by Tad Williams
“There! It’s running there!”
“It’s a cat!”
“No, it’s a bloody ape! But it’s fast!”
Dyer waded in last and the three converged. The branches thrashed furiously, then Dyer straightened up with something the size of a small child struggling in his arms. Vansen and the others hurried forward.
“Perin’s Balls!” swore Vansen. “Don’t get scratched, Collum. What is it?”
The whining, scratchy cries of the thing as it fought helplessly against the much larger Dyer were disturbing enough, but hearing it suddenly speak the Common Tongue was terrifying. “Let go me!” it shrilled.
Startled, Dyer almost did let it go, but then he squeezed until it subsided. The guardsman was breathing hard, his eyes wide with fear, but he was holding the thing tightly now. Vansen could understand why the others mistook it for an ape or a cat. It was vaguely man-shaped, but long of arm and short of leg, and was furred all over in shades of gray and brown and black. The face was like a demon-mask that children wore on holidays, although this demon seemed to be as frightened as they were.
“What are you?” Vansen asked.
“Something cursed,” said Southstead, his voice cracking.
The thing stared at the guardsman with what looked like contempt, then turned its gaze on Vansen. The bright yellow eyes had no white and only thin black sideways slits for pupils, like a goat’s. “Goblin, am I,” it rasped. “Under-Three-Waters tribe. You dead men, all.”
“Dead men?” Vansen repressed a superstitious shiver.
“She bring white fire. She burn all you houses until only black stones.” It made a strange hissing, spitting sound. “Wasted, my leg, old and bent. Fell behind. Never I see the beauty of her when she ends you.”
“Kill it!” Southstead demanded through clenched teeth.
Vansen held out a hand to still him. “It was following the army of the Twilght People. Perhaps it is one of them—it’s certainly their subject. It can tell us things.” He looked around, trying to think of what they could use to bind the creature, which was struggling again in Dyer’s grasp.
“Never,” the thing said, the words raw and strangely shaped. “Never help sunlanders!” A moment later it squirmed abruptly and violently, contorting itself in such a way that it seemed to have no backbone, and sank its teeth into Collum Dyer’s arm. He screamed in pain and surprise and dropped the thing to the ground. It scrambled away from them, but one of its legs was clearly lame and dragged behind it. Before Vansen could even open his mouth to shout, young Dawley took two steps and caught up to it, then smashed it to the ground with his bow. A moment later Dyer was there as well, holding his bloody arm against his body as he began to kick the writhing shape. Southstead caught up to them with his sword out and his mouth full of angry curses. The other two stepped back as he began hacking and hacking. All three men were making sounds like dogs baying, howls of terror and rage.
By the time Vansen reached them the goblin was long dead, a bloody tangle of meat and fur on the mossy forest floor, its lantern eyes already going dull.
Barrick still refused to see her, but Briony was determined. Her brother’s outbursts and anger had been bad enough before, but now he was truly frightening her. He had always been prickly and private, but this strangeness about the potboy was something else again.
She leaned down close to the wide-eyed page, who had his back against the prince’s chamber door as though he meant to defend it with his ten-year-old life. “Tell my brother that I will be back to speak with him after the evening meal. Tell him we will speak.”
As she walked away, she heard the page hurriedly open the door and then almost slam it closed behind him, as though he had just escaped from the cage of a lioness.
Are there people here who fear me as much as they fear Brone? As they fear Barrick’s moods? It was an odd thought. She had never conceived of herself as frightening, although she knew she was not always patient with what she deemed foolishness or dithering.
Zoria, virgin warrior, Zoria of the cunning hands, give me the strength to be gentle. The prayer reminded her of that fool of a poet, and her sudden whim. Why had she decided to keep such a creature around? Just to annoy Barrick and the lord constable? Or because she truly did enjoy even such ridiculous flattery?
Her mind muddled with these thoughts, she walked down the long hall beneath the portraits of her ancestors living and dead, her father and her grandfather Ustin and her great-grandfather, the third Anglin, without really seeing them. Even the picture of Queen Lily, scourge of the Gray Companies and the most famous woman in the history of the March Kingdoms, could not hold her attention today, although there were other times when she would stand for hours looking at the handsome, dark-haired woman who had held the realm together in one of its bleakest hours, wondering what it would be like to make such a mark on the world. But today, although the familiar sight of her other clansmen and clanswomen had not moved her, the picture of Sanasu, Kellick Eddon’s queen, caught her eye.
It was unusual for Briony to give the portrait more than a glance. What little she knew of Queen Sanasu was dreary, of her painfully long years of mourning after the great King Kellick died, an obsessively silent, solitary widowhood that had made her a phantom to her own court. So detached had Sanasu become in the last half of her life, family stories related, that the business of the kingdom had fallen entirely to her son years before he became king in fact, something that made the responsible Briony loathe the woman without knowing anything more about her. But today, even as absorbed in worries as she was, Briony could not help staring at something in the likeness she had never really noticed before: Sanasu looked very much like Barrick—or rather Barrick, her many-times-great grandson, looked much like Sanasu, which was accentuated by the black mourning garb they both favored. And these days, with his pallor and striking, haunted eyes accentuated by his bout with the fever, Barrick looked more like the long-dead queen than ever.
Briony stood on her toes for a better look, wishing the light in the ancient hall were better. The artist who had made the portrait had no doubt prettified his queen, but even so, the Sanasu in the picture had the almost transparent look of someone very ill, which only made her red hair even more shocking, like a bloody wound. She also seemed astonishingly young for someone who had lost her husband in middle age. Her face was odd in other ways, too, although it was hard to say exactly why.
I can see Father’s eyes in her, too, and his coloring. Briony suddenly wished she knew more about great Kellick’s widow. The portrait made Sanasu look mysterious and foreign. Briony couldn’t recall being told anything about where the melancholy queen had come from before marrying Kellick, but whatever distant land might have spawned her, it had now been part of the family heritage for centuries. Briony was suddenly struck by how the blood of the Eddons, her own blood, was like a great river, with things appearing and disappearing and then appearing again. And not just looks, but moods and habits and ruling passions, too, she thought: Queen Sanasu had famously stopped talking to those around her and exiled herself to Wolfstooth Spire, so that she was seen by only a few servants and became all but invisible for the two or three decades before her death. Was that what was in store for her moody, beloved Barrick?
That ghastly thought, and the continuing fascination of Sanasu’s white, otherworldly face, had grasped Briony’s interest so firmly that she nearly screamed when the ancient jester Puzzle stepped out of the shadows nearby.
“By the gods, fellow,” she demanded when her heart had slowed again, “what are you doing? You startled me out of my wits, creeping up like that.”
“I am sorry, Princess, very sorry. I just . . . I was waiting for you . . .” He seemed to be considering whether he should get down onto one extremely creaky knee.
Briony reminded herself of her own prayer for Zorian patience. “Don’t apologize, I will live. What is it, Puzzle?”
“I . . . it is just . . .” He looked as anxious as Bar
rick’s page. “I am told that someone will share my room.”
She took a breath. Patience. Kindness. “Is that too much trouble? It was a sudden thought. I’m sure we can find somewhere else to put this newcomer. I thought he might be company for you.”
“A poet?” Puzzle couldn’t seem to grasp the connection. “Well, we will see, Highness. It is possible we will get on. Certainly I do not speak to many people since . . . since your father has gone. And since my friend Robben died. It might be nice to have . . .” He blinked his rheumy eyes. It was possible that her father Olin was the only person on the continent of Eion who had ever found Puzzle amusing, or at least amusing in the way the jester tried to be. What must it be like, she wondered, to be supremely unfitted for your life’s work? Even if she was impatient with him now, Briony couldn’t help regretting the way she and Barrick had teased the bony old fellow all these years.
“If it turns out not to your liking, tell Nynor and he will find the poet some other place. Thinwight, or whatever his name is, is young and should be agreeable. Bad poets need to be agreeable.” She nodded. “Now I have much to do . . .”
“My lady,” the old man said, still having trouble meeting her eyes, “it was not that which I wished to speak about—well, not as much.”
“What else?”
“I have a very great worry, my lady. Something that I have remembered, and that I fear I should have told earlier.” He stopped to swallow. It did not look easy for him. “I think you know I visited your brother on the night of his death. That he called for me after supper and I came to his chamber to entertain him.”
“Brone told me, yes.” She was alert now.
“And that I left before Lord Shaso came.”
“Yes? So? By the gods, Puzzle, don’t make me work it out of you word by word!”
He winced. “It is just . . . your brother, may the gods grant his soul peace, sent me away that night. He was . . . not kind. He said that I was not diverting, that I never was—that my tricks and jests only made him feel . . . made him feel even more that life was wretched.”
Kendrick had only told the truth, but she knew he must have been distressed indeed to be rude to old Puzzle. Her older brother had always been the most mannerly of the family. “He was unhappy,” she told him. “It was an unhappy night. I am sure those were not his true thoughts. He was worried about me, remember, about the ransom for the king and whether he should send me away.”
The jester shook his head in confusion and defeat. He was bareheaded, but the gesture was so familiar she could almost hear the tinkle of his belled cap. “That is not what I wanted to tell you, Highness. When Lord Brone asked me about that night, I told him what I remembered, but I forgot something. I think it is because I was so disturbed by what Prince Kendrick had said—a hard blow for someone who has devoted his life to the pleasure of the Eddons, you must admit . . .”
“Whatever the reason, what did you forget?” Gods defend me! He certainly does test a person’s patience.
“As I left the residence, I saw Duke Gailon walking toward me. I was in the main hall, so it did not occur to me he might be going to see your older brother and I did not mention it to the lord constable after . . . that terrible event. But I have been thinking and thinking—sometimes I lay awake at night, worrying—and I think now that he was walking the wrong direction to be going to his own chambers. I think he might have been going to see Prince Kendrick.” He bowed his head. “I have been a fool.”
Briony didn’t bother to reassure him. “Let me understand this. You are saying that you saw Gailon Tolly heading toward the residence as you were leaving. And you saw nothing of Shaso?”
“Not that night, but I went straight to my bed from there. Are you very angry, Highness? I am an old man, and sometimes I fear I am becoming a witling . . .”
“Enough. I will have to think about this. Have you told anyone else?”
“Only you. I . . . I believed you would . . .” He shook his head again, unable to say what he believed. “Shall I go to tell the lord constable?”
“No.” She had said it too forcefully. “No, I think for now you should tell no one else. This will be our secret.”
“You will not put me in the stronghold?”
“I suspect that sharing a room with that poet fellow will be punishment enough. You may go, Puzzle.”
Long after the old man had tottered away she remained, standing beneath the pictures of her forebears, thinking.
23
The Summer Tower
SLEEPERS:
Feet of stone, legs of stone
Heart of aromatic cedar, head of ice
Face turned away
—from The Bonefall Oracles
HE PRACTICALLY HAD TO fight his way through the women to get to her. The physician could feel their resentment, as though he were some long-absent lover who had put this baby in her and then left her shamed and alone. But the king is the father here, not me, and Olin is not absent by choice.
Queen Anissa had grown so round in the belly that it made the rest of her slight frame seem even smaller. Seeing her in the center of the bed, surrounded by gauzy curtains like trailing cobwebs, he had a momentary image of her as a she-spider, gravid and still. It was unfair, of course, but it set him thinking.
“Is that Chaven?” To make room for him, she pushed away one of her small dogs, which had been sleeping against the curving side of her stomach like a rat dreaming of stealing a hippogriff’s egg. The dog blinked, growled, then stumbled down to join its companion who snored near her feet. “Come here, quickly. I think I will give birth at any moment.”
From the look of her, she might have been right. He was surprised by the dark circles under her eyes. In this room of draped windows, the only light an unsteady glow from the candle-studded altar, she looked as though she had been beaten.
“You need more air in this bedchamber.” He took her hand and gave it a quick, formal kiss. The skin was dry and warm—a little too much of both. “And you look like you aren’t getting enough sleep, my queen.”
“Sleep? Who could sleep in such a time? Poor Kendrick murdered in our own house by a trusted servant, and then plague all through the town? Do you wonder I keep the windows covered to keep out bad airs?”
Calling Shaso a trusted servant seemed an interesting way of characterizing him, and the fact that she had not counted her husband’s absence in her list of worries might also have been thought strange, but Chaven did not respond to her words. Instead, he busied himself examining the queen’s heartbeat and the color of her eyes and gums, then leaned in to smell her breath, which at the moment was a little sour. “The plague is all but spent, Highness, and I imagine you were in far greater danger from your own maid when she had it than from it floating in from the town.”
“And I sent her away until she was better, you can be sure. Didn’t I, Selia? Where has she gone? Has she gone for seeing why I have no breakfast yet? Aah! Must you poke me so, Chaven?”
“Just wishing to be certain that you are well, that the baby is well.” He let his hands move across the drum-taut arc of her stomach. The old midwife was still staring at him in a way that was a little less than friendly. “What do you think, Mistress Hisolda? The queen seems well enough to me, but you have more experience with such things.”
The old woman showed a crooked smile, perhaps recognizing his gambit. “She is stronger than she looks, though the baby is a big one.”
Anissa sat up. “That is just what I am feared of! He is big, I can tell—how he kicks! One of my sisters died birthing such a child—they saved the baby, but my sister died all . . . washed in blood!” She made a southern sign against evil happenstance. She was afraid, of course, Chaven could see that, but there was also a hint of falsity to her words, as though she played up her fear in hopes of sympathy. But why shouldn’t she? It was a frightening business, childbirth, especially the first time. Anissa was already well past twenty winters, he reminded himself, not yet in th
e time of danger for first mothers but certainly past her prime according to all the learned men who had written about it.
This was also the first time Chaven had heard her refer to the baby as “he.” The royal physician did not doubt that the midwife and her coven of helpers had been at work, perhaps dangling a pendulum over Anissa’s stomach or reading splatters of candle wax. “If I order you a medicinal draught, will you promise to drink it every night?” He turned to Hisolda. “You will have no trouble finding the constituents, I’m sure.”
The old woman raised her eyebrow. “If you say so, Doctor.”
“But what is it, Chaven? Is it another one of your binding potions that will turn my bowels to stone?”
“No, just something to help you sleep. The baby will be strong and hearty, I am sure, and so will you be if you do not sit up nights frightening yourself.” He stepped over to the midwife and listed the ingredients and their proportions—mostly wild lettuce and chamomile, nothing too strong. “Every night at sundown,” he told the old woman. He was beginning to doubt that flattery worked on her, so he tried another tack, the truth. “I am a little frightened to see her so restless,” he whispered.
“What are you saying?” Anissa moved herself heavily toward the edge of the bed, disturbing the dogs and setting them growling. “Is something wrong with the child?”
“No, no.” He came back to her side, took her hand. “As I said, Highness, you are frightening yourself without need. You are well and the child is well. The plague seems to have passed us by, praise to Kupilas, Madi Surazem, and all the gods and goddesses who watch over us.”
She let go of his hand, touched her face. “I have not been out of this place so long—I must look a dreadful monster.”
“You look nothing of the sort, Highness.”
“My husband’s children think I am. A monster.”
Chaven was surprised. “That is not true, my queen. Why would you say such a thing?”