by Tad Williams
But where are the Funderlings? he wondered.
"Hear me!" a loud, clear voice said from behind them in the ordinary tongue of Southmarch mortals. It was Aesi'uah, Yasammez's chief eremite, but her mistress did not even look up as the counselor spoke. "On behalf of my lady Yasammez, I bid you lay down your weapons and your feuds-all peaceful folk have safe welcome in this house." The words echoed in Barrick's mind, a time-lost traditional greeting, a memory of more warlike days that now seemed to have come again.
"The Autarch Sulepis' army is outside the castle walls," Aesi'uah continued. "He has brought machines the world has not seen since the gods' day, great guns that smash the stone like a hammer. He has bred monsters. He has even bred living children of the Exile to use like beasts, all so that he can raise the god he thinks is Whitefire-Sulepis calls him Nushash-from eternal sleep and force him to wield his matchless strength on the autarch's behalf." She bowed her head for a moment. "He has studied and prepared carefully. We believe he has the power to do just what he intends."
"But how could he command a god even if he could wake one?" said a Skimmer man, standing up. "Egye-var speaks to us through the sisters and the Scale, but we could no more tame him than we could tame the watery ocean itself."
"The southerner believes he has a way to force the god to do his bidding," said Saqri, speaking up from her seat beside Yasammez. "The ripples of his exploration-with apologies to Turley Longfingers and his beloved ocean-could be felt in the Deep Library, and even by some of the more sensitive still among the living." She paused in an odd way, and Barrick suddenly sensed that she spoke of herself-that her own long, long sleep and the dreams that had come with it had not always been peaceful or pleasant. "We do not know how this mortal plans to control a god, but we believe after everything else he has done, it would be foolish to assume he cannot accomplish it."
"So, if it pleases my fellow monarchs," little Queen Upsteeplebat called out through her speaking-trumpet, "what is the point of our all being here? The autarch has already plunged down past these halls and is moving in the deeps with his men, forcing his way downward to the Funderlings' sacred place-to the Shining Man."
"It is not only the Funderlings' sacred place," said Saqri. "No matter which gods we chose to follow, he who is prisoned in the Shining Man saved us all from continuing enslavement. Without him, the gods would yet rule us."
"Would that have been so bad, Mistress?" asked Turley the Skimmer. "Our god speaks often-like to us and it's done us naught but good."
"It could be that you misremember what it was like when the sea god could take a more active interest in things," Saqri said. "But I will grant that he was always the most peaceful of the brothers-his power came not just from his strength but also from his wisdom. In any case, it is not the return of the gods we fear, though it is something worth fearing, as much as the more frightful idea of a mortal madman controlling an immortal's power."
Aesi'uah spoke again, relating things Barrick had already heard but with new details which had clearly been learned only recently, like the story of the autarch's visit to M'Helan's Rock and conversation with Hendon Tolly, which the Dreamless woman now reported word for word in her calm, clear voice. She, and occasionally Saqri, also spoke of things Barrick had not heard, or had heard only imperfectly, retelling the tale of Crooked and his destruction of the gods in such a way that it seemed almost entirely different from the version the raven Skurn had told him, full of strange details which raised quiet Fireflower echoes in his thoughts.
From time to time the Skimmers and the tiny people called Rooftoppers chimed in as well, and Barrick began to grasp how little he had truly known about his father's kingdom, especially its capitol, when he lived in Southmarch.
"A question occurs to us," Queen Upsteeplebat said at last. "Where are the Funderlings? Where are the stonecutters? The children of Egye-Var are here, as are those of us who worship the Lord of the Peak…" She gestured to her Rooftoppers. "But where are the minions of old Karisnovois, King of the Mud and the Rock?"
Aesi'uah turned to look at her mistress, Yasammez, but it was Saqri the queen who spoke instead.
"That is part of the reason we are here," Saqri told her. "The Funderlings are at this moment far below us, fighting to protect the deep place they call the Mysteries from the autarch and his thousands-the place we call Ancestor's Blood."
"What do you mean, fighting? Below us?" Barrick didn't like the sound of that at all. "We sit here talking when this autarch is already in the depths?"
Yasammez stirred. "Too late to pretend innocence, last bearer," she told Barrick coldly. "Come out and speak or hold your peace." After this cryptic remark, she stared at him for a long moment, then lowered her dark, dark eyes once more.
"We would hear the answer that this young man seeks," said Upsteeplebat. "But first we would know his name."
It was bizarre for Barrick to realize he could be in a meeting of nearly a hundred souls in his own castle-or at least beneath it-but not be recognized. He bowed toward the tiny, handsome woman. "I am Barrick Eddon, son of King Olin, Majesty. I am a prince… now the only prince… of Southmarch."
The murmur of surprise that rose seemed laced with more than a few angry mutters. Most of the latter seemed to be coming from the Skimmers. Turley, their leader, turned to Barrick with a worried look.
"Your pardon that we didn't recognize you, Prince Barrick. My daughter speaks well of your family-especially your sister, whom she helped leave the castle."
"My sister? Briony?" It had taken a moment for his sister's name to come to him. Briony seemed… diminished now, somehow, her place in his memory and thoughts smaller than it had been in the past, as though a mist had flowed between them. "Is she truly here?"
"She lives," said Saqri. "But I cannot discover where she is. These days the restlessness of the sleeping gods disrupts all the gifts of Grandmother Void, but what have become most difficult are far-seeing and far-talking." She spread her hands-The Sea is Calm. "Later I will tell you all I know… but right now we have more pressing matters than even sisters and brothers." She looked at Yasammez as though she would say something to her ancestor, but then turned back to the rest of those watching. "The Funderlings and the men who fight with them are far below us in the place they call the Maze, making a stand against Sulepis and all his men and monsters. The hour is fast dying when we can still help them directly. Thus we come to what we think will be the final struggle."
"But that is why we have joined together," said Upsteeplebat through her speaking-trumpet. The tent quieted so everyone could hear her. "The Exiles and the Firstborn, the commoners and the high ones of the Fireflower-we have joined together to fight for our home. Why do we waste time talking?" She pulled a tiny streak of silver from a sheath and lifted it high. "I pledge my sword as a token of my people's willingness to risk their lives in the service of this goal."
The roar of shrill cheers from the box was drowned out by Turley Longfingers, who rose yet again to say, "All well and good, but why should we? What benefits our clans when we could be away before the next tide and find elsewhere to fish and ply our crafts?"
"There is more to a decision to fight with us…" Saqri began, but Yasammez abruptly rose to her feet beside her, swift and ominous as a black cloud scudding in from the horizon.
"The water-man is right that this is no fight for his people," Yassamez declared, "but he is wrong about the reason." She looked around the room from her thicket of armored spikes, her anger almost visible. Some of the mortals actually cringed as her gaze touched them. "The reason the Skimmers should not fight-that none of you should fight-is because there is no point. Victory cannot be snatched from the jaws of this failure because these are the final moments of the Long Defeat. Ancient apologies should be made and accepted by those…" she looked directly at Saqri,"… who believe in such things. But the rest of you might just as well return to your families to spend your last hours with them. There is no cure for this disease. Ther
e is nothing ahead of us but death." Her long pale fingers rose to the ember-red stone on her breast. "So I declare as holder of the Seal of War." She said this not in anger, but with calm and horrifying certainty. "Those who ignore me will learn soon enough that I speak the truth."
And then Yasammez turned and walked from the tent, leaving open mouths and silence behind her.
19
Mummery "The north was almost empty of men in those days because of the great cold that had followed the Theomachy, after Zmeos, the jealous god of the sun's fire, was defeated by his three brothers, Perin, Erivor, and Kernios… "
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
Ferras Vansen could barely sit still. "Where are they? Where are the Qar? I thought we had an understanding!" The fearsome Yasammez was beyond anyone's understanding, of course, but her councillor Aesi'uah had as much as promised Vansen that the Qar would fight side side by side with Vansen and the Funderlings-after all, what else could the Twilight folk do?
"I do not mind waiting a little while longer for them," Cinnabar said. "It will give me time enough time to put on my armor. Where is my son, Calomel? He was going to help me with it." The magister shook his head mournfully. "I have not worn armor since my youthful days in the warders. Even if it will still fit me, I fear I misremember which strap goes to which buckle… Calomel? Where are you, boy?" When the Funderling youth appeared, his father said, "Go and get it all for me, son. It's time." Calomel trotted off.
The guards brought the Qar's messenger to Vansen and the other commanders.
"Spelter?" said Malachite Copper. "They sent you?"
Vansen glanced up in surprise as the drow entered the makeshift command post. He liked Spelter, but why should the Qar use a humble military scout as their envoy when so many others like Aesi'uah could speak the mortal tongue just as well?
The bearded man bowed, a quick downward flick of his chin. His inscrutable, vulpine face seemed even more blank than usual. "Magisters, Captain-I bring you greetings from Lady Yasammez."
"I am glad to have her greetings," Vansen said, "but what I need is to know what's in her mind. She gave me to understand the autarch was her enemy, too. He is not stopping, and we are falling back to protect the Mysteries."
"Yes, we know," said Spelter, nodding once.
"Well, then? Is she coming? Will your mistress stand beside us as she all but promised?"
For a brief moment Vansen glimpsed the unhappiness that had been hidden in Spelter's dark eyes, perhaps even the twist of a frown in the drow's beard, and his heart went cold.
"No, Captain," said Spelter. "She is not."
"What?" Cinnabar stumbled forward, his vambraces dragging on the floor. "Not coming? But we gave your mistress sanctuary in our own tunnels-we gave you all sanctuary when the autarch came! And this is how she pays us back? Leaving us to fight alone?"
"I am sorry, Magister." Spelter turned to Vansen and nodded a salute. "Captain." He kept his back rigid and his eyes staring ahead, even when there was nothing before him to stare at; a soldier was a soldier, it seemed, even among the Qar. "I regret bearing this news. You are brave allies. I can say no more. Good luck."
Vansen watched the drow walk back across the chaos of the breaking camp. A few of the Funderlings watched him with superstitious fear. Only half a year ago the drows and the Qar had been stories to excite and frighten young children. Now they were real.
Real, but cowardly, Vansen thought in sudden rage. He should have known that Lady Porcupine was too proud and spiteful to be able to overcome her hatred of mortals-he should have known! Now it was he who had betrayed his allies by promising them help that would not come…
"Balls of the Brothers!" he spat, full of fury and shame. "Cinnabar, I've failed. I'm prepared to hand the command to Copper right now if you'll let me."
"You'll do nothing like it," said a startled Malachite Copper, coughing up some of the water he'd been drinking.
"He's right," said Cinnabar. "You'll do nothing like, Captain. We hung you on the marshal's hoist because you're the best for the task." He reached out blindly to take another piece of armor from his son Calomel, but his hands were shaking. "You've done nothing to show otherwise. By the Elders, Captain Vansen, do you blame yourself for the Qar not coming? If you had not risked your life to make treaty with them, we'd still be fighting them as well as the filthy, fracturing autarch!" Cinnabar looked upset. "Sorry, lad. Don't tell your mother I said that in front of you."
Young Calomel brightened considerably.
Vansen shook his head. "Do not be so quick to exonerate me, Magister. Perhaps the Qar and the autarch would now be fighting each other if I hadn't interfered."
"Still and all," said Copper, "don't be foolish. No one else would have done differently, but you were the only one who could do it, in any case."
"Once more our old friend Copper speaks the truth," Cinnabar agreed, waving his hand. "Enough. Except to say that not only won't we let you out of your responsibilities, Captain Vansen, my people will long remember what you did for us." A moment later, he added, "If the Elders decree that my people survive, that is."
Vansen, who had already been mulling his own version of this, nodded. "A wise soldier never presumes that the gods will reward good intentions." He felt about to drown in his own misery. "Well, if the fairies aren't coming, I suppose we need wait no longer. Anything else left to finish here?"
"Me." Cinnabar, tongue between his teeth, was busy with his high-collared chest plate.
Calomel reached up and helped his father tie the knots. "He's almost ready, Captain."
"And he looks very handsome, our Cinnabar," Malachite Copper said almost cheerfully, as if they had not just been told they were fighting alone. "Not in the least like a fat townsman who has forgotten everything he learned in the warders."
"Yes, I'm sure one sight of me and the autarch's men will all run," said Cinnabar, but no one had the heart to laugh.
He had become an animal, a thing of rough, matted hair and sharp teeth. He could smell her. He knew that the soldiers had taken her across the water-he had her scent and it told him everything. He could even smell the warm blood that would gush forth when he caught her and began to bite and tear…
Daikonas Vo shuddered and blinked. No. He was not an animal. He was a man, even if it was getting harder to remember that sometimes. He looked at the crowd of people around him. Some of them were staring. He could only guess what he looked like. But what was he trying to remember…?
It came back. The girl. The girl from the Seclusion. He didn't smell her, that was only his madness speaking, but he had seen the soldiers take her and march her onto a boat headed back across the bay toward Southmarch. He knew where she was going-to the autarch, the wonderful, powerful, treacherous, murderous autarch…
It was important to remember the truth and defend against madness. If Vo lost control, he knew he would become an animal in truth-a dead one, as forgotten as any cur left to rot by the roadside. But there were moments he did feel he could smell the girl, no matter how far away she was-he could almost picture her scent wafting behind her as she ran, trailing in the air like a broken spiderweb, dissolving slowly but lingering just long enough to coil about him like mist, leading him on…
He stopped himself just before he began howling. The sun was bright, and his head felt as though it had been split by a stoneworker's chisel. The people around him had drawn back, and many were staring at him in apprehension-he must be talking to himself again.
Vo put his head down and began to walk.
She had tried to kill him. That memory helped to keep him going when the pain almost became too much. It was not the worst thing she had done, of course-in fact it was scarcely important at all except as a reminder of how slack he had been. But in trying to murder him she had poured all his sweet black medicine away, the one thing that had quieted the gnawing monstrosity the autarch had left in Vo's guts. Now the agony grew in h
im by the hour. Vo had tried other remedies since he had lost his boat, wild simples he had picked in the forest and eaten, and later, when he had reached villages and small towns again, things he could get from apothecaries and healers, simply stealing when he could, killing without hesitation when he had to. But even the most learned of these country healers knew little more than the name of Malamenas Kimir's healing liquid-they certainly did not have any. If he had not been certain beyond doubt he would be dead before he reached Agamid and Kimir's shop he would have started back there already; instead he had only one chance to end the burning pain in his guts: he might still be able to convince Sulepis of his usefulness and be released from this endless torture.
So Daikonas Vo walked across the waterfront of Onir Beccan toward the place the ships docked, ignoring the local apothecaries because he could not afford the time or distraction. Every hour it seemed to become harder to think. Sometimes his mind was nothing but a black cave of screeching bats. Sometimes his legs cramped so badly that he dropped helplessly to the ground, but he always got up again.
Somebody was making strange noises. Growling and wheezing, mumbled words.
It was Vo himself, of course. He laughed a little through the pain. It was strange being mad, but he had been through worse.
Vo had been trying to ignore the pain that burned in his gut like a blazing coal while he watched the small ship he planned to board. A crane swung barrels of supplies up onto the deck as half-naked men pulled the ropes and shouted at each other. Could he manage? It seemed unlikely: to judge by the number of Xixian soldiers on the deck the autarch's army had commandeered the Blueshore cog outright, which would make it hard for Vo to slip aboard unnoticed, especially in his present condition.
It was only after he had reluctantly decided to wait for another ship that he suddenly remembered the parchments that old Vash had given him-the autarch's writ. The whole memory seemed strange, as though it had happened to someone else, but the documents had served him well when he commandeered the first ship in Hierosol, and could do so again… if he still had them…