by Tad Williams
"Another question, one that must be asked-will there be peace between us?"
"I think in this one thing I can safely speak for your brother. Yes, there will be peace, if mankind will leave us in our freedom and our isolation."
The whispers began again; Briony ignored them. "If my brother is truly your leader I will need to hear that from his own lips before I…" she turned guiltily toward Prince Eneas, "… before we could promise to honor such a pact on behalf of our peoples."
The eremite bowed her head. "As you say."
Briony took another deep breath, reminding herself that the business of caring for her people would always be a matter of compromises. "Thank you, Lady Aesi'uah. That eases my mind somewhat. Now, let us speak of other things. What happened down below the castle-I scarcely know how to talk about it. I've heard many stories, but I still don't entirely understand them. That… thing… the giant…"
"It was Zosim the Trickster, the lord of words and wine and fire. Zosim the Deathlord's son. Zosim the god."
The whispers became more urgent, more fearful.
"Forgive us if we doubt," Eneas said abruptly. "But this flouts everything we Trigonates believe."
"You need not take my unsupported word as truth, Prince Eneas," said Aesi'uah. "There are more than a few of Briony's own subjects who still live, and who saw much of what happened."
"Little people," said Eneas unhappily. "Kallikani."
"They are still my subjects, Prince Eneas," Briony said as politely as she could. And Ferras Vansen, too, she thought, but he will not talk to me. Scarcely a day passed after Vansen collapsed at her feet before he had gone off to join the Funderlings in hunting for Durstin Crowel and the rest of Tolly's partisans under the castle. "Even so, Lady Aesi'uah, it is hard for those of us who weren't there to understand. What happened to… Zosim?"
"He is gone, Princess. Even the oldest and wisest of our race who survived cannot tell for certain what that means. He is an immortal and immortals are, by definition, hard to kill, but it might be possible when they take mortal form. We can feel no trace of him in the waters that roil now beneath us-the inrushing sea quenched his blaze. Where is fire when it ceases to burn? That is where Zosim is."
"So you are telling me he… it… cannot come back? That we are safe?"
Aesi'uah's expression was strange-almost a smile. "None who draw breath are safe, Highness."
Briony checked her temper. It took a moment to answer. "Thank you for this report, Lady Aesi'uah. Have you anything more to tell me?"
"Nothing except that we regret the damage done to your people as well as ours."
"But it was you fairies who did much of that damage…!" said one of the nobles and the undercurrent of discontent threatened to break the surface and become a true wave.
"Murderers," called another, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Demons!"
Briony was angry at this, but she knew that many of her own people supported her only because of her family name, and others solely because of the prince of Syan and his soldiers. She could not afford to give her impatience full rein.
"Please," she said, holding up her hand to still the growing clamor. "Lady Aesi'uah is our guest. Whatever happened before, in the end the Qar fought as our allies and many of them died defending this city and stronghold. Do not forget that." She turned to the eremite. "But as you can see, our folk are not quite ready to extend the open hand of forgiveness-and who can blame them?"
Aesi'uah inclined her head. "As you say, who can blame them?"
It seemed to Briony there was a mocking undercurrent to the reply, and that decided her. She did not like smugness coming from these creatures, however justified. "Since we still have much to discuss," she announced, "and my brother will not come to me, then I will go to him."
She was satisfied to see something like surprise on the eremite's slender face. "Highness…?"
"My apologies-was I not clear? I will go to speak to your Barrick, lord of fog and wind or whatever his grand new title is."
"But, Your Highness, it is… he is surrounded by…" Aesi'uah was clearly at a loss.
"He is what? He is my brother, yes. He is on the sovereign territory of Southmarch, capital of these March Kingdoms. He is surrounded by fairy folk, whom you have just promised me regret any damage they have done to my people. So why should there be any difficulties?"
Eneas was startled, too. "Briony… Princess… I don't think this is wise."
"But I do, Prince Eneas. More, I think it a grave necessity. The people with whom we were recently at war are encamped beneath our feet, within a short distance of miles of tunnels we know almost nothing about. If we are finding it difficult to root out a simple annoyance like Crowel, can you imagine what a hornet's nest it would be to try to do the same with the Qar should things go badly between us?" She turned and saw, as she had hoped, that all eyes in the capacious tent were on her. "Of course I shall go." She raised her hand to forestall the prince's next words. "Alone but for a few guards-this is a parley between allies, after all. Lady Aesi'uah? You may go and inform Barrick that I will come to him today, before sunset."
Briony sat back in her makeshift throne as the eremite rose and made her graceful, unhurried way out of the tent. Her head was still throbbing but she felt a little better. At least she would finally have a chance to see her brother, face-to-face.
Tinwright crouched in the indifferent shade of a dying yew tree in the commons before the royal residence and watched Princess Briony march past with her retinue of guards. A group of nearby laborers also saw her and raised a ragged cheer. Tinwright hoped she hadn't noticed him. Only Elan M'Cory swearing to the princess that Tinwright had resisted Tolly long after others would simply have murdered Briony's infant brother had kept Tinwright from going back to a stronghold cell-or more likely to the headsman's block.
But was it really true, he wondered-what would he have done if things had been different? Would he have thrown away his own life, or would he have done what Tolly ordered?
Matty Tinwright had just finished his jug of wine and all he could think of now was that he wished he had been able to afford more. Prices were very high, and all the best things went to the Syannese soldiers-as it was, Tinwright had needed to steal coppers out of his mother's jewelry box so that he could get drunk and quiet the pain in his chest, which hurt every time he took a deep breath. Still, he supposed he should be grateful he was alive. If he had not had the Zorian prayer book in his breast pocket he would be having this drink in Heaven-or at least not in Southmarch.
"Who would ever think a book could save a man's life?" the Syannese soldier-surgeon who bandaged his wound had said. Tinwright had been in chains at the time so he had not agreed with the man about his luck. He was free now but didn't feel much better about things.
And there went the princess, he thought, less than a hundred paces away from where he sat, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. He could only watch as she and the soldiers made their way along the commons path toward the Raven's Gate-watch and wonder how things had gone so very wrong for Matt Tinwright, Royal Poet.
Elan M'Cory did not love him. She had made that plain. She had thanked him for helping to keep her alive and hidden from Hendon Tolly, but that, she had told him, was gratitude, not love.
"Duke Gailon needs me," she had said, pointing again at the hideous thing she had spent the last three days nursing. "He nearly died-he thought he was dead! How could I desert him now?"
Even had Tinwright not resented the man for the fortunate accident of his birth, he would have found it painful to have her prefer such a blighted creature to his relatively unblemished self. Gailon Tolly's face was a mass of open wounds and pocked with dirt and worse things beneath the skin, so that he seemed ravaged by plague. Still, Elan had told him that she wanted only to devote the rest of her life to nursing Gailon back to health. What could be clearer than that? Tinwright himself was of no further interest.
Love, he thought. Subject of
so many sweet verses, and yet it stinks like ordure.
He levered himself to his feet and staggered across the green, which now was little more than mud and broken bits of rubble pierced by a few strands of dried, dead grass.
A map of my heart, Tinwright thought.
Would I have done it? Would I have killed the child to save myself-no, to save Elan? It was hard to say now-hard to remember anything except the confusion and terror of that moment. He stared down from wall the and across the outer battlements to the unending roll and crash of the sea. The looming Tower of Summer covered him in cool shadow. Tinwright's own thoughts on that night were as lost to him as something from the depths of history. How could anyone ever say with certainty what such and such a hero said, or thought, or felt? Tinwright had been in the middle of great events… although he had to admit his part had been a minor one… and could scarcely remember a moment of it except for Hendon Tolly's mad face glaring like a festival mask. Like something from a play…
He looked up at the sound of footsteps. A slender figure was coming toward him along the top of the wall, an old woman by her face, although she walked with strength and ease. Tinwright realized he was staring and looked out over the water again. The waves, whipped by early summer winds, spat froth as they raced toward the castle wall.
"Ah." The woman had seen him. "Forgive me. I will leave you alone and find another spot."
Tinwright shook his head. She was older than his mother, but he was tired of being alone with his own thoughts. "No, stay, please. Are you a priestess?"
"A Zorian sister," she said.
"So." He nodded. "No shortage of things for you to do these days, I'm sure."
"There is never a shortage of things to do, now or any other time." But she smiled as she said it. Tinwright liked the woman, liked her grave, somber features. "At the moment, though, I want to do nothing except feel some wind on my face."
Tinwright took this as a request for silence, so he turned away again to contemplate the restless ocean. People said that the sea had now flooded all the depths underneath Funderling Town; ever since he had heard that Tinwright half expected the castle to float away at any moment, like a boat lifted off the beach by a rising tide.
"Tell me," he said after a while. "How does it feel to know that the gods are not with us?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You must have heard what happened here. Even in your temple or shrine you must have been told something of what happened."
The woman smiled again. "Oh, I know a bit about it, yes."
"Then tell me how you can still call yourself a Zorian sister when we are told the gods are asleep-that they have been sleeping for thousands of years. That Zoria herself was killed by her husband back in the beginning of Time. That all the things the priests have told us about Heaven have been lies." He could not choke off his own bitterness now. "Nobody watches over us. Nobody waits for us when we die. Nobody cares what we do in this world, for good or ill."
She looked at him carefully, then took a step closer and stood behind him, so that they both looked out over the moving water, which glinted like silver in the afternoon glare. "And how is that different?" she asked after a while.
"What do you mean?"
"How is that different from what we have always had, always known? The gods come to us only in dreams. We must make our own choices every day of our own short lives. Whether they will reward those choices or even notice them, we do not know. I see nothing changed."
"But it is changed! It was all a lie. We saw what the priests showed us, believed what they told us, but the gods they described to us were only puppets playing out a story. Now we don't even have the puppets. We don't have anything."
"We have the same troubles we always had, young man," she said sharply. "We have the same needs as always. I see you are injured." She pointed to the bump of the poultice under his shirt. "But there are many who are more sorely wounded. They need help here on earth, whatever the gods may do. Even if our faith was never anything but a shadow play, we can still learn from it. And it could be that even the gods themselves were only puppets-that there is a larger cause behind it all, for you and for me and for every person here." She shook her head. "Listen to me go on. Some comfort, eh? I fear I am out of practice." She patted his arm. "Take care, young man. Despair is the only true enemy. Make yourself useful. Nurse someone who has greater need than you. Feed someone who is hungry. Make something that will help another."
After the woman had left, Tinwright found himself still thinking about what she had said.
"Where are Crowel and his renegades now?" Briony asked Lord Helkis, who had been alerted to her coming and had met her at the front gate of Funderling Town.
"All but run to ground, Princess. They have been pushed back to the quarry on the edge of the town, I'm told. It will be over soon." Helkis seemed to have decided that since it was now all but certain she would marry his prince, he had better start treating her with respect. Briony wasn't at all sure about his reasoning, but it made for a nice change. "Crowel does not know these tunnels but that man Vansen seems to, and Vansen also has the help of the Kallikans, of course."
"Vansen makes himself very busy," she said. So busy that she had not seen him since his recovery. Between the guard captain and her brother, she was beginning to feel quite thoroughly avoided. Does Vansen hate me? she wondered. Fear me? Or do both he and Barrick simply not care, as my brother did his best to make clear the last time?
The Funderlings who had returned to the heart of their city came out to watch Briony as she passed down Gem Street, some of them cheering but the rest watching with fascination and worry on their faces. Apparently the Funderlings were not all happy with her, either.
"I feel the need to talk to Chert Blue Quartz," she said to Lord Helkis. "Will you ask the Funderlings to send him to me?"
"As you wish, Highness." He dispatched a runner to the guildhall at the far end of the long, winding street, where reconstruction had already begun on the damage caused in the last few days of fighting before Crowel's retreat. "No man would ignore your summons, Princess, I promise you."
Except the ones I truly want to see, she thought.
Aesi'uah came out to meet her in front of the chamber, and though the woman's face was as calm as always, Briony could not help feeling that the eremite was anxious about something. "He is waiting for you, Princess Briony." Aesi'uah gestured with her long hands toward the archway and the flickering lights beyond, then stepped discreetly to one side.
"He is my brother," Briony said when Helkis and his guards would have accompanied her. "Whatever else has happened, I feel certain he is no danger to me."
Lord Helkis did not look pleased to have to stand so near to Aesi'uah, but he was not going to move any farther away, either; Briony left them to sort it out.
Her brother stood looking down at a table made from two stones set one on top of the other where he had spread many slates and rolls of parchment. Barrick had taken off his armor, and wore only a loose-fitting white shirt with breeches of the same color. His feet were bare, and for a moment she had the illusion that the past year had not happened, that she had left her bedchamber and found him up before her, standing in his nightshirt waiting for her to rise as he had when they were children. Then he looked up, and the strange coldness in his face proved that such an innocent, mostly happy past was truly gone forever. "Briony," he said calmly. "You wish to talk with me, I hear."
It was hard to make herself speak. She wanted to rush to him, to throw her arms around him, even to hit him-anything to drive that look from his face. Instead, all she managed was a nod. "Yes, I thought that would be a good idea… since you would not come to me."
"My apologies," he said in the way he might have said it to a stranger after treading on her foot, "but it is not so easy. My people… well, they hate yours. That makes it difficult. They are still fearful, and many of them do not trust me completely."
"Your people? Are you
talking about elves and goblins?" Briony realized her voice had risen almost to a shout, but she could not help herself. "You are calling these your people now, but you will not come to see your own sister? You will not come to see your father's body before he is buried?"
He turned his back on her as if to resume studying his papers and slates. "Of course you cannot understand."
Could this tall, flame-haired stranger really be Barrick? Or had the Qar somehow set a changeling in his place? Was such a thing even possible, or was it just another old wives' tale? These days legends and fairy stories seemed to be the only things that were unquestionably true. "Do you think things have not changed for me, Barrick? Our father is dead. I have walked all the way to Tessis and back as a traveling player. People have tried to poison me and shoot me with arrows. I met a demigoddess…!"
"I knew a demigoddess, too," he said. "But she was not the type who made friends with our kind."
"With our kind. Listen to yourself! A moment ago, the fairies were your people, now you speak as though you remember your true blood! You'll have to make up your mind, Barrick Eddon."
"You do not understand. The Fireflower…"
"Oh!" She turned and walked away, fighting back her anger. "Yes, things have happened to you. To me as well. Zoria's mercy, Barrick, I killed Hendon Tolly with my own hands! If you have been burned by Heaven's fire like the Orphan-well, then, so have I! We are both changed! But you haven't changed all that much-your suffering still must be unequaled by any other's…!"
He turned, his face tight with rage. "Don't talk to me about suffering, Briony! You will marry that prince-I have seen him moon over you like a calf following its mother. You will be the queen of Syan and the world will bow to you. What do I have? Do you even care?"
"Barrick, that is foolishness…"
"Do you know what is ahead for the Qar… and for me? Saqri, the queen of the People, is dying. She sacrificed herself so that Zosim could be defeated-dozens of arrows and rifle balls pierced her. Only her will and her love for her people keep her alive. When she is gone, half of what has kept the Qar race alive will be gone, too. Think of that, sister-when you are planning your marriage, I will be burying my queen and my beloved…!"