by Tad Williams
“But you have . . .” She suddenly understood. Again, it was like being struck a hard blow. “Oh, Barrick, you are afraid you might have this, too?”
“Might have it? No, Sister, I already do. The dreams started even earlier for me than they did for Father.”
“You had a fever . . . !”
“Long before the fever.” He let out a shaky breath. “Although, since then, they have been worse. I wake up in the night cold with sweat, thinking only of killing, of blood. And since the fevers, I . . . I see things, too. Waking, sleeping, it almost makes no difference. I am watched. The house is full of shadows.”
She was stunned, helpless. She had never felt so distant from him, and for Briony that was a shocking, raw feeling, as though a part of her own body had been torn away. “I hardly know what to say—this is all so strange! But . . . but even if Father has some . . . madness, he still has managed to be a good man, a loving father. Perhaps you are worrying too . . .”
Again he interrupted her. “A loving father who threw me down the stairs. A loving father who told me he should never have sired me.” His face was stony. “You have not been listening very carefully. It started early in me. My madness won’t be mild, like Father’s—a few days a year when he must shut himself away from the rest of mankind.
That is what he meant in the letter, do you see now? That he has not suffered badly from the madness since he has been captive. It is nothing to do with making jokes, he was talking to me about something ugly we both share—our tainted blood. But his will seem mild next to mine. Mine will grow and grow until you have no choice but to lock me away in a cage like a beast—or to kill me.”
“Barrick!”
“Go away, Briony.” He was weeping again, but without much movement this time and with his eyes half shut: the tears came out of some deep, hard place, like water through a cracked stone. “You know what you came to learn. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“But I . . . I want to help you.”
“Then leave me alone.”
The mists had grown so thick that they all had to travel like blind pilgrims, each one clinging to the one before him and being clung to in turn. Only the girl Willow who led them was not hung between two fellows front and back. She walked more slowly now in the smothering whiteness, but still with purpose, always forward.
Dab Dawley had hold of Vansen’s cloak. Sound was confused in the mist and it was sometimes hard to hear even words spoken in a loud voice by a man a few yards away, but Vansen thought the young guardsman might be whimpering.
They had slept two times and walked for most of the waking hours between those sleeps, yet still had found no end to the terrible forest. Ferras Vansen did not have the sense they were walking in circles in the aimless way he and Collum Dyer did before, but he was still disheartened that two days’ march had not taken them back to the fields of men.
It could be that even if we’re not going in circles, we’ve turned the wrong direction. Perhaps I’ve trusted in the girl too much. The moon, after an initial appearance when they were setting out, had been as scarce as the sun. But perhaps we are going in the right direction, only the Shadowline has continued to spread. It was a hard, chill thought. Perhaps all the lands everywhere are now truly under shadow.
“Are you sure you know where home is?” he whispered to the girl when they were all standing together on a shelf of rock above what sounded like either a quiet stream just beneath them or a very noisy one far below. Whatever the distance stretching beneath them, they were taking no chances; they leaned back against the cliff face side by side as they rested.
She smiled at him. Her thin, dirty face was weary, but some of the early expression of almost religious ecstasy had worn away, along with some of the fear and confusion. “I will find it. They have just dragged it far away.”
“Dragged what?”
Willow shook her head. “Trust in the gods. They see through all the darkness. They see your good works.”
And my bad ones, Vansen couldn’t help thinking. The two days or however long it had been, struggling step by slow step through the murk, had left him much time to brood on his failures of command. Now that the worst shock of losing most of his company had worn down to a persistent, painful ache, he felt almost as wretched about losing the merchant’s nephew, Raemon Beck. He couldn’t help seeing Beck’s miserable face in his mind’s eye. The poor fellow was certain something like this would happen—that we would drag him back into shadow, that he would meet his doom here. And it seems he was right. But perhaps Raemon Beck and the other guardsmen were alive, merely lost as he and Dyer had been lost. Perhaps he might even discover them before leaving the shadowlands. It was something to cling to, a hope to make the bleak hours a little less haunting.
“What’s that?” Dawley said in a sharp whisper, yanking Vansen’s thoughts back to the damp, mist-shrouded hillside where the company was resting.
“I heard nothing. What was it?”
“A tapping sound—there it is again! It sounds like . . . like claws clicking on stone.”
A thought that would make no one any happier, Vansen knew. He himself could not hear it, but Dawley had by far the sharpest ears of any of them. “Let’s move on, then,” Vansen said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Willow? We need you to lead us again, girl.”
“Lead us where, I’m asking?” said Southstead. “Right into the nest of some great cave bear or something like.”
“None of that,” Dyer told him sharply. They had found something a little like military discipline again, but it was fragile.
They moved carefully along the narrow trail. Vansen held onto the girl’s tattered shift only lightly, wanting to be able to move his arms quickly if he stumbled and lost his balance. The unknown distance to the side of them began to feel even more frightening as they hurried along. In his imagination, Vansen could almost feel the invisible bottom of the ravine grow deeper, dropping away from them like water running out of a leaky bucket.
“There’s something there!” shouted Balk, the last in line; his voice seemed to come to them down a long tunnel. “Up there! Behind us!”
Vansen tightened his grip on the girl’s smock and turned to look back. For a moment he could see it coming along the top of the cliff face behind them, a grotesque, drawn-out shape like a scarecrow going on four legs, but more tattered and less comprehensible, then it reared up to an unbelievable height, stiltlike legs pawing, before the mist folded around it again.
Terror set his heart rattling in his chest. “Perin save us! Faster, girl!”
She did her best, but the trail was narrow and untrustworthy. The men behind him were cursing and even sobbing. Gravel slid from beneath Vansen’s feet.
Now he could hear the thing just above them, clicking and scratching like the armored claws of a crab dragging across the wet rock between tidepools. The mists had grown thicker. He could barely see the girl moving before him as she climbed a short rise, even though he was still clinging to her hem. A shower of stones fell between them and he looked up to see a dark and indistinct shape loom out of the curtaining fogs only half a dozen yards above. If that was the thing’s head, it was misshapen as the stump of a twisted tree. For a moment he could hear it breathe, a deep, scratchy wheeze, as a scrabbling leg probed down the rock face. Vansen let go of Willow’s garment so he could draw his sword, but the ragged limb stopped short. The thing was still too far above them. It drew back into the mists.
“Go—quick as you can to open ground!” he told the girl, then turned to shout back to the others. “Let go and draw your swords, but don’t get separated! Dawley, do you have arrows still?” He heard the young guardsman grunt something he could not quite make out. “Try to get a shot if you can see it well enough.”
Vansen scrambled up the path behind the girl, doing his best to lean in toward the hillface despite every screaming sense telling him to lean back, away from the reaching arms of the thing that stalked just up the slope. B
ehind him the men had become a disorganized rout, but he did not know what else to do; to make them try to continue walking while holding onto each other and their weapons would be to invite disaster. They needed to find their way to some open space where Dawley’s bow and their swords might save them.
He staggered and put his foot down on loose soil, then windmilled his arms to keep from tipping out into the misty invisibility behind him. As he regained his footing, another scrabbling noise came from behind him, then a strange wooden creaking and a sudden screech from one of the men—a sound of such naked animal terror that he could not even tell who was making it. He turned, blade held high, to see the huge thing had lunged downward out of the fogs like a spider gliding down a web. The men around it were screaming and hacking away. In the instant it was among them, it still had no semblance or shape of anything he could understand—spindly arms long as tree branches, hanging rags of skin or fur almost like singed parchment. It was a madness, an obscenity. For an instant only he saw in the chaos what seemed to be a sagging hole of a mouth and a single empty black eye, then the huge thing went scuttling backward up the cliff face with a kicking, shrieking bundle clutched in its folding limbs. Beside him, Dawley cursed and wept as he loosed a single arrow at the shape, then it disappeared into the mists again.
It had taken Collum Dyer.
They staggered now in silence, Vansen choked with despair. The thing had caught what it wanted and they did not see it again, but it was as though it had reached down and plucked their hearts away with their comrade. Vansen had known Collum Dyer since he first came to Southmarch. He found his thoughts turning helplessly again and again to that moment, to Dyer’s screams. Once he had to stop and be sick, but there was little in his stomach to vomit out.
When they finally reached the edge of the cliff path they stopped, gasping for breath as though they had been running at uttermost speed, although they had spent most of the hour since the attack barely at walking pace. Mickael Southstead and Balk were gray with fear; they knelt on the ground, praying, although to what gods Vansen couldn’t guess. The girl Willow was clearly frightened, too, but sat on a stone as patiently as a child being punished.
Young Dawley stood with his bow still in his hand and his last arrow on the string, tears in his eyes.
“What was it?” he asked his captain at last.
Ferras Vansen could only shake his head. “Did you hit it?”
It took Dawley a moment to reply, as though he had to wait for Vansen’s voice to blow down a long canyon. “Hit it?”
“You shot at it. I want to know what happened, in case it comes back. Did you hit it?”
“I wasn’t trying to hit it, Captain.” Dawley wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “I was . . . was trying to kill Collum . . . before it took him away. But I couldn’t see if . . . if I . . .”
Vansen closed his eyes for a moment, fighting back tears of his own. He put his hand on the young guardsman’s quivering shoulder. “The gods grant you made a good shot, Dab.”
So bleak and quiet was the company, so defeated, that when Vansen saw the moon again he didn’t speak of it, not wanting to raise hopes that had been so often dashed. But after an hour more trudging silently behind the girl he could not ignore the fact that the mists were clearing. The moon was not alone—there were stars, too, speckled across the sky as cold and bright as ice crystals.
They walked on through the high grass of wet hillside meadows and through thinning stands of trees, still alert to any sound, but after a while Vansen was certain that something truly had changed. The moon was far down in the sky now, a sky that had always before been blurry with fog and cloud.
They were all staggeringly tired, and for a few moments he considered stopping to build a fire so they could dry out wet clothes and snatch a little sleep, but he was afraid that if he closed his eyes he would open them again to find everything submerged in silvery nothingness again. Also, the girl was striding determinedly forward despite her weariness, like a horse on the path back to the barn at the end of a long day, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Now that the mists had thinned, he let go of her ragged smock and dropped back to walk for a little while with each of the men in turn, Southstead, Dawley, Balk, saying nothing unless they spoke to him, trying to turn his savaged company back into something whole again, or at least into something human. He couldn’t pretend that he was not overseeing a disaster, but he could make the best out of what he had.
They trooped on through shadowy glens and over moonlit hills. The sky began to change color, warming from black to a purple-tinted gray, and for the first time in days Vansen began to believe they might actually find their way out again.
But where? Into the middle of that fairy army? Or will we find that we have been wandering for a hundred years, like one of the old tales, and that all the world and the folk we knew are gone?
Still, even with these heavy thoughts in his head, he couldn’t help smiling when he saw the first gleam of sunrise on the horizon. His eyes welled up, so that for a moment the patch of bright sky smeared. There would be some kind of day after all. There would be east and west and north and south again.
The sun didn’t burn through the mist until it was high into the sky, but it was the real sun and the real sky, beyond doubt. No one wanted to stop now.
Most astonishingly of all, before the sun was halfway up the morning sky, they struck the Settland Road.
“Praise all the gods!” shouted Balk. He ran forward, did a clumsy dance on the rutted dirt that covered the ancient stones and timbers. “Praise them each and every one!”
As the other men tumbled down into the grass by the roadside, laughing and clapping each other on the back in joy, Vansen looked up and down the road, not completely ready to trust. It was the same road, but what arrested him was what part of the road it was.
“Perin Cloudwalker!” he murmured, half to himself. “She’s brought us back to the place where we met her. That’s miles from where we crossed over. And miles closer to Southmarch, thank the gods!” He staggered on aching legs to where the girl stood, smiling a little, staring around her in calm confusion. He grabbed her and kissed her cheek, lifted her up and put her down again. He had a sudden thought then and hurried eastward down the road with the men shouting questions after him. Sure enough, at the next long straight stretch he found a height where he could climb up and see that mists had enveloped the road not a mile away to the east. She’s brought us back to our side of the Shadowline, but also we’re now between the shadow-army and the city, bless her! But how could that be? He tried to understand what had happened but could only guess that the substance of the lands behind the Shadowline was different than that of other lands, and not just because of mists and monsters. Somehow the girl had managed to find her way across a fold of shadow and bring them back to the place where she herself first crossed over, long before they even found her.
He hurried back to the others. “We will rest for a short while,” he said, “but then we have to find horses and ride as fast as we can. Southmarch is ahead of us and the enemy is behind us, but who knows how long until they catch up? The girl has given us a precious gift—we must not waste it, or waste the lives of our comrades either.” He turned to Willow. “I may wind up in chains for my part in all this, but if Southmarch survives, I’ll see you dressed in silks and laden with gold first. You may have saved us all!”
24
Leopards and Gazelles
GROWING JOY:
The hives are full
The leaves fall and drift slowly
Death is agreeable now
—from The Bonefall Oracles
QINNITAN GROANED. “Why do I feel so ill?” “Get up, you!” Favored Luian slapped at one of her Tuani servants, who ducked with a practiced shrug so that the blow only grazed the girl’s black-haired head. “What are you doing, you lazy lizard?” Luian shrieked. “That cloth is dry as dust.” She reached out and gave the girl’s arm a cruel pinch.
“Go and get Mistress Qinnitan some more water!”
The slave got up and refilled the bowl from the fountain splashing quietly in the corner of the room, then returned with it and resumed cooling Qinnitan’s forehead.
“I don’t know, my darling,” Luian said as if the outburst had not happened. “A touch of fever, perhaps. Nothing dreadful, I’m sure. You must say your prayers and drink dishflower tea.” She seemed distracted by something more than Qinnitan’s miseries, her eyes flicking from side to side as though she expected to be interrupted at any moment.
“It’s that potion they give me every day, I’m sure.” Qinnitan tried to sit straight, groaned, and gave up. It was not worth the expenditure of strength. “Oh, Luian, I hate it. It makes me feel so wretched. Do you think they’re poisoning me?”
“Poisoning you?” For a moment Luian actually looked at her. Her laugh was harsh and a bit shrill. “My small sweet one, if the Golden One wished you dead, it would not be poison that killed you, it would be something much . . .” She paled a little, caught herself. “What a thing to say! As if our beloved autarch, praises to his name, would want you dead, in any case. You have done nothing to displease him. You have been a very good girl.”
Qinnitan sighed and tried to tell herself Luian must be right. It didn’t quite feel like being poisoned, anyway, or at least not how she imagined such a thing would feel. Nothing hurt, and she wasn’t exactly ill—in fact, generally her appetite was extremely good and she slept well, too, if a little too long and deeply sometimes—but something definitely felt strange. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right, Luian.” She yawned. “In fact, I think I feel a little better now. I should go back to my room and have a nap instead of lolling around here and being in your way.”
“Oh, no, no!” Luian looked startled at the suggestion. “No, you . . . you should come for a walk with me. Yes, let us take a walk in the Scented Garden. That would do you more good than anything. Just the thing to brush away those cobwebs.”