Shadowheart s-4

by Tad Williams

  "Flint?"

  The boy turned and saw him, and for a moment seemed nothing more than a child caught doing something he shouldn't, opening his blue eyes innocently wide. He closed the book quickly, but Chert saw that Flint kept his finger between the pages, marking his place until Chert went away again. "Hello, Papa Chert. Mama Opal sent you to speak to me, didn't she?"

  "I suppose. She said that I might 'understand.' Understand what, Flint?"

  The boy pulled up his legs to sit cross-legged atop the stool like an oracle on a pillar. "I'm not like other children."

  Chert could not argue with that. "But you're a good boy," he said. "Your mother and I… we…" He did not know quite what to say next.

  "But the problem," Flint went on, "is that I don't know why. I don't understand why I am so full of thoughts and ideas that seem… like they don't belong. Why can't I remember more?"

  Chert spread his hands helplessly. "Where we found you… beside the Shadowline… well, we always knew there had to be some kind of magic on you. I knew it from the first. Opal knew it, too, but she would never admit she knew." He let his hands drop. "I'm sorry, lad. I didn't know it was hard on you, too."

  "Someday, I think I will have to go away," Flint said. "To find out all the things I want to know. All the things about why I'm… this way."

  "When you're grown, son, if that's what you want to do…" But even as he said it he knew that Opal would see even this distant consent as a form of betrayal. "Just remember, your mother loves you very much… and I love you, too…"

  The boy shook his head, but not, it seemed, at what Chert had said. "I do not think I can wait so long," he said. "I'm frightened that if I don't understand, I'll… I'll miss something."

  "Miss what? I don't get you, boy."

  "That's just it!" His pale face had gone red. "I don't understand it myself. But I can feel that things are bad, so bad! And I think I know the answers, or some of the answers, that I can… I don't know, reach in and find them. But when I try, they all just fly away, like bats, like…"

  To Chert's astonishment, Flint's eyes were shiny with tears. He had never seen the boy like this. He hesitated, then stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. Flint swayed on the flimsy stool but hung on tightly, his chest moving with sobs like small hiccoughs. At last the boy pulled himself away and slid down to the floor.

  "Will you let me go when I need to?" he asked. "When I truly, truly need to?"

  "Before you're grown? We can't, son. We can't do that!"

  The boy looked up at him, and precisely now, when his flushed face was as childlike as Chert had ever seen it, another look stole across, something strange and sly and somehow alien. "Then I will go anyway without your blessing, Papa Chert."

  "No!" He took hold of the boy's shoulders. "You must promise me you'll do nothing of the sort. It will break your mother's heart-that's the truth! You must promise me that, until we say you're old enough, you will stay here with us. Promise!"

  Flint tried to squirm out of his grasp, but years of working stone had given Chert strong hands and the boy could not get away. "No!"

  "You must promise, boy. You must." Chert was almost weeping himself. "That's all I can say. Promise me you won't go without our… without my permission." Opal would never allow it, but if he had to-if he felt it was the only way not to lose the boy in other, deeper ways-he knew he would go against her. And that would be a terrible day. "Promise."

  The boy at last stopped struggling. "Only with your permission?"

  "Until you reach a man's age."

  "But how old am I?"

  Chert was so upset that it surprised him how suddenly the laugh came. "Well struck, lad. So, let us say… five more years, shall we? By any standard, that should give you time to do some growing."

  "Five years?" He looked dully resigned. "In five years the world might be ended, Father."

  "Then what you and I do won't be such a worry, will it?" He had won, but Chert did not feel particularly good about it. "Come," he said. "You like the temple library, don't you? I have business there. Come and spend the afternoon with me."

  Silent and thoughtful again, his tears all but dried, Flint followed Chert back through the busy temple halls, past priests and soldiers and more than a few women, all silent, all apparently in a hurry. Each and every one of them wore a face as grim as Black Noszh-la, Gatekeeper of the House of Death.

  10

  Fools Lose the Game "For a year the poor child labored in the temple, but then the corrupt mantis of that place sold the Orphan and several other slaves to a ship's captain in need of crew…"

  -from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

  The room was warm and dark and smelled of the heart-shaped roots that one of Tolly's other minions had set in the fireplace to smolder the night before, a smell that made Matt Tinwright's head ache even as he peered around the chamber through slitted eyes. He still had no idea whether the roots had been meant for some magic ritual or simply so the smoke could provide a kind of dreamy drunkenness, which it had definitely done. Hendon Tolly's pursuits, though often disquieting, were still largely mysterious, despite nearly a tennight of Tinwright being kept at the man's side like a dog on a leash.

  He groaned and opened his eyes wider. The groan became a gasp of surprise as he saw that Tolly was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him, staring down like a vulture watching a living thing turn into carrion.

  "Wh-wha-what is it, my lord?" Tinwright stammered. "Do you need something?"

  They were alone in the chamber: the women had gone. Tinwright hoped they were all still well. He had seen a few frightening moments before he had finally collapsed into welcome oblivion.

  "Brother Okros never decided precisely what he wanted," the lord protector said, as if in continuation of an early conversation. Perhaps it was: Tinwright could remember little of what had happened. He struggled into an upright position.

  "I beg your pardon, Lord Tolly?"

  "What he wanted. I'm talking of that pinchsniff Okros. Some days he played the man of learning, concerned only to uncover the great secrets of existence." Tolly smirked. The lord protector looked remarkably well-groomed for a man who lived the way he did: Tinwright could not help wondering if the nobleman had snuck off to bathe while Tinwright himself was still sleeping. "It was quite amusing, really. On those occasions, he would treat me as a fine cook might treat his grossly fat master-as an embarrassment, but a necessary one, because I was the sponsor of his art." Tolly rose and gestured impatiently. "Get up, poet. This will be a momentous day or I miss my guess."

  "My lord…?"

  "But Okros lost the path, you see. He came to believe that what we sought were the answers to his questions." Tolly looked at Matt Tinwright with the bright eyes of a hunting hawk.

  The lord protector was stranger than usual, Tinwright thought-as though he were drunk, but in some hard, crystalline way. "But he was wrong, Lord…?"

  "What I want had nothing to do with him. He was a fool… and fools lose the game." Tolly smiled a hard smile. The warning was very clear. "Now come, poet."

  Tinwright followed Hendon Tolly across the crowded residence to the Prince Kayne Library, which had become the lord protector's throne room and council chamber during the days of the Qar siege. The old library had always been a quiet, neat room despite its large size, with books crowding all the shelves between the floors and the high ceilings, but now it looked as though it had been in the front lines of the siege. Books lay scattered everywhere, both modern bound volumes and parchment scrolls from Hierosol and even ancient Xis, as well as a dozen chairs and stools and even a few tables dragged in haphazardly from other parts of the residence. The disorder was in large part because Tolly and Brother Okros had emptied the Tower of Summer, King Olin's refuge, and brought almost everything out of his locked room to this library-some of the books, Tinwright had noticed, even seemed to have been written by Olin himself, and he thought about h
ow glorious it would be to be left alone long enough to read some of them. What a boon for a poet-to read the true thoughts of a mindful king! But Hendon Tolly was clearly not going to let him stray from his side long enough to do such a thing.

  Tinwright had not spoken to Elan or his mother in days, and had been hard-pressed even to send them a pair of short, secret letters telling them what had happened. He only prayed that his mother would not show up at the palace demanding that her newly elevated son-she must think he was Tolly's secretary!-find a place for her in the residence.

  Nightmare. And not just the idea of having her underfoot-what if she mentioned Elan?

  Tinwright forced these thoughts from his head as a group of soldiers led by the lord constable, Berkan Hood, came to the library seeking an audience with Hendon Tolly. They were understandably distressed about the idea of the autarch's ships landing unhindered in the harbor just opposite the castle.

  "Two dozen warships, Lord Protector, and there are still more coming!" Berkan Hood was doing his best to keep his voice even but not entirely succeeding; he was clearly not the kind of man who usually practiced such restraint. "Yet we have not fired so much as a single bombard. Please, my lord, why do we not fight back? We struggled against the fairies for months, threw them back a dozen times. Now that those demons have retreated, why have we gone shy as maidens in front of the Xixies, who are only mortal?"

  Hendon Tolly glared. He was barely interested in the trappings of ordinary rule-Tinwright had seen it even in their short time together. "There are plans afoot to protect this castle and this city, Hood," he growled, "and I will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it." With these curt words he dismissed them, although Berkan Hood and the others seemed far from satisfied.

  As they went out, the castellan, Tirnan Havemore, who had once been Avin Brone's factor, slipped into the library. "It is here, my lord," he said, handing Tolly a parchment chopped with a seal Tinwright had never seen. As his master read the letter, Havemore looked Tinwright up and down with unhidden dislike. None of the inner circle could understand why Tolly kept Matt Tinwright around, but that was unsurprising since Tinwright wasn't certain himself.

  "I was wondering when we would hear from them," the lord protector said when he had finished. He called for paper and ink to write a reply. "You're the poet," he told Tinwright. "Take my answer down and write it in a fair hand."

  He proceeded to dictate a message so full of strange, almost meaningless phrases that Tinwright could only gape and do the best he could to get the wording correct. Still, a few things were clear. The astonishing missive was a letter to the Autarch of Xis, and promised that Tolly would meet with the southern king just after dark that very evening, then named the place.

  "M'Helan's Rock?" Tinwright asked, surprised. "The island out in the bay?"

  "Yes, you insufferable idiot," Tolly said. "Do you question my choice?"

  "No, my lord! I just wanted to make sure I had the name straight."

  As if he were a child copying out texts in his best hand to avoid a thrashing, Matt Tinwright did his best to keep the writing clean and graceful. As if the Monster of Xis is going to notice my penmanship! he mocked himself. "Oh, no, we won't kill that one when we conquer Southmarch-he writes too fair a hand!" Tolly's right-I'm a fool. Still, it was an interesting situation, in a dreadful sort of way: who would have guessed a year and something past that Matt Tinwright would be here today, writing messages for the lord of all Southmarch to an actual god-king… whatever a god-king might be…

  "Good." Tolly finished reading, then added his own jagged signature and sealed the letter closed with wax and his signet ring. "Send it back immediately," he instructed Tirnan Havemore. "And if any man tries to open that, I will make sure he chokes on his own severed fingers."

  The castellan hurried off with the letter held out as though it were a deadly serpent.

  "So now the endgame begins," said Tolly as he turned to Matt Tinwright. "Our lives and our destinies are in our own hands, poet. Who could ask for better than that? If we succeed, we win all. If we lose-well, history will not remember our names and future generations will not find our graves." He grinned, his expression still as shiny and brittle as cracked glass. "Splendid, eh?"

  Tinwright only bowed and said, "My lord." Tolly's ranting did not seem to require an answer and he was too terrified to try to invent one.

  Not all the Qar who had met in the small cavern near Sandsilver's Dancing Room had their minds on the new enemy, the thousands of Xixian soldiers and their master, the autarch. Hammerfoot, lord of the Ettins, who like all his kind was slow to build to wrath but even slower to cool, sat in the darkness fuming like one of the forges of Firstdeeps.

  "They humiliate us," he rumbled. "These sunlanders. A thousand years of wretched treatment, hundreds of years of exile, and we are expected to forgive them… just so." He flicked his massive, blunt fingers in a gesture of disgusted finality. "As I sat looking at their unformed faces, soft as pink mud, it was all I could do not to crush them. I should have crushed them…"

  "Then you would be a fool," Yasammez told him. "We need them all."

  "Need them?" Hammerfoot looked up; in the small place, he seemed to grow even larger. "We could have ground them all beneath our hooves if you had not held us back, Lady."

  Yasammez stood, and her dozen lieutenants fell silent. "Do you see this?" she said, touching the Seal of War. "It means you have sworn yourself to me. Do you see this sword?" She slapped Whitefire's sheath. "In the very place my kin were murdered I forswore my oath and sheathed it. And you tell me now that you would become twice an oathbreaker? Where is the honor of the Deep Born, Hammerfoot? Where is the brave heart that has shared so many troubles with me-and whose father and grandfather fought beside me as well?" She shook her head and the thoughts that carried her words were as chill as a blast of wintry wind. "I am disappointed."

  For a moment it seemed the anger might make the great Ettin do something beyond madness, for the oaths of the Deep Born were among the most powerful things that any of those gathered there knew. Even Lord Hammerfoot, though, could not stand long in Lady Porcupine's cold regard.

  "I… I spoke rashly," he said. "But I do not understand what we are doing, my mistress. We came here to fight the creatures who have done evil to us… not to help them."

  "We cannot beat this southern king by ourselves," said Yasammez. "I told you, this autarch has twenty soldiers for every one of ours, and other weapons beside-those are odds that even the People cannot overcome… unless all we seek here is a noble death." She spread her hands in the gesture Complications Unsought as she seated herself again. "But though we need the sunlanders as allies, that does not mean they are friends. Ultimately, we must keep the doorway to the gods from falling under the power of any mortals, even our momentary allies, so if we defeat the southerner but still cannot regain control here…" She shrugged. "Then it will be time for the other measures."

  Aesi'uah, her chief eremite, seemed unsettled by this idea. "Other measures? Do you mean the Fever Egg…?"

  "Yes," said the dark lady, silencing her. "Stone of the Unwilling, which of your people has been tasked with protecting the Egg?"

  He flickered as if surprised. "Shadow's Cauldron, great lady."

  "Call her."

  "Of course. She will step to us now."

  A moment later another of the Guard of Elementals joined their presence, smelling freshly of the Void. "I have come…" she began.

  "Produce it," commanded Yasammez.

  Shadow's Cauldron did not need to ask what she was expected to produce; only half an instant passed before it was in her hand, a translucent stone the size of a human child's head. In its depths some brown murkiness so dark it was almost black swirled like a tiny thundercloud. Inside that cloud something shone a sickly yellow, like lightning struggling to be born.

  "The Egg is strong." Shadow's Cauldron was young and less used to forming words than Stone of the Unwilling; he
r speech buzzed like wasps in the thoughts of those listening. "It will not break unless thrown from a great height, or struck by something heavy and strong. But when it is broken, the fever seed will be released and it will spread like smoke. Everything in its path will die."

  "Even a god?" Yasammez looked at the thing with interest and a little distaste.

  Again the buzzing words; those who had skin felt it crawl in response. "Any earthly form that a god wears will die-nothing that draws breath or sinks roots can live when this fever burns it."

  "But what will stop it?" demanded Greenjay's son, Flightless. "Shall we kill everything that runs beneath the sun or moon? That will be a miserable epitaph for the People."

  "It stops of its own accord, like the ripples in a large pond," Shadow's Cauldron told him with something like anger in her voice. "As the Lady Yasammez wishes, it will not spread far beyond the borders of this mortal land before its potency dies." Her flicker grew stronger. "Although many believe that none of the sunlanders deserve to survive…"

  "Thank you, daughter," said Stone of the Unwilling. "Have you heard what you wished to hear, Lady Yasammez?"

  "She may go."

  A moment later, Shadow's Cauldron and the Egg were no longer in the cavern. It was the eremite Aesi'uah who broke the silence. "Has it really come to this, Mistress? To such despair? Not only to take our own lives, and thousands upon thousands of mortal lives as well, but even the lives of beast and herb, then to make this place a wasteland of death for years to come?"

  "Small enough price for them to pay for their treachery, certainly!" said one of the Changing tribe. "We are owed this vengeance, Dreamless! As Shadow's Cauldron said, it is a shame we cannot kill more."

  Yasammez silenced him with a harsh gesture. "We do nothing simply for vengeance, much as it might be deserved. But know that I will do whatever I must to make certain that the gods and their gateway do not fall under the control of any mortal."