by Tad Williams
The guard reluctantly dropped the weapon to his side, and they all watched as the king of Southmarch halted at the edge of the abyss. He looked down for a long moment, then turned back to the Golden One and the guards. "You have a demon's luck, Sulepis. I have waited long for that chance, but your god must be watching you."
"Oh, he is watching," the autarch said again, still laughing. "But he is watching because he fears me!" He gestured toward Olin. "And now, little king, what will you do next?"
"The one thing you cannot prevent." The northerner was disheveled, pale, and sweating, all his recent ill-health plain on his face and in his labored breathing. "I am going to take my own life. I need only step back one pace. Then you will see how far your plans go without any of Sanasu's blood to make your filthy charms with!"
Vash did not doubt from the look on Olin's face that he would carry through on his threat. He felt a moment of unexpected hope. If Olin Eddon dies, then perhaps our master will give up this mad plan of his. Perhaps we will be able to return to Xand-to a life worth living.
But the autarch seemed quite undisturbed. "Oh, Olin, this is a fine comedy. Like something played here during your Zosimia festivals, is it not?"
"I am no longer listening to you and your madness and your tricks." The northerner was at the very edge of the pit-he did not even need to step back again to fall, only lean too far. Nobody would be able to prevent it.
"No trick. Rather, just like your comic tales, it is all a matter of timing. If you had made this threat yesterday or the day before, you would have posed a serious problem for me. But today…" Sulepis chuckled again and shook his head. "Oh, wait until you see how your own gods have cursed and betrayed you!"
"What are you talking about?"
Sulepis turned and whispered something to one of the half dozen guards hovering nearby. The man turned and went back to the autarch's magnificent, gold-stitched tent. "You have made one small misjudgment, Olin. That is no mean tally, but it is one more than you could afford to make. You see, it is not particularly the blood of Sanasu the Weeping Queen I must have, it is the blood of her ancestor, the god Habbili-the one you northerners know as Kupilas the Crooked." The autarch smiled at the king's growing look of dismay. "The god spread his seed a bit more widely than only among the Qar, you see. For one thing, he lived long on Mount Xandos among his enemies, and in that time fathered a child or two upon mortal women. Or perhaps it was upon goddesses or demi-goddesses, and they in turn mated with mortals-it does not matter. In Xand we have always heard tales of the survival of Habbili's bloodline. My priests and I eventually proved those rumors right… and that is why, since last night, you are no longer the only key that will open Heaven's door. Look!"
The guard was returning with the girl, who had been dressed like one of the Brides from the Seclusion. He brought her to Sulepis and pushed her roughly to her knees beside the walk-board slaves.
"You will remember Qinnitan of the Hive, I think, King Olin," the autarch said, as if introducing them to each other at a state banquet. "You see her now as we first saw her, with the mark of her bloodline visible in her hair." He bent and reached out a long arm to pull the girl's hair back; a streak of fiery orange-red ran through the shining fall of black like a wound. "So you see, you may throw yourself to your death if you wish, Olin Eddon. I will miss these last hours of your conversation, but now that I have her, I no longer need you or your blood."
The northern king looked from the triumphantly grinning autarch to the dull-eyed girl. "Ah, it's you, child," Olin said. "I was right-there was something about you, after all."
She only looked at him and then back to the autarch, face full of sullen terror.
After a moment Olin lifted his hands. "I surrender. You can do with me what you will, Sulepis. I ask you a boon, however. I will go to my death without struggle if you promise you will spare the girl. She is only a child!"
"A child with very, very old blood," said the autarch. "But you are in no position to make demands, Olin."
The girl looked up, and for the first time seemed to understand what was going on. Her eyes, already large and dark, widened as she saw Olin on the precipice. "Go!" she shouted, and then, as if to make it clear she did know what was happening, added, "Go, die! Be free!"
But instead of heartening him, these words seemed to take the last strength out of Olin Eddon. He sagged to his knees, letting the broken piece of stone fall from his hand, and did not move as the guards dragged him away from the edge and then quickly tied his hands behind his back.
"Do not harm him, but put him back under lock and key." The autarch smiled at Vash. "We cannot reward him for bad behavior, of course."
"Is there nothing to which you will not stoop?" Olin asked the autarch as they marched him past. "To hide behind a child…!"
"I would murder a million children to reach what is mine," Sulepis said calmly. "That is why I will be a god when you and your country-men have disappeared into the dust of the past." Vash must have betrayed something with his expression, because the autarch pointed at the old courtier as if to drive the lesson home. "A million children, my old friend-ten million! It makes no difference. I would destroy everything that lived without a second thought, if it brought me my heart's desire."
Vash invented an errand and left soon after. The autarch, who was discussing the push into the depths beneath the castle with his officers, did not seem to notice his departure.
Matt Tinwright had thought he could sink no lower-that his days living at Hendon Tolly's side, kept at the lord protector's beck and call, forced to watch and even participate in some of Tolly's more disturbing pastimes, had pulled him down so far nothing could ever shock him again. He had been wrong.
It was bad enough he had to carry young Prince Alessandros, who had been squirming and crying all the way across the residence; Tinwright could not imagine what he would have done if he had been forced to keep Queen Anissa restrained, a task that had fallen to the two guards after they had taken the child. She fought and shrieked in their arms, but the upper floors of the residence might as well have been deserted: as the group made its way down the hall no one even opened a door to look out at what was happening. Tinwright could only guess that they had become familiar with the sound of distressed women being dragged across the residence at night.
But why am I helping this monster? he thought. Nobody knows better than I do what a mad beast he is. I should find a way to kill him, even if I die myself making it happen.
But that was just the problem: Matthias Tinwright did not want to die. Not even to rid the world of a murderous piece of offal like Hendon Tolly. In fact, he was so terrified of the lord protector that he couldn't convince himself he would succeed even if he somehow steeled himself to do it. Tolly would survive, somehow, and he would go out of his way to make Tinwright's death long and painful.
So instead you'll go along with him? he asked himself. By Zosim's lyre, what kind of man are you?
A coward. There was no reason to lie-Tinwright was talking only to Tinwright, after all. A coward who wants to live. Besides if I die, who will take care of Elan? Who will keep her from falling back into Tolly's clutches?
But it wasn't really Elan, he knew. Coward-that was the true shape of it. No sense in pretending otherwise.
Queen Anissa was struggling with the guards again, trying to reach Tinwright and the child. "Sir!" she cried to Tinwright, "Sir, I know you not, but you have a kind face. Will you let at least me carry him? Please, sir! He is frightened, the poor, dear little lamb." She strained toward the red-faced, weeping baby. "Let his mama hold! Let me…!"
Matt Tinwright felt as if he might be ill. What could the harm be, after all? Why shouldn't Anissa hold the baby?
Because she might kill the child instead of letting Tolly have him, he told himself, and was horrified not only to be able to conceive of such a thing, but to know it was true and he had to act on it. Come now, he told himself, as if another member of the crowd of Matt Tinwr
ights had shouldered forward to have a say. If you hold onto the baby, you can keep it safe. No telling what this hysterical woman might do.
"Please, sir, please!" Her tone changed, grew louder and more desperate as they approached Tolly's chambers. "Oh, by the gods, by the holy Three," she began to screech, "and our lady Zoria and all the demons in the deeps, curse this monster for stealing my baby! Curse him!"
And the worst thing was that he did not know which monster she meant, Hendon Tolly or himself, and he could not find much difference between the two.
"Why do you act like this, my queen? Why do you make such a clamor? No one will hurt your baby. Go back to your rooms." Hendon was smoother and more composed than the last time Tinwright had seen him. He had bathed and put on a clean doublet and hose; except for a certain feral quality in his stare and his ceaseless pacing and gesticulating, he almost seemed the old Hendon Tolly again.
Anissa was trying her hardest to believe the lies he was telling her, but she was not finding it easy. "Why take him from me, Lord Tolly? Why such treating of me, who always gives you kind words and… kind help?" Her accent, thick at the best of times, had become nearly impenetrable. "Just give back him and I bring when you need him."
"But I need him now, sweet Anissa." Hendon smiled, but he was clearly out of patience with her. He held the baby awkwardly, like a fastidious scholar who had been handed a mud-spattered pig. "Enough talk, now. Go back to your chambers and I promise I will soon bring him to you, safe and sound."
"But why do you take him? For what?" She tried to smile back, but it was agonizing to see how poorly she did it. "You cannot need such a little one!"
"Ah, but I do, my queen, and you must trust me. Have I not helped you since your husband was taken from you? Have I not guided you during these most difficult times, and sworn to you that Alessandros here would follow in his father's footsteps?"
"But why do you need my baby?" She pulled free of the guard who held her arm and threw herself down onto her knees in front of Hendon Tolly. It was painful to watch, like a sick drunkard begging for a last cup.
"Enough. I do not have time to explain everything. Go back to your rooms, Anissa." Tolly's already scant tolerance was fraying fast. The imposture-his attempt to seem ordinary and composed-was already falling apart.
"No!" She crawled rapidly toward him and threw her arms about his legs. "Please, Hendon! I beg you! Not this thing! Not my Sandros!"
"For the love of all the gods, will you simpletons get this woman off me!" Tolly shoved her away with his foot, fighting to keep a grip on the young child, who was squirming and crying again. He managed to get his heel against the queen's shoulder and kept her at bay that way, although she wept and tried to get to him. At last the guards pried her loose and dragged her to her feet, then had to hang on as she shrieked and fought to get to Tolly again.
"Take her away," he said. "Lock her in her rooms-no, she will raise a fuss there that will put the cat amongst the mice for certain. Lock her in the strongroom on the next floor. Feed her and see that she is tended to-she may have one maid, a young one-but I do not want to see her again until I call for her."
The guards dragged the queen out of the room. It was not easy, even though Anissa was a small, slender woman, because she fought them every step of the way, and even with Tolly's orders, the guards still could not bring themselves to be rough with the king's wife.
When they were gone and the echoes of the woman's wretched cries had finally faded, Tolly set the child down on his bed where it kicked and wailed.
"Do you know anything about changing a child's smallclothes?" Tolly asked him suddenly.
"Sire?" Tinwright had not been expecting this.
"The creature stinks. I am sure it needs cleaning. We shall have to find a woman who can do it." The lord protector shook his head in disgust. "My library is small-I am not going to share it with that ghastly stench."
"Library, my lord?"
"We have incantations to speak, potions to prepare and serve to this little beast," Tolly said with a look of distaste toward young Alessandros Eddon. "Okros explained it to me, although I do not remember everything he said. No matter! You are a scholar too… of sorts. We have all his books and papers. We have a day or so before the autarch's bloody Midsummer Night-plenty of time. The magical royal blood is already there, after all." He gave a sudden laugh-long, loud, and harsh. "Yes, the little beast is simply full of the stuff!"
28
Better Than Expected "The Orphan's journey north was a long one. He and Moros were menaced by robbers, heathens, cruel demons, and spiteful fairies…"
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
The fighting as the funderlings were forced back through the Maze was as bad as anything Ferras Vansen had ever experienced. He had been terrified facing the Qar, he had been confused and despairing almost his entire time behind the Shadowline, and of course his earliest fighting, raids that his old commander Donal Murroy had led against bandit chieftains in the Southmarch countryside, had been terrifying precisely because they were the first time he had faced opponents trying to kill him-but this was different than all of them. Most of it was siege work, breast against breast, shield against shield, a sweaty, slippery, exhausting struggle where a moment's loss of concentration could cost your life. In some spots the ranks were so tightly packed that men were killed next to him but could not fall down until he and his Funderlings finally retreated; other times Vansen and his comrades remained tangled with the very Xixian soldiers they had killed and could not shove the bodies away until the southerners fell back. It was a disturbingly intimate war: because of the darkness and close quarters archers became almost entirely useless, so most of the struggle was with men you could touch and smell and see… if not see well. The bearded, desert-browned faces of the Xixians, their conical helmets and armor of overlapping plates, began to seem almost as familiar as those of the little men who fought beside him. Together, the two sides moved deeper and deeper into the earth, twined like courtiers engaged in a complicated dance. The defenders gave ground, and the attackers pressed them, so that sometimes it seemed to Vansen the entire struggle was only some complicated way of worshiping great Kernios, lord of death and darkness.
Has ever a stranger war been fought? he wondered to himself. And by more bewildered combatants?
After hours of bloody fighting, Vansen's men were able to use their dwindling supply of blasting powder to drop a large section at the front of the Maze onto the autarch's army, utterly blocking the central chamber known as the Initiation Hall with the rubble of collapsed walls, and thus closing the only route through the Maze. After retreating a safe distance, the defenders were able to snatch some much-needed rest as the Xixians labored to dig their way through the shattered stone that barred their path.
"But I need to know more!" Vansen told Brother Flowstone, one of the monks who had come to fight with the other Funderlings. With many of the Maze's corridors now cracked and in danger of collapse, he had pulled his men all the way back to a wide, low chamber called the Revelation Hall where the young Funderlings spent the end of their vigil before finally being given a sight of the Shining Man. "Why can't you tell me the names of these tunnels?" Vansen continued. "It's the one thing Chert didn't put on his map. With so many different ways to choose, we might even be able to attack the southerners from behind or from the side!"
"Because these tunnels do not have names!" A broken nose and several long cuts disfigured Flowstone's youthful face. "I told you, Captain, we Brothers only learn the steps of the maze by heart so that we can pass through it and lead the celebrants. We do not learn the names of each back-around and blind pass. Don't you understand, Captain? We Funderlings didn't build this place."
Vansen was astounded. "You didn't? Then who did?"
Flowstone shrugged. "Perhaps the Qar. Perhaps your gods-the same gods that this mad southern king wishes to bring back to life. In a way, we are all st
rangers here."
Ferras Vansen tried to rest, but as had happened so many times on this retreat, he got up after a short, ragged sleep and wandered through the makeshift camp, watching over his men and wishing he could do more for them. Too many dead had been left behind; here too many were wounded and in need of care. For a while Vansen lingered to watch some of the Funderlings building walls across the narrower end of the broad chamber so they would have some cover when the time came to retreat from the Revelation Hall-if any men were still left to retreat.
His heart heavy, Vansen wandered back to his own fire. "Gods! This will drive me mad!" he said. "We have used all but the last of our blasting powder. When they dig through this fall of rubble, we will have no other way to hold them back but our sinews and blades. Why did we say yes to Chert's cursed plan-how much blasting powder will be wasted up above…?"
"Might as well calm yourself, Captain," Jasper told him. "What the Elders decree the rest of us will see."
"But we need only hold them back for a day or two more, and it will be too late for the autarch's lunatic scheme!" Vansen was nearly beside himself with frustration. "Am I wrong about the day, Copper?"
"We may not have had enough water to drink," said Malachite Copper said, "but we have kept the water-clock damp as a ferret's nose." He shook his head sadly. "Up in Funderling Town they will be lifting a cup to Midsummer's Eve."
"Gods bite me. What do people who live in a dark cave care about summer?" Vansen asked pettishly.
At that moment, Cinnabar's son Calomel came running through the camp. He was a great favorite, but the men were so weary and downhearted that few of them even bothered to look up as he passed. If they had, they would have seen his dirty face streaked with tears.
"Captain! Come quick!" he cried. "Hurry! Bring men! My father needs you at Initiation Hall!"
"What?" Vansen jumped to his feet. "But he only went back to look after the ones pushing rubble into the tunnel…"