the hills."
That night, Briony left her meal with Eneas and his officers early and returned to her tent. She wasn't hungry, and she was too anxious to make conversation. The men had been too excited to pay much attention to her anyway. They were like small boys, she decided-females were acceptable company, but only until something really important came along. Even Eneas, Briony could not help noticing, had showed a bit of childlike enthusiasm, talking avidly about tactics. The prince was not a fool, and he had been planning carefully with an eye toward keeping his own men as safe as possible, but Briony still saw something in his excited conversation that reminded her of her brothers arguing over quoits.
But even the work of getting herself ready for bed without the help of servants, a once-unfamiliar task now become quite ordinary, did not tire Briony enough to bring sleep quickly. Instead she lay in a bed that (like almost everything else in camp) smelled of the animals that carried the bags each day, listening to the quiet, intermittent calls of the camp sentries declaring that all was well. Between calls, she thought of the men of her family, scattered or entirely lost, and in the darkness and solitude of her tent, which alone in the camp she shared with no other person, Briony Eddon wept.