by Tad Williams
“Enough!” the prince regent almost shouted. “By Perin’s hammer, can’t you leave me alone? Unless you have some magical solution to this problem, all I want from you tonight is silence.” Despite his fury, Kendrick seemed on the verge of weeping himself. He waved his hand. “No more.”
Stunned, Barrick could only stand and watch his older brother walk back toward his chambers. When Kendrick stumbled, one of the guards kindly reached out a hand to steady him.
“That’s enough, Briony. I cannot tell you more—not yet. I still must think and talk on this entire matter. You are my sister and I love you, but I must be the ruler here while our father is gone. Go to bed.”
Remembering Kendrick’s words of only a few hours ago, thinking back on the whole terrible day, she lay sleepless in the dark—although, judging by the sounds, her ladies were not having the same problem: as always, pretty little Rose was snoring like an old dog. Briony had managed to drowse for a short while, but a terrible dream had awoken her, in which Ludis Drakava—who in truth she had never seen; all she knew about him was that he was near her father’s age—had been an ancient thing of cobwebs, dust, and bones, pursuing her through a trackless gray forest. She had not been able to sleep since. She wondered if it was dreams of that sort which robbed Barrick of his sleep and health.
What hour is it? she wondered. She had not heard the temple’s midnight bell yet, but surely it could not be far away. I must be the only one in the castle still awake.
In other times such a thought would have been more exciting than troubling, but now it was only testament to the terrible fate hanging over her like a headsman’s ax.
Has Kendrick decided?
He had given away nothing of his thoughts when she had visited him in his chambers during the evening. She had wept, which made her angry with herself now. She had also begged him not to marry her to Ludis, then had apologized for her selfishness. But he must know I want Father back as much as anyone does!
Kendrick had been distant the whole time she was in his chamber, but had taken her hand when they parted and kissed her cheek, something he rarely did. In fact, the memory of that kiss now chilled her more than his preoccupation. She felt certain that he had been kissing her good-bye.
Pain was wearying. Perpetual fear became numbness. For a little while Briony’s mind wandered and she imagined all the things, good and bad, that could happen. Somehow her father could escape and Ludis would have no claim on the Eddons. Or she could find that the Lord Protector was a slandered man, that truly he was handsome and kind. Or that he was worse than the tales, in which case she would have no choice but to kill him in his sleep, then kill herself. She lived so many lives in that hour, both grim and fanciful, that at last she slipped into a true dream without knowing it—a kinder one this time, the twins playing at hide-and-seek with Kendrick, children together once more—and slept through the midnight bell. But she did not sleep through the shriek that came just a short while later.
Briony sat upright in bed, half certain she had imagined it. Nearby young Rose squirmed in her sleep, lost in some nightmare of her own.
“The black man . . . !” the girl moaned.
Briony heard it again—a terrified wail, growing louder. Moina was awake now, too. Something banged hard on the chamber door and Briony almost fell out of her bed in fright.
“The Autarch!” Moina squealed, plucking at the charm she wore about her neck. “Come to kill us all in our beds . . . !”
“It is only one of the guards,” Briony told the Helmingsea girl harshly, trying to convince herself as well. “Go and take off the bolt.”
“No, Princess! They’ll ravish us!”
Briony pulled her dagger from beneath her mattress, then wrapped the blanket around her and stumbled to the door, heart fluttering as she called out to learn who was on the other side. The voice was not one of the guards’, but even more familiar: as the door opened, Briony’s great-aunt Merolanna flapped into the room, her nightdress askew, her long gray hair down on her shoulders, crying, “Gods preserve us! Gods preserve us!”
“Why is everyone shouting?” Briony asked, fighting against growing dread. “Is it a fire?”
Merolanna stumbled to a halt, panting and peering shortsightedly. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Briony, is that you? Is it? Oh, praise the gods, I thought they had taken you all.”
The old woman’s words ran through her like icy water. “All . . . ? What are you talking about?”
“Your brother—your poor brother . . .”
The chill threatened to stop her heart. She cried, “Barrick!” and shoved past Merolanna.
There were no guards outside, but the passage was full of disembodied sounds, wails and distant shouting, and as she emerged into the high-ceilinged Tribute Hall, she found it full of people drifting confusedly in the near-darkness, calling questions or babbling religious oaths, a few carrying candles or lamps, and all in their nightclothes. The vast hall, strange even in bright daylight with its weird statues and other objects brought back from foreign lands, like the stuffed head of the great-toothed oliphant that hung above the fireplace and was as ugly as any demon in the Book of the Trigon, now also seemed filled with pale ghosts. Steffans Nynor, wearing a ridiculous sleeping cap and with his beard tied up in a strange little bag, stood in the center of the room shouting orders, but no one was listening to him. The scene was all the more dreamlike because no one stopped Briony or even spoke to her as she ran past them. Everyone seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
She reached the hall outside Barrick’s chamber but found it deserted, her brother’s door closed. She had only a moment to wonder at this before something grabbed her arm. She let out a small, choked shriek, but when she saw whose wide-eyed face was beside her she grabbed at him and pulled him close. “Oh, oh, I thought you . . . Merolanna said . . .”
Barrick’s red hair was disheveled from bed, wild as a gale-blown haystack. “I saw you go past.” He seemed like one dragged from sleep yet still dreaming, his eyes wide but curiously empty. “Come. No, perhaps you shouldn’t . . .”
“What? Her relief vanished as swiftly as it came. “Barrick, what in the name of all the gods is going on?”
He led her around the corner into the main hall of the residence. The corridor was full, and guards armed with halberds were pushing servants and others back from the door of Kendrick’s chambers. She suddenly realized her misunderstanding.
“Merciful Zoria,” she whispered.
Now she could see in the light of the torches that Barrick’s face was not empty, but slack with horror, his lips trembling. He took her hand and pulled her through the crowd, which shrank back from them as though the twins might carry some plague. Several of the women were weeping, faces grotesque as festival masks.
The guards kneeling around the body glanced up at the twins’ approach but for a moment did not seem to recognize them. Then Ferras Vansen, the captain of the royal guard, stood, his face full of dreadful pity, and yanked one of the crouching soldiers out of the way. The prince regent’s room was full of terrible smells, slaughterhouse smells. They had turned Kendrick onto his back. His face gleamed red in the torchlight.
There was so much blood that for a fleeting instant she could tell herself it was someone else, that this horror had been visited on some stranger, but Barrick’s groan destroyed the flimsy hope.
Her dagger fell from her hand and clinked onto the flags. Her knees sagged and she half fell, then crawled toward her older brother like a blind animal, tangling herself for a moment with one of the guards as he mumbled a prayer. Kendrick’s face twitched. One blood-slicked hand opened and closed.
“He’s alive!” Briony screamed. “Where is Chaven? Has someone sent for him?” She tried to lift Kendrick, but he was too wet, too heavy. Barrick pulled her back and she struck at her twin. “Let me go! He’s alive!”
“He can’t be.” Barrick, too, was in some other world, his voice confused and distant. “Just look at h
im . . .”
Kendrick’s mouth worked again and Briony almost climbed on top of him, so desperate was she to hear him speak, to know that he was still her brother, that life was in him. She searched for his wounds so she could stop them up, but the whole front of him was soaking wet, his shirt in tatters and the skin beneath it just as ragged.
“Don’t,” she said in his ear. “Hold on to me!” Her brother’s eyes rolled; he was trying to find her. His mouth opened.
“. . . Isss . . .” A sibilant whisper that only Briony could hear.
“Don’t leave us, oh, dear dear Kendrick, don’t.” She kissed his bloody cheek. He let out a whimper of pain, then curled as slowly as a leaf on hot coals until he was lying on his side, bent double. He kicked, whimpered again, then the life was out of him.
Barrick still pulled at her, but he was weeping, too—Everyone is crying, Briony thought, the whole world is crying. Dimly, as though it were happening in another country, she could hear people shouting down the corridor.
“The prince is dead! The prince has been murdered!”
Guard Captain Vansen was trying to lift her away from Kendrick. She turned and slapped at him, then grabbed at the man’s heavy tunic and tried to pull him down, so full of fury she could barely think.
“How did this happen?” she shrieked, her thoughts as red and slippery as her hands. “Where were you? Where were his guards? You are all traitors, murderers!”
For a moment Vansen held her at arm’s length, then his face convulsed with grief and he released his grip. Briony scrambled to her feet, struck hard at his shoulders and face. Ferras Vansen did nothing more to defend himself than lower his head until Barrick pulled her off.
“Look!” her brother said, pointing. “Look there, Briony!”
Her eyes blurred with tears, she did not at first understand what she was seeing—two stained lumps of shadow on the floor beside the prince regent’s bed. Then she saw the Eddon wolf on the slashed tunic of one of the figures and the pool of blood a shiny blackness beneath them both, and understood that Kendrick’s guards, too, were dead.
7
Sisters of the Hive
DAYS:
Each light between sunrise
And sunset
Is worth dying for at least once
—from The Bonefall Oracles
THE SMOKY SCENT OF THE jasmine candles and the perpetual sleepy buzz of the Hive temple, the half-frightened, half-exalted breathing of the other girls, all the sounds and odors that surrounded her at the moment the world changed beyond all recognition would never again completely leave her mind. But how could it be otherwise? It would have been overwhelming enough just to meet the Living God on Earth, the Autarch Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III, Elect of Nushash, the Golden One, Master of the Great Tent and the Falcon Throne, Lord of All Places and Happenings, a thousand, thousand praises to His name, but what happened to Qinnitan at this moment was beyond belief—and always would be.
Even a year later, when she would have to abandon a life of splendid leisure in the Palace of Seclusion and run in terror of death through the dark streets of Great Xis, every moment of this day would still be alive inside her . . . a day that had begun like many others, with her friend Duny poking her out of bed in the darkness before sunrise.
Duny had been so aflutter with excitement that morning she could barely keep her voice in a proper whisper. “Oh, get up, Qin-ya, get up! It’s today! He’s coming! To the Hive!”
The events of that day would lift Qinnitan up to heavenly heights, to honors not just undreamed-of, but so impossible as to be ludicrous even to imagine. Still, if she had known all of what was to come, she would have done anything to escape, as a jackal in a trap will gnaw through its own leg in its desperation for freedom.
They hurried down the corridor, two lines of girls with hair still damp from the water they had splashed on their faces and heads in the ritual cleansing, their robes sticking to their bodies, making a lively chill that would not last long in the rising heat of the day. Qinnitan’s own black hair hung in lank, loose ringlets, the odd reddish streak hardly visible when it was wet. When she was a baby, the old women of Cat’s Eye Street had called it a witch streak and made the pass-evil sign, but no sign of witchery or anything out of the ordinary at all had followed. Some of the other children had called her “Striped Cat,” but other than that, by the time she was old enough to range the streets and alleys in the neighborhood of her parents’ house, no one paid any more attention to it than they did to a mole on the nose or crossed eyes.
“But why is He coming here?” Qinnitan asked, still not quite awake.
“To find out what the bees think,” Duny said. “Of course.”
“Think about what?” The priestesses and the Hive Mistress often spoke about autarchs coming to seek the wisdom of the sacred bees, tiny oracles of the all-powerful fire god Nushash, but the names they cited were of the impossibly distant past—Xarpedon, Lepthis, rulers whom Qinnitan had only ever heard mentioned during the boasting of the Great Hive’s caretakers. But now the real, living autarch, the god-on-earth himself, was coming to consult with the fire god’s bees. It was hard to believe. Her father had been a priest in the temple of Nushash all his life but had never been favored with a visit from an actual autarch. Qinnitan had been a sworn acolyte priestess for scarcely more than a year. It almost didn’t seem fair.
This autarch, Sulepis, was a fairly young god-on-earth still. He had only been on the Falcon Throne for a short time—Qinnitan could remember his father, the old autarch Parnad, dying (followed more violently by several of his other sons, who had been the current autarch’s rivals) when she had first gone to serve the bees, the funereal hush that had lain so deeply on the Hive temple that she had been surprised later to discover things were not always that way. Perhaps the autarch’s youthfulness explained why he was doing astounding things like visiting a smoke-filled apiary in one of the more obscure corners of Nushash’s sprawling, ancient fire temple.
“Do you think He’ll be handsome?” Duny asked in a strangled whisper, clearly shocked and thrilled by her own daring. Sulepis had spent most of his first months on the throne chastising some of the outer provinces who had thought, falsely and to their subsequent regret, that the new, young autarch might prove timid. Thus, he had not found time for the sort of processions or public events that made the common people feel as though they knew their ruler. Qinnitan could only shrug and shake her head. She couldn’t think of the autarch in that way and it hurt her head even to try. It was like a worm trying to decide whether a mountain was the right color. She wasn’t angry, though: she knew her friend was frightened, and who wouldn’t be? They were going to meet the living god, a being as far above them as the stars, someone who could snuff all their lives more easily than Qinnitan could kill a fly.
For a brief moment—it was always too brief—the acolytes passed out of the narrow passageway into the high-windowed gallery that crossed from the living quarters to the temple complex. Twelve to fifteen steps at most, depending on how quickly the leading girl was marching, but it was the only chance Qinnitan had to see below her the magnificent city of Great Xis, a city in which she had once, if not exactly run free, at least lived at street level, among people that spoke in normal tones of voice. In the Hive scarcely anyone ever spoke above a whisper—although sometimes the whispers could be as intrusive as shouts.
“Do you think He’ll speak? What do you think He’ll sound like?”
“Quiet, Duny!”
Qinnitan had just a few moments each day to savor the world outside the temple, even if she only saw it at a distance, and she missed it very much. As always, she opened her eyes wide as they crossed the windowed gallery, trying to drink in every bit she could absorb, the blue sky bleached mostly gray with the smoke of a million fires, the pearl-white rooftops stretching far beyond sight like an endless beach covered with squared stones, interrupted here and there where the towers of the greatest families thrust up into
the air. The towers’ colorful stripes and gold ornaments made them look like the sleeves of splendid garments, as though each tower were a man’s fist raised toward the heavens. But of course the rich men of the tower families had no complaints against the heavens: instead of clenched in a fist, their tower-hands should be spread wide, in case the gods should decide to throw down even more good fortune on people already choked with it.
Qinnitan often wondered what would have happened if her own family had been one of the ruling elite instead of only a middling merchant family, her father a landholder instead of a mere functionary in the administration of one of Nushash’s larger temples. She supposed it could have been worse—he could have been a lackey of one of the other gods, fast losing power to the great fire god. “We are so lucky to have this for you,” her parents had told her when she had been admitted as an acolyte of the Sisters of the Hive, although she herself had prayed—blasphemy, but there it was—that it would not happen. “Far richer families than ours would shed blood for such an honor. You will be serving in the autarch’s own temple!”
The temple, of course, had proved to be a sprawl of connected buildings that seemed only slightly smaller than Great Xis itself, and Qinnitan one of so many hundreds of Hive Sister acolytes that it was doubtful even the priestess in charge of her living quarters knew more than a few of their names.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if He looks at me. If I faint, will He have me put to death?”
“Please, Duny. No, I’m sure people faint all the time. He’s a god, after all.”
“You say that so strangely, Qin. Are you feeling ill?”
Her momentary glimpse of freedom ended: the mighty city disappeared as they stepped out of the gallery and into the next corridor. One of Qinnitan’s aunts had told her that Xis was so big that a bird could live its entire life while flying from one side of the city to the other, perching along the way to sleep, eat, and perhaps even start a family. Qinnitan was not certain that was true—her father had poured scorn on the notion—but it was certainly true that there was a world outside so much bigger than her own constrained circumstances, so much more vast than her march from living quarters to temple each morning and back again each evening, that she ached to be a bird, flaunting herself above a city that never ended.