by Tad Williams
It would take hours to shift the stone again here-hours these Funderlings should be spending improving the defenses elsewhere instead of undoing and redoing their work. Ferras Vansen leaned against the wall, suddenly weary beyond words. Commander? General? He wasn't even fit for his old post as guard captain.
The drow looked the repairs up and down, then looked at Vansen. He said something in his harsh, gulping tongue.
"He says… I think he says there is another way to reach his camp from here," Antimony told Vansen.
"Another way? The Qar have another way into our caverns?" He stared at the little bearded man. "Why would he surrender that secret to us?"
"He is afraid if we turn back now the rest of my people will lose patience with him and kill him. He says the hairless one-Jasper, of course-was… making gestures." Antimony suppressed a smile. "Making it clear that he would be happy to wring this one's neck… or worse."
"I'll wager he was." Vansen nodded. "Yes, tell him we will let him show us the way."
"He asks only one thing. He begs you not to tell Lady Porcupine that he showed you a path you did not already know. He says that would mean an ending for him more terrible than anything even the hairless one could imagine."
33
Caged Children
"Rhantys, who claimed to speak with fairies himself, says that the Qar queen is known as the First Flower because she is the mother of the entire race. Rhantys even suggests her name, Sakuri, comes from a Qar word meaning 'Endlessly Fertile,' but the absence of a Qar grammar means this is hard to prove or disprove."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
It was not that Pinimmon Vash disliked children. He had always kept dozens of them as slaves, especially for his closest needs. All boys, of course-he found girls unsatisfying and inadequate. Still, he had young female slaves among his household as well. No one could claim he had anything against children. But it was the strange pointlessness of these particular children he found disconcerting.
Not to mention all the work it had caused him. It was one thing to deal with the autarch's ordinary moods, his sudden urges to eat bizarre foods or to hear some exotic style of music or experiment with some ancient, near-forgotten form of interrogation. That was well within the ordinary scope of Vash's job; he had performed such services for other autarchs before this one. In fact, he prided himself on his skill at foreseeing such requests and having at least the beginnings of fulfilling them at all times. But Sulepis made even his grandfather Parak, a man of wild appetites and fancies, seem as staid as the oldest and most constipated priest in the great temple. And now…
"Go ashore with a troop of soldiers," the autarch had told him when they made land at Orms, a city in the marshy Helobine country south of Brenland, and began trading with the locals to refresh the ship's supplies of fresh food and water. "Go some miles outside the walls-I do not wish to waste my time fighting with these people, and if I set my men on the city I will have to let them off the leash and then we will be here days and days. So take your men out to the countryside and bring me back children. Alive. A hundred should do…"
There had been no further explanation, of course, nor instruction: there seldom was with this autarch.
Seize one hundred children from their homes. Bring them back to the ship. House them, feed them-keep them alive and more or less well. But am I told why? No, of course not. Ask no questions, Vash. You may be the autarch's oldest and must trusted adviser, but you deserve no courtesies, he told himself sourly. Just do as you are told.
The paramount minister walked one last time around the section of the hold that had been boxed in with lashed staves to make a cage for the young prisoners. A dozen were housed here, the rest scattered out over several other ships. Feeding them was not the problem, Vash thought as he examined their pale faces, so confused, sullen, or blankly terrified. But keeping them alive-how was he supposed to do that? Already several of them were running at the nose and coughing. A cage in the hold was not a very warm place to house a dozen half-naked children, but would the autarch understand that if a sudden fever ran them through them and took them all? He would not.
No, then it'll be my head, Vash thought gloomily. He stared at a weeping boy and wished he could reach through the bars and hit the child to make it stop crying. And even if I am lucky and manage to keep them alive for whatever madness he plans, what next? What next, Pinimmon?
The autarch's parade of strange whims continued. They had started off from Hierosol in a single ship, but many more ships from the Xixian navy had caught up and joined them during the voyage, all loaded with soldiers. Now, after the fleet had skirted Brenland and passed through the Connord Straits, they landed in a shallow bay in the wild lands along the eastern border of Helmingsea. This was as much of a surprise to Pinimmon Vash as the order to capture one hundred children. He was increasingly convinced that his master was deliberately leaving him in the dark about the most important parts of this weird venture.
Stranger still, a troop of the autarch's fierce White Hound soldiers and their horses now went ashore in boats. They rode off west into the forest and had not returned when the autarch told the captain to weigh anchor. The fleet was still many leagues from Southmarch, their apparent destination, so Vash could not even guess at what mission the White Hounds had been left behind to fulfill.
"Let us be honest with each other, Olin," Sulepis said, "as men of learning and brother monarchs, if nothing else." Now that they were at sea again, sweeping along the coast toward their destination, the autarch was in an expansive mood. He was standing so near the railing-and the condemned northern king-that Vash could almost feel the anxiety of his Leopard bodyguards, who were watching the situation with the fixed, predatory stares of their namesakes. "Most of what we are told of the gods by priests, by the sacred books, is nonsense," he continued. "These are tales for children."
"Perhaps that is true for the tales of your god," Olin said stiffly, "but that does not mean I so lightly throw away the wisdom of our church…"
"So you believe everything your Book of the Trigon tells you? About women turned to lizards for spurning the gods' advances? About Volos Longbeard drinking the ocean?"
"The intentions of gods are not for us to judge, nor what they can accomplish if they choose."
"Ah, yes. On this we are agreed, King Olin." The autarch smiled. "You do not find the subject interesting? Then let me speak of more specific things. Your family has a certain invisible… deformity. A stain, as it were. I think you know what I mean."
Olin was clearly furious but he kept his voice even. "Stain? There is no stain on the Eddons. Just because you have the power to kill me, sir, does not mean you have the right to insult my family and my blood. We were kings in Connord before we came to the March Kingdoms, and we were chieftains before we were kings."
The autarch looked amused. "No stain, is it? Not of character or of body? Very well, then, let me tell you a little of what I have learned. If you still say I am wrong when I've finished-why, on my oath, I might even apologize. That would be entertaining, wouldn't it, Vash?"
The paramount minister had no idea what Sulepis wanted him to say, but his master was clearly waiting for an answer. "Very entertaining, Golden One. But astonishingly unlikely."
"But let me tell you a little of my own journey first, Olin. Perhaps that will give you some idea of what I mean. You will be interested too, Lord Vash. No one else in all Xis has heard this tale, except for Panhyssir."
His rival's name was like a hot coal dropped down his collar, but Vash did his best to smile and look gratified. At least the high priest was elsewhere; otherwise, the humiliation would have been even more excruciating. "I listen eagerly for whatever wisdom my lord wishes to share."
"Of course you do." Sulepis seemed to be enjoying himself: his long-boned face kept creasing in wide, crocodilian smiles and his unusual eyes seemed even more lively than usual. "Of course you do.
"I have kno
w that I was not as other children since I was very young. Not simply that I was the son of an autarch, because I was raised with dozens of others who could claim the same thing. But ever since I was a small boy I have heard and seen things that others could not see. After a while I came to realize that I, of all my brothers, could actually sense the presence of the gods themselves. Truly, every autarch claims to hear the speech of the gods, but I could tell that even for my father Parnad these were empty words.
"Not so for me.
"But here was a strange thing! All of the other royal sons and I were the children of the god-on-earth-yet only I could sense the presence of the gods! Stranger still, I had no greater power than this one small gift. The gods had given me no greater strength than other mortals, no longer life, nothing! And clearly the same was true of my father as well, and all his other heirs. The autarch of Xis was nothing but an ordinary man! His blood was ordinary blood. All that we had been taught was a lie, but only I had the courage to acknowledge it."
Vash had never heard so much blasphemy spoken-and it was being spoken by the autarch himself! What did that mean? How was he supposed to react? Indifferent as he largely was to religion, except insofar as it was the steady heartbeat of Xixian court etiquette, still Vash could not help cringing, wondering if any moment the great god himself might not strike them all down with his fiery rays. Clearly, every worry he had entertained about the autarch's sanity had been justified!
"So I took it upon myself to learn more about it," Sulepis continued, "both about the blood of the gods and the history of my own family.
"At first I spent my days exhausting the great libraries of the Orchard Palace. I learned that before my ancestors swept out of the desert to take the throne of Xis the city had been ruled by other families who claimed kinship with other gods. The farther back I went, the more these ancestors were described as being close to godlike themselves. Was this because they were closer to their godly ancestors than we moderns are, so that the holy blood ran thicker in their veins? Or had the stories around them simply grown over the years? What if these ancient monarchs, self-proclaimed descendants of Argal or Xergal, had been no less mortal than the dull creatures being raised around me in the palace-no less mortal than my father? Parnad might be fierce and cunning, but I had long since learned that he had no wit for and no interest in matters of religion and philosophy.
"Some of the priests recognized in me what they thought of as a kindred spirit. They were wrong, of course-I have never been interested in esoteric knowledge simply for its own sake. A single mortal lifetime is too short for such untrammeled, undisciplined study. I had only one thought in mind. Without the truth I had no tool, and without a tool I could not reshape the world into something I liked better.
"In any case, the library priests began to tell me of books they had heard of but never read-for the first time I came to understand that there were writings that the libraries of the Orchard Palace did not possess, writings in languages other than our own, some of which had not even been translated into Xixian! Do you wonder why my Hierosoline is so good, King Olin? Now you know. I learned it so that I could read what the ancient scholars of the north had to say about the gods and their doings. Phayallos, Kofas of Mindan, Rhantys-especially Rhantys-I read them all, and searched for the forbidden books of the southern continent as well. I finally located a copy of Annals of the War in Heaven in a temple near Yist, where my several-times-great-grandfather had destroyed the last of the fairy cities in our land."
"There were Qar in your land?" It was the first time Olin had spoken for a while, and he sounded, Vash thought, as though he were interested despite himself.
"Were, yes. My ancestors took care of that." Sulepis laughed. "The Falcon Kings are not such sentimentalists as you northern rulers-we did not wait for a plague to destroy half our kingdoms before driving out the fairy vermin.
"My search for truth took me to many strange places in my youth. I unearthed cylinder-books from the serpent tombs of the Hayyids that cover the plains like the castings of desert ground-cats. I bargained with the golya at their desert fires, eaters of man-flesh who are also said to be shape shifters-they become hyenas under the full moon's light. They told me tales of the earliest days and showed me the stone carvings they had carried since the gods walked the earth. From them I learned the secret of the Curse of Zhafaris, the curse of mortality that the great god of all laid on humanity when his children turned against him.
"I even plundered the resting place of my own kin, the Eyrie of the Bishakh, where my desert chieftain ancestors had been laid to rest atop high Mount Gowkha, their mummified bodies resting on nests made from the bones of slaves, their fleshless faces looking east to where the Sun of Resurrection will rise. As the moon climbed overhead and the howls of the golya rose from the desert canyons below, I pried stone tablets from my forefathers' crabbed, dead hands in search of heaven's secrets even as my guards fled in terror down the mountain.
"But all I learned confirmed only what I already knew. The gods might be real, but their power was gone and no man had it, not even the autarchs of Xis. My line may have been fathered by holy Nushash, the lord of the sun himself, but I cannot make a light in a dark room without a lamp, nor light that lamp without a flint.
"But as I followed the ancient scholars down paths so dark and forbidding that even the library priests finally began to shun me, I learned that what was true of my own ancestors was not necessarily true of all people. Some families, I learned, had been said since the eldest days to carry the blood of the gods in truth, often through the Pariki, the fairies-the ones you know as Qar."
"I do not wish to hear any more of this story," Olin said abruptly. "I am weary and ill and I beg your leave to go back to my cabin."
"You may beg all you like," said the autarch with a look of annoyance. "It will not do you any good. You will hear this story, even if I must bind and gag you to obtain your collaboration, because it amuses me to tell you and I am the autarch." His expression changed into a smile. "No, I will make it simpler. If you do not agree to listen I will have one of our child captives brought to me and I will strangle it in front of you, Olin of Southmarch. What do you say to that?"
"Curse you. I will hear you out." The northern king's voice was so quiet that Vash almost couldn't hear him over the noise of the sea.
"Oh, you will do more than that, Olin Eddon," said the autarch. "You see, you have such blood in you-the blood that bestows the power of a god. To you it is worthless, a curse, but it means everything to me. And in only a few days now, when the final bell of Midsummer's Day tolls, I will take it for my own."
The last few hours of darkness before the Tessis city gates opened were terrible. Briony huddled on the floor of the company's wagon and tried to sleep, but despite her great weariness sleep would not come. Feival's treachery, the cruelty of Lady Ananka, and the mistaken, unfair, and foolish judgment of King Enander would not leave her head, the words these enemies had spoken buzzing in her head like blackflies.
And now I am a fugitive again, she thought. What have I accomplished here in all this time? Nothing-no, less than nothing. Another city is barred to me and I have lost all hope of bringing any help to Southmarch from Syan.
Finn Teodoros came quietly into the wagon. "Your pardon," he said when he saw she was awake, "just looking for my pens. Did Zakkas nip you, Princess? You look full of deep thoughts."
She frowned at the casual blasphemy. The oracle was the patron of both prophecy and madness and fits of either were sometimes called "Zakkas bites." "I'm fretful and I can't sleep. I've spoiled everything."
The playwright sat down beside her. "Ah, how many times have I said that myself? " He laughed. "Not as many times as I should have, I suppose-I seldom see what I've done wrong until much later. It's good you see it immediately, but don't let it carry you away."
"I wish I could sleep but I can't keep my eyes closed. What if they're waiting for us at the gate?"
"Waiting
for us? Not likely. For you… perhaps. Which is why you will stay in the wagon."
"But someone may have remembered you. That Lord Jino is a clever man. He said he was sorry for what happened to me, but that won't keep him from doing his job. He'll have noted the name of the troupe."
"Then we will call ourselves something else," said Finn. "Now try to rest, Princess."
He went out, his weight on the small steps making the wagon bounce and sway, leaving her alone with the voices of her many failures.
By the time they rolled up to the city gates, Makewell's Men no longer looked much like a company of traveling players. The masks and ribbons and all other displays that had served as a flag of their profession had been hidden, and the players themselves were dressed in unexceptional traveling clothes. Still, for some reason they had attracted the attention of one of the guards and Briony was beginning to feel anxious. Had someone in the castle remembered the players after all?
"Where did you say you were going?" the man asked Finn for what must have been the third or fourth time. "I've never heard of it."
"The well of Oracle Finneth, in Brenland." Finn told him as calmly as he could.
"And these are all pilgrims…?"
"By the Three!" Pedder Makewell had little patience at the best of times. "This is outrageous…!"
"Shut your mouth, Pedder," Teodoros warned him.
"You don't know of Finneth's Well?" Nevin Hewney stepped in front of Makewell. "Ah, that's a pity, a true pity." Hewney was better known for his writing than his acting, but here he stepped smoothly into the scene and began to improvise. "Young Finneth was a miller's daughter, you see, a chaste, pure girl. Her father was an unbeliever-this was back in the days when Brenland and Connord were mostly heathen, counting the Three Holy Brothers no different from the other gods." Hewney put on the rapt look of a believer-for a moment, even Briony, peering through a crack in the boards of the wagon, found herself believing his fervor. "And her father was ashamed that she went around preaching the sacred word of the Trigon, and denouncing him because he was living with a lewd woman without marriage in the temple, as is proper," Hewney went on, seizing the guard's elbow and leaning so close that the man flinched back. "So he and his lewd woman seized Finneth in her sleep and threw her between the stones of the mill, but the stones would not turn, you see, would not harm her. Then they dragged her to the well at night and threw her in to drown, but in the morning…"