by Tad Williams
Briony waited a moment before she spoke. “I don’t understand everything you say, but I do know that if you feel any loyalty to our family at all, even a tainted loyalty, then you must tell us the truth. If it is your blood, how did it get there?”
Shaso slowly lifted his arms. The crisscross slashes had mostly healed. “I cut myself.”
“Why?”
He only shook his head.
“More likely he was wounded by the guards or Kendrick,” Barrick pointed out. “While they defended their lives.”
“Was there blood on their weapons?” his sister asked. “I cannot remember.” All this talk of blood had made Briony go quite pale. The Barrick of half a year ago, he knew, would have said something to distract her, to make it easier to discuss these dreadful things, but now he was hollowed, his insides burned black.
“Your brother had no weapon,” answered Avin Brone, “which makes his killing even more cowardly. The guards were covered all over with blood from their own wounds, so it was impossible to tell if their blades had been bloodied before they died.”
“You still have explained nothing,” Briony told the old man. “If you want us to believe that, tell us why you cut yourself. What did you and Kendrick speak of, that led to such a strange thing?”
The master of arms shook his head. “That is between me and him. It will die with me.”
“Those may not be idle words, Lord Shaso,” said Avin Brone. “As you know, we have not kept the headsman as well employed in King Olin’s day as in his father’s, but his blade is still sharp.”
The master of arms turned his red-rimmed eyes first on Barrick, then Briony. “If you want my head, then take it. I am tired of living.”
“The gods damn your stubbornness!” Briony cried. “Would you rather die than tell us what happened? What obscure point of honor have you caught on, Shaso? If there is something that will save your life, then for the sake of all the gods, tell me!”
“I have told you the truth—I did not murder your brother. I would not have harmed him even if he had put his own blade to my throat, because I swore to protect your father and his household.”
“Wouldn’t have harmed him?” Barrick was feeling tired and sick again—even his anger had become only a distant storm. “Strange words—you have knocked me down and beaten me often enough. My bruises haven’t healed from the last time.”
“That was not to harm you, Prince Barrick.” The old man’s words had a sharp, cold edge. “That was an attempt to make you a man.”
Now Barrick was the one who stepped toward the master of arms, hand upraised. Shaso did not move, but even before Avin Brone reached him, Barrick had stopped. He had remembered the courtiers who pelted the dancing bear with cherry-stones and crusts of bread, and how he had laughed to see the chained creature snapping at the missiles in annoyance.
“If you are the murderer of our brother,” he said, “as I think you are, then you will receive your punishment soon enough. Lord Brone is right—Southmarch still has a headsman.”
Shaso flapped his hand dismissively. His chin sank to his chest as though he was too weary to keep his head up any longer.
“That is your last word?” Briony asked. “That you did not harm Kendrick, that the blood on your knife was your own, but you won’t tell us how it happened?”
The old man did not look up. “That is my last word.” As he followed Briony out the door, Barrick wondered if such a mad story could possibly be true. But if it was, then truth itself was not trustworthy, for there was no other explanation for Kendrick’s death, no one else suspected but Shaso. Take that away and all was shadow, as treacherous and inconstant as the worst of his own fever-dreams.
He must be the murderer, Barrick told himself. If not, reason itself tottered.
Ferras Vansen studied the line of men as though they were suddenly discovered family—as, in a way, they were. They would be living together for weeks or months, traveling into the wild places, and even family did not breed any greater closeness than a company of soldiers—or in some cases, any greater contempt. They were only half a pentecount all together—any greater number would have excited too much attention—and their little troop was dwarfed not only by Wolfstooth Spire looming just above them, but by the empty expanses of the barracks’ reviewing yard. Vansen had chosen to take seven mounted men including himself, and a dozen-and-a-half foot soldiers, a pair of them new recruits who were little more than farmboys, to watch after the donkey-cart. In order to make things easier for his lieutenant Jem Tallow, who would command the castle guard in his absence and needed able, levelheaded men, Vansen had deliberately chosen his troop so that more than half were young and inexperienced. There were fewer than ten of these men that Vansen really trusted in a fight: he hoped it would be enough.
Raemon Beck had been given a horse and a sword, both of which he handled like what he was, a merchant’s nephew. Vansen had considered armoring the young man as well, but his own experiences in the bandit campaign of three years earlier had taught him that one unused to heavy gear would eventually make things hard for the others, even on horseback. He would keep the youth nearby, with himself and old hand Collum Dyer watching over him; that would be the young man’s best armor.
“Don’t look so grim,” he told Beck. “Your caravan was caught unaware, and only the gods know the quality of the fighting men who were with you. Now you’re with half a pentecount of hardy Southmarch Guard, many of them blooded in Krace and against the last of the Gray Companies. They won’t run from shadows.”
“Then they are fools.” Beck was pale and his mouth trembled a little when he spoke, but he had gained composure since his audience with the prince and princess. “They have not seen these shadows. They have not seen the devils that live in them.”
Vansen shrugged. He was not himself entirely happy about their mission; he had spoken largely to cheer the young merchant. Ferras Vansen was a child of Daler’s Troth, and had grown up only a short distance from the haunted ruins of old Westmarch—on days the south wind blew back the mists, the broken shell of its keep could sometimes be seen from the highest hilltops. He and his people knew better than to speak contemptuously, as the Duke of Summerfield had, about the Shadowline and what lay beyond that cloudy border. But like the rest of his people, a fierce and generally standoffish community of hillside farmers and herders, he was also keenly aware that his family’s land was a holding that had been only a few generations in the hands of mortals. The dale folk had long had a sense that there were forces waiting beyond the Shadowline to take back those lands, as well as an equally fierce and stubborn determination not to let that happen.
A messenger from Lord Brone trotted into the reviewing yard. Vansen called the troop to order. The horses stamped restlessly, waiting, and the donkey cropped dry grass from between the cobbles. The morning was already far advanced, but there was nothing to do but wait. Already the long shadow cast by Wolfstooth Spire was beginning to shrink back into itself.
She came at last, a slender shape in mourning black accompanied by two female attendants and the great bulk of the lord constable who, if he was not becoming the king, did seem to be changing into something like the father of the prince and princess, assuming a kind of ceremonial precedence over all the business of the Eddon family despite the comparative lowliness of his title. He was rich, though, with vast holdings of lands, and able enough that he had risen higher in the royal family’s favor than any of their closer kinsmen. Vansen wondered if it could be this rather than anything else that had sent young Gailon of Summerfield home to his family’s dukedom—the knowledge that Lord Brone had sealed off the avenues of approach to the royal twins, leaving Gailon with a superior claim by right of blood, but inferior access.
Ferras Vansen couldn’t keep his mind for long on such bloodless matters as the princess approached. The past weeks had not been kind to her—she had not painted her face since the funeral and he could see by the blue shadows beneath her eyes that
she had not slept well. Still, despite this, despite the cold look she turned upon him, he could not imagine another face that would make him feel as he so helplessly did.
Perhaps it really is as the ancients say, he thought. Perhaps a heart was indeed like a piece of dry birchwood, and could only take fire and burn brightly once—that any fire that came after would be only an ember, smaller and cooler. Just my treacherous luck I should burn for her, for one I can never have, honorably or dishonorably, and who hates me in any case.
“Captain Vansen,” she said in a dry, firm voice, “my brother is resting, but he sends his wish that the gods speed your mission.” Vansen was a little surprised to see that there was an expression other than contempt on her face, the first time since Kendrick Eddon’s death that anything else had lit her features when looking at him. The problem was that he could not read the look, which might only have been weariness and disinterest. “I see you have your men ready.”
“Yes, Highness. Your pardon, but are you certain you wish us to ride out so plainly in the middle of the day? Everyone will whisper of it.”
“Everyone is already whispering. How many people did that man there, Beck, speak to before he was brought to the castle? Do you think there is anyone in Wharfside or the Three Gods who hasn’t heard his story by now? You and your men will ride out down Market Road, across the causeway, and straight through Southmarch Town. Everybody will know that the Eddons are not so crippled by grief and fear that they ignore plundered caravans and kidnapped noblewomen.” She looked to Brone, who nodded his approval. “And this is not only for show, Vansen. We are not taking it lightly, my brother and I. So I trust you will take advantage of any trustworthy travelers on the road to send word back to us of your progress.”
“Yes, Your Highness. The monks of the university have a post service that travels back and forth on the Settland Road every fortnight, and it is a long time yet before the winter will stop them. I will keep you and Lord Brone informed, but I honestly hope I will not be gone so long.”
“You will return only when you have answers to give us,” she declared; sudden fury was like a whipcrack in her voice.
“Of course, Your Highness.” He was stung, but in that moment he saw not just her anger, but something deeper and stranger in her expression, as though a frightened prisoner looked out from behind her face. She is afraid! It filled him with ridiculous thoughts, with the wild urge to kiss her hand, to declare his painful love for her. Thwarted in its natural direction and forced to find other escape, like steam hissing from beneath a pot lid, the sudden flicker of madness dropped him to his knees.
“I will not fail you again, Princess Briony,” he declared. “I will do what you have sent me to do or I will die trying.”
Even with his head down, he could sense the stir of surprise going through the other guardsmen, could hear Avin Brone’s sucked-in breath.
“Get up, Vansen.” Her voice sounded strange. When he was on his feet again, he saw that the anger was back in her eyes, along with a glitter that might have been tears. “I have had enough death, enough oaths, enough men’s talk about honor and debts—I have swallowed them all until I am ready to scream.
“You may think I blame you for my brother’s death. I do in part, and not only you, but I am not so foolish as to think some other guard captain would have saved him. You may think I have given you this charge because I want to punish you. There may be a little truth to that, but I also know you for a man who has done other things well, and who has the trust of his soldiers. I am told that you are levelheaded, too.” She took a step forward until only the broad sweep of her skirts separated them. Vansen couldn’t help holding his breath. “If you die without solving this mystery, you accomplish nothing. If you live, even if you have failed your charge, you still may do some good for this land at another time.”
She paused, and for a teetering moment it seemed to Vansen that she might say absolutely anything at all.
“But if the safety of any of my family is ever again on your shoulders,” she finally suggested, with a smile that would be cruel were it not so weary, “then you do indeed have my permission to die trying, Captain Vansen.”
She turned to his men and called to them, “May all the gods protect you. May Perin himself make your road smooth and straight.” A moment later she was walking back across the courtyard with Brone and the two ladies-in-waiting hurrying to catch up.
“Not quite a court favorite, Captain, are we?” asked Collum Dyer, and laughed.
“Mount up.” Ferras Vansen did not understand what had just happened, but there were many miles ahead of them, days of riding, and he would have plenty of time to think about it.
The one known as The Scourge of the Shivering Plain rode down out of Shehen on her great black horse, letting the animal pick its way along the narrow hill paths with scarcely a tug on the rein, although in places the drop was so great that it was hard even to see the birds flying below her. Yasammez had no need for haste. Her thoughts were traveling before her, winged messengers faster than any bird, swifter even than the wind.
She descended from the heights and turned toward the oldest lands and the greatest city of all, which stood on the shores of the black ocean just outside the great northern circle of frost and ice. There were Qar folk that lived even in the northernmost lands beyond Qul-na-Qar, strange ones who walked in that permanent darkness and made songs with their fingers and their chill skin, but they had lived apart for so long that most of them had little to do with the rest of their race anymore. They scarcely even thought about the lost southern lands, for they had never lived there, and thus of all the Twilight People they had suffered the least at the hands of the mortal enemy. The cold ones would not serve Lady Porcupine: she would have to muster her armies from Qul-na-Qar and the lands that lay south of it, all the way down to the thrice-blessed fence that the mortals called Shadowline, and that the Qar themselves called A’sish-Yarrit Sa, which meant “Storm of Silence,” or, with a slightly different intonation of voice or gesture of the hand, “White Thoughts.”
The northerners might not care about the mortal thieves, but those who lived below their icy lands did. As Yasammez rode, they came up from the cavern towns of Qirush-a-Ghat, “Firstdeeps,” and out from the forest villages in the great dark woods to see her pilgrimage. The starlight dancers paused and grew silent on the hilltops as she passed. Those who did not know her—for it had been long since Yasammez had last left her house at Shehen—knew only that one of the great powers was passing, terrible and beautiful as a comet, and although they feared and respected such might, they did not cheer her, but watched in troubled silence. Those of the Qar who did recognize her of old were fiercely divided, because they all knew that where Lady Porcupine went, she was blown on winds of war and blood. Some returned to their families or villages to tell them that bad weather was coming, that it was time to put away stores of what was needful and strengthen the walls and gates. Others followed her in a quiet but growing crowd, their numbers swelling behind her like a bride’s train. All of these knew that the bridegroom to whom she went was Death, and that her husband and master would not be careful of whom he took, but they followed her anyway. Centuries of anger and fear pushed them together, clenched them like a fist.
Yasammez was the blade which that fist had raised in the past. Now it would be raised again.
Her arrival threw Qul-na-Qar into confusion. By the time she rode through the great leaning gates at the head of a silent flock of Qar, the ancient citadel had already broken into camps of fanatical supporters and equally fanatical opponents, and a party larger than those two put together whose only shared philosophy was resistance to both extremes, a willingness to wait and see the shape that time took. But none of this was obvious, and to the casual eye—if there had been such a thing in this place—the great capital would have seemed to move in its usual deceptively calm way, its immemorial ordered disorder.
The servitors of Yasammez who waited for h
er within Qul-na-Qar, almost all of whom had been born into that service since the last time she had visited the city, had scurried to air out her chambers on the sprawling castle’s eastern side, heaving up the shutters for the first time in decades and opening the windows. The chill marine winds and the ocean’s ceaseless noise, like the breathing of a vast animal, filled the rooms as they rushed to make things ready for their mistress. This was a day that all knew would someday form a chapter of its own in the Book of Regret.
But as she made her way through the Hall of the Gate, passing beneath its living sculptures without an upward glance, Yasammez was surrounded not only by her own minions but by all the dark city’s excitement-seekers as well—those bright-eyed ones who dabbled in the showier magicks, others who passed their time refining the arts of war and the arts of courtship until they were scarcely distinguishable from each other, all the planners of secret campaigns and delvers of forgotten mysteries. She was surrounded by believers, too, those who had yearned for a voice to echo forcefully their own talk of catastrophe, to satisfy their yearnings for an all-smothering doom. All came singing and calling out questions, some in languages that even Yasammez herself did not speak. She paid none of them any attention, and passed instead from the Hall of the Gate to the Hall of Black Trees, then on through many more, the Hall of Silver Bones, the Hall of Weeping Children, the Hall of Gems and Dust. She stopped outside the Mirror Hall but did not go in, even though the blind king and silent queen waited behind the doors, aware of her coming since before she even left her high house.
Instead she told the servitor who guarded the entrance—a Child of the Emerald Fire who showed the faint glow of its kind even through its robe and mask—“Outside the gate there are thousands of our race who have followed me here from the countryside. See that they are well-treated. Soon I will speak to them.”