by Tad Williams
“Ah, yes, of course. A very young girl—a child, really—” Arimone’s smile was a bit cold, “from, let us be frank, an undistinguished family. None of us can quite imagine what it was that lifted you to the Golden One’s eye.” She spread her hands, which glittered with rings. The nails were half the length of her long, slender fingers. “Other than the beauty of your innocence, little sister, which is of course charming and formidable.”
Never in her life, even standing before Autarch Sulepis, had Qinnitan felt less significant.
“Come, will you have a little more tea? I have prepared a surprise for you. I hope it will be a pleasant one. Will you promise not to tell on me if I do something that is a little naughty?”
Qinnitan could only nod.
“Good. That is how it should be between sisters. So you will not be too shocked if I tell you that I have brought a man into my house today—a true man, not one of the Favored. You are not afraid to meet a true man, are you? You have not been so long away from the streets of your childhood that you view them all as monsters and rapists, do you?”
Qinnitan shook her head, confused and frightened. Did the first wife know about Jeddin? Why else all this taunting?
“Good, good. In truth, he is very harmless, this man. So old that I do not think he could mount a mouse.” She laughed between her teeth and her serving girls echoed her. “He is a storyteller. Shall I summon him?” The question was not meant to be answered: Arimone lifted her hands and clapped. A moment later a bent figure in colorful clothes stepped through one of the curtained doors and into the receiving room.
“Hasuris,” she said, “I apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“I would rather wait for you in a dark alcove than be served honeyed figs by any other woman, Mistress.” The old man bowed low to Arimone, then gave Qinnitan a look so saucy and self-satisfied that he might as well have winked at her. “And this must be the young wife you told me of. Greetings, little Mistress.”
“You are a shameless flirt, Hasuris,” said Arimone, laughing. “None of your nonsense or the Golden One’s guards will come and you will join the Favored.”
“My stones and I adventure together only in memory, Great Queen,” he said, “so it makes little difference. But I suppose their departure could be painful, so I will stay silent and behave well.”
“No, to behave well you must not stay silent at all. Instead you must tell us a story. Why else would I have brought you here?”
“To admire the turn of my calf ?”
“Wretched old fool. Tell us a tale. Perhaps . . .” Pondering, or pretending to, the paramount wife put a finger to her red, red lips. Even Qinnitan could not help staring at her like a lovesick boy. “Perhaps the story of the Foolish Hen.”
“Very well, Great Queen.” The old man bowed. Now that he was closer, Qinnitan could see that his white whiskers were stained yellow around his mouth. “Here is the tale, although it is a rather simple one, without any good jokes but the last one: “Once there was a very foolish hen, who preened and preened herself, certain that she was the most beautiful of her kind in all creation,”
he began.
“The other hens grew weary of her posturing and began to talk behind her back, but the foolish hen paid no attention at all. ‘Jealous, that is all they are,’ she told herself. ‘Who cares what they think? They are of no importance compared to the man who feeds us. That is someone whose opinion matters, and who will recognize my quality.’ So she set out to gain the attention of the man who came every day to spread corn on the ground.
“Every time he arrived, she would push her way out from the midst of the other hens and strut back and forth before the man, head held high, breast shoved forward. When he looked away, she would call to him—‘Ga-gaw! Ga-gaw!’—until he looked her way again. But still he treated her no differently from any of the others. The foolish hen became very angry and resolved to do whatever it took to be noticed.”
Qinnitan was feeling a chill again. Was there a point to this story? Was Arimone suggesting that the younger wife had gone out of her way somehow to attract attention? The autarch’s? Or someone else’s? It was all too difficult to understand, but the penalties would be no less mortal because the crimes weren’t altogether clear. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to be back in the Temple of the Hive, surrounded by the sweet hum of the sacred bees.
“The foolish hen could not sleep for trying to imagine a way to get the man’s attention. Her lovely voice had not moved him. Perhaps he needed to see that she valued him more than the others did, but how could she do that? She resolved to eat more of the corn he dropped than anyone else, and so she followed him from the first moment he arrived until he went away again, pecking at the other hens to drive them away and eating as much corn as she could manage. The other hens despised her as she grew fatter and sleeker, but still the man did not speak to her, did not single her out in any way. She decided she would fly to him and show him that she alone was worthy of his attention. It was not easy, because by now she was quite plump, but by practicing every day she at last managed to stay aloft long enough to flutter a good distance.
“One day, after the man finished spreading the corn and began to walk back to the house, the hen flew after him. It was harder than she thought it would be and she did not catch up to him until he had already gone through the door. She hurried after and flew inside, but it was dark and she could not see, so she began to call out—‘Ga-gaw! Ga-gaw!’—to let him know she had arrived.
“The man came to her and picked her up. Her heart was full of joy.
“ ‘I have tried to ignore you, you fat thing,’ he said, ‘because I was going to save you for the Feast of the Rising at the end of the rainy season, but here you are in my kitchen, shouting at the top of your lungs. Clearly it is the great god’s will that I eat you now.’ And so speaking, he wrung her neck and set a fire in the oven . . .”
Qinnitan stood suddenly and the old man Hasuris fell silent. He looked a little shamefaced, as if he had somehow guessed the story might upset her, which didn’t seem possible. “I . . . I don’t feel very well,” she said. She was dizzy and sick to her stomach.
Arimone looked at her with wide eyes. “My poor little sister! Can I get you something?”
“No, I . . . I think I had better go home. I’m v-very s-s-sorry.” She put her hand over her mouth—she had a sudden, powerful urge to vomit all over the first wife’s beautiful striped cushions.
“Oh, no, must you really? Perhaps it would be better for you to have a little more mint tea. Surely that would settle your stomach.” Arimone picked up Qinnitan’s cup and held it out to her, gaze doe-innocent. “Go ahead, little sister. Drink some more. It is made to my special recipe and it cures nearly all ills.”
Filled with horror, Qinnitan shook her head and stumbled out without even bowing. She heard the slaves laughing and whispering behind her.
29
The Shining Man
FIVE WHITE WALLS:
Here is the shape with its tail
In its mouth
Here is the inside turned outside, the outside in
—from The Bonefall Oracles
“LISTEN CAREFULLY,” CHERT SAID when he had put some distance between himself and the temple of the Metamorphic Brothers. He raised his hand to his shoulder to let Beetledown climb onto his palm, then held him so that he could see the man’s tiny face. “If your nose is telling you the truth and this is the way Flint went, I think I know where he’s going.”
“If my nose . . . ?” The Rooftopper’s features screwed up in indignation. “Wasn’t bred for it like the Grand and Worthy, me, but leaving un out, there be not a better sniffiter in all of the Southmarch heights . . .”
“I believe you.” Chert took a deep, shaky breath. “It’s just that . . . where he’s headed . . .” His knees felt weak and he had to sit down, which he did carefully: the Rooftopper was still standing on his hand. For the first time that Chert Blue Quartz coul
d remember, he wished he were outside, under the sky, instead of beneath the unimaginable weight of stone that had been the top of his world almost all his life, and had always held that place in his thoughts. “Where he’s headed is a very . . . strange place. A sacred place. Sometimes it can be a dangerous place.”
“Cats? Snakes?” The Rooftopper’s eyes were wide. Despite his growing fear, Chert almost smiled.
“No, nothing like that. Well, there might be animals down there, but that’s the least of my worries.”
“Because th’art a giant.”
Now Chert did smile: being called a giant was something that would probably never happen to him again. “Fair enough. But what I need to tell you is that I have a decision to make. It’s not an easy one.”
The little man looked at him now with keen interest, just like Cinnabar or one of the other Guild leaders being presented with a tricky but possibly lucrative bargain. The Rooftoppers were not just like people, they were people, Chert knew that now; they were just as complicated and lively as the Funderlings or anyone else. So why were they so small? Where did they come from? Had they been punished by the gods, or was there something even stranger in their origins?
Thoughts of the gods and their fabled propensity for vengeance were, at this moment, more compelling than usual.
“Here is my problem,” he told Beetledown. “I told you before that places like the temple . . . that some of my people might frown on you being there. We are uncomfortable with outsiders seeing the things that are most important to us.”
“Understood,” said the little man.
“Well, I think Flint has gone deeper still into . . . into what we call the Mysteries. And I know that many of my people will be upset if I bring an outsider there. It was one reason I haven’t even taken Flint anywhere near the place, even though he is my foundling son.”
“Then time has come for me to go back to my own home.” Beetledown sounded quite cheerful about it, and Chert wasn’t surprised: the little man had become less comfortable the longer and deeper their journey became. In fact, he seemed positively to glow with satisfaction at the thought that his travels below ground were about to end, which made Chert’s already wretched position even more so.
“But I’m afraid to lose so much time—if the boy’s down there, it’s been hours already. It’s a dangerous place, Beetledown. Strange, too. I . . . I’m very frightened for him.”
“So?” The Rooftopper frowned in puzzlement, then gradually his tiny brows unkinked, although the understanding obviously brought him no happiness. “Tha wants to take me down with.”
“I can’t think of anything else to do, any other way to track him—there are many paths, many ways. I’m sorry. But I won’t take you against your will.”
“Th’art much the bigger of us twain.”
“That doesn’t matter. I won’t take you against your will.”
Beetledown’s frown returned. “Tha said ’twas a sacred place—banned to outliers.”
“That’s why I said I had a difficult decision. But I’ve decided I’d rather break the law and take you into the Mysteries than leave my boy alone down there any longer than I have to—if you’ll go. Besides, the boy himself is no Funderling, so the law’s already fair cracked and riven, as we say.”
The little man sighed, a minuscule noise like the squeak of a worried mouse. “My queen bade me give ’ee help with nose and otherwise. Can Beetledown the Bowman do less than un’s mistress bids un?”
“The Earth Elders bring you and all your people good luck,” said Chert, relieved. “You are as brave as you keep saying you are.”
“That be the solemn truth.”
Their paths intersected at the doorway of the armory. Vansen had his arms full of polishing cloths, which he was borrowing, since they had run out in the guards’ hall, and he almost did not see her—in fact, almost knocked her over. Astonishingly, she seemed to be alone. She was dressed in a simple long shirt and breeches like a man’s, and Ferras Vansen was so surprised to see the face that had been in his mind’s eye all day that for a long moment he simply couldn’t believe it was true.
“M-My lady,” he said at last. “Highness. Here—you must not do that. It is not fitting.”
Princess Briony had been picking up his dropped cloths, her face wearing a pleasantly distracted expression that was almost insulting—it was obvious that she did not recognize him outside of the formal setting of an audience or council chamber. Her features abruptly changed and tightened, eyebrows lifting in a formal gesture of polite surprise. “Captain Vansen,” she said coolly. He had a brief glimpse of her guards—two of his own men—hurrying toward them across the armory courtyard, as if their own captain might be a threat to the princess.
“Your pardon, please, Highness.” He did his best to get out of her way, a gesture made difficult not only by the fact that she was holding the handle of the door, but because he was full-laden and she was not. He only managed it by clumsily dropping a few of the cloths again as he backed into the armory. He hid his terrible embarrassment by bending to pick them up.
Gods save me! Even when we meet almost as equals, alone in the armory doorway, I immediately turn myself into a bumbling peasant.
A second, equally unpleasant thought suggested that maybe this was just as well. After all, the sooner you get over this stupidity the better, a more sensible part of himself pointed out. If shame alone will do that, then shame is a good thing.
He glanced up at her face, saw the mixture of amusement and annoyance moving there. He had managed to block her way again. But I will never get over it, he thought, and in that painful, radiant instant he couldn’t imagine knowing anything with more certainty, not his love of his family, not his duty to the guards or to the all-seeing gods themselves.
Princess Briony suddenly seemed to realize she was smiling at his discomfiture; the transition of her features back to bland watchfulness was astonishingly swift and more than a little saddening. Such a lively face, he thought. But over the past weeks she had been slowly, purposefully turning it into something else—the marble mask of a portrait bust, something that might stand for decades in one of the castle’s dusty halls. “Do you need any help, Captain Vansen?” She nodded to her two hurrying protectors. “One of these guards could help you carry those things.”
She would lend him one of his own guardsmen to help him carry a few pieces of cloth. Was it real malice, or just girlish snippishness? “No, Highness, I can manage. Thank you.” He bent a knee and bowed a little, careful not to drop his burden again. She took the hint and moved from the doorway so that he could escape, although he had to glare her two panting guards back out of the way first. He was so relieved to escape her overwhelming presence that it was all he could do, after a final turn and bow, to walk rather than run away.
“Captain Vansen?”
He winced, then wheeled to face her again. “Yes, Highness?”
“I do not approve of my brother appointing himself head of this . . . expedition. You know that.”
“It seemed clear, Highness.”
“But he is my brother, and I love him. I have already . . .” Oddly, she smiled, but it was clear she was also fighting tears. “I have already lost one brother. Barrick is the only one I have left to me.”
He swallowed. “Highness, your brother’s death was . . .”
She raised her hand; at another time he might have thought she was being imperious. “Enough. I do not say it to . . . to blame you again. I just . . .” She turned away for a moment so she could dab at her eyes with the long sleeve of her man’s shirt as though the tears were little enemies that had to be swiftly and brutally eradicated. “I am asking you, Captain Vansen, to remember that Barrick Eddon is not just a prince, not just a member of the ruling family. He is my brother, my . . . my twin. I am terrified that something might happen to him.”
Ferras was moved. Even the guardsmen, a pair of young louts whom Vansen knew well and did not think could muste
r the finer feelings of a shoat between them, were nervous now, unsettled by the openness of the princess regent’s grief. “I will do my best, Highness,” he told her. “Please believe that. I will . . . I will treat him as though he were my own brother.”
Immediately upon saying it he realized that he had been foolish again—had insinuated that under ordinary circumstances he would give more care to his own family than to his lord and master, the prince regent. This seemed a particularly dangerous thing to say considering that one prince regent had already died while he, Vansen, was the officer of record.
I am truly an idiot, he thought. Blinded by my feelings. I have spoken to the mistress of the kingdom as though she were a crofter’s daughter from the next farm over.
To his surprise, though, there were tears in Briony’s eyes again. “Thank you, Captain Vansen,” was all she said.
She had looked forward all morning to stealing a little time for practice, been desperate for the release of swinging the heavy wooden sword, but now that the time had finally come, it only made her feel clumsy and tired.
It is that man Vansen. He always unsettled her, made her angry and disturbed—just seeing him reminded her of Kendrick, of that terrible night. And now it seemed he might be standing by to watch another of her brothers die, for none of her arguments could make Barrick change his mind. But was it Vansen’s fault, or was it only some terrible joke of the gods’, that he should be attached to so much of her misery?
Nothing made sense. She let the sword drop into the sawdust of the practice ring. One of the guards moved forward to pick it up but she waved him off. Nothing made sense. She was miserable.
Sister Utta. She had scarcely had time for her tutor lately, and Briony suddenly realized how much she missed the older woman’s calming presence. She snatched up a cloth to wipe her hands, then stamped her feet to shake off the sawdust before setting out for Utta’s apartments, guards scuttling after her like chickens behind a grain-scattering farmwife. She had crossed the courtyard and was just walking into the long, narrow Lesser Hall when for the second time in an hour she nearly knocked over a young man. It was not Vansen this time, but the young poet—well, the so-called poet, she could not help thinking—Matty Tinwright. He reacted with elaborately pleased surprise, but by the care he had put into his hair and clothes, his swift breathing, and his position just inside the doorway, she rather thought he had been watching her come across the courtyard from one of the windows and then had hurried down the hall to manufacture this “accidental” meeting.