by Tad Williams
She spoke none of this, or let any of it show on her face except perhaps by a certain angry stiffness that silenced Rose and Moina completely. “I must dress,” she said again, and stood as straight as she could, as proudly upright as any queen or empress, while they began to clothe her in her brother’s clothes.
At the very last the ladies pretended they could not do it, that they did not understand the working of the thing, although it was much more simple than any lady’s garment, so she put on the heavy sword belt herself and buckled it tight across her hips before sliding the long blade into the sheath.
If it was a weather change, it was a strange one. Vansen stood on the hillside behind the scouts and looked out across the expanse of valley, at the Settland Road winding along at its bottom, and tried to make sense of what he felt. The air was close, but not from the nearness of any storm, although a heavy rain had swept through at midday and the road had been hard going for the rest of the afternoon. Neither was it a smell, although the air had a certain sour tang that reminded him of the burning season in autumn, of bonfires now two months past. Even the light seemed inexplicably strange, but for no reason he could name: the sky was darkening quickly now, the sun setting behind a slate-colored blanket of clouds, and the hillsides seemed unusually green against the dark pall, but it was nothing he had not seen hundreds of times.
It’s because you’re afraid, he told himself. Because you crossed that line once and you’re afraid you might find yourself behind it again. Because you’ve seen what’s coming and you’re afraid to meet it.
All morning and afternoon they had encountered people fleeing the rape of Candlerstown, most merely hurrying ahead of rumors of its end, but some—almost all women and children lucky enough to have escaped in wagons—who had actually survived its destruction. The stories of these last were particularly terrifying and Tyne Aldritch and Vansen and the others had spent much of the afternoon trying to understand what it meant for them, vainly trying to concoct a strategy that could counter such nightmarish madness. The first few refugees’ tales had so unsettled the soldiers who heard them, themselves conscripted farmers little different from the husbands and fathers these families had so recently lost to such ghastly enemies, that with Earl Tyne’s permission Vansen had ridden ahead with a company of scouts to glean what information he could from the oncoming victims and then give them what aid he might before turning them aside to where outliers of the army could give them food and water, hoping to prevent the dreadful stories washing repeatedly across the main body of troops like waves of freezing water. Ferras Vansen already knew this second night out from Southmarch would be a grim, anxious camp; no sense in turning it into anything worse.
It was pointless, of course: those who couldn’t stand even to hear about the terrible Twilight People would probably have scant chance of surviving a battle with them, but Vansen hoped that the fact of real combat would give men back their hearts no matter how frightened they were. Any enemy who could be touched, fought, killed, was better than the one you could only imagine.
He turned to Dab Dawley, one of the survivors of his own ill-fated expedition across the Shadowline. It was only with great reluctance and at the express order of Princess Briony that he had increased the responsibility of Mickael Southstead, whom he didn’t trust very much at all—the night he was named a captain he had caused two bad fights back in Southmarch with his bragging—but young Dawley was a different story, cautious and thoughtful despite his years, and much more so since their shared adventure. Had it not been for his own desire to see what was ahead of them, Vansen would happily have let Dawley lead this scouting party himself, despite his lack of experience.
“I think we stay here tonight, Dab, or at least that is what I will suggest to Earl Tyne. Will you take the men down and start looking for water? It seems to me there should be a stream there, beyond that hillock.”
Dawley nodded. The other scouts, wilderness veterans almost to a man, had heard the captain—there was no need for the formality of orders. They clicked softly to their mounts and started down the road.
A few hundred such as these and I might not fear even the Twilight folk, Vansen told himself, but he knew it was not true. Even standing in the midst of a thousand of the stoutest men in the world would not thaw a freezing, terrified heart.
The valley was full of fires. This close to home, they were still eating fresh meat and bread that could be broken without having to saw at it with a knife, which was a rare pleasure on march. Some of the guardsmen from Kertewall were playing pipes and singing. Despite the mournful Kertish tunes it was a pleasingly ordinary sound; Vansen was glad of it and certain that others felt the same.
He was wandering back toward the fire when he saw a figure standing at the crest of one of the low hills, inside the ring of sentries but not near any of them. He puzzled for a moment before he recognized it as Prince Barrick. Vansen was a little surprised, thinking that the prince would have preferred to be in the midst of Lord Aldritch and the other nobles, drinking and being waited upon, but Vansen knew from his experience with the royal family that the boy had always been odd and solitary.
But he’s a boy no longer, I suppose. In fact, Barrick was the same sort of age Vansen himself had been when he first left home to seek his fortune in the city—an age when he had been certain that he was a man, despite no confirming proof. Watching Barrick, he could not help remembering Princess Briony’s fear for her brother. Certainly the lad should be safe enough—he was scarcely two dozen yards from the nearest campfire—and Ferras Vansen had a respect for solitude that many others did not, but he couldn’t help being anxious. After all, Collum Dyer was within my arm’s reach when he was taken. It would be horror enough to have to tell that lovely, sad young woman that her brother had died honorably in battle—he couldn’t imagine telling her the prince had been stolen by fairies right out of camp.
As he strode up the hill, the wet grass slapping at his legs, Vansen suddenly wondered what the Twilight People wanted. Although there had been few true wars during his lifetime, he had ample experience of violence and knew that there were some men who could only be stopped from taking what they wanted by strength, and some who feared that others meant to take what was theirs even when it was not true, that greed and fear lay at the bottom of most fights. But that army he had seen beyond the Shadowline, that array of the sublime and terrible, that ghastly, glorious host—what could they want? Why had they left the safety of their misty lands after two centuries or more, a time in which their original enemies had long since disappeared and new mortals unnumbered had been born, lived, and died again, all without knowing the shadow folk as anything but the stuff of old stories and evil dreams?
He fought a shudder. They were not men, not even animals, but demons, as he knew better than anyone, so how could a mere man hope to understand their reasons?
Young Barrick turned at his approach and watched for a moment before turning back to what he had been gazing at so intently—nothing, so far as Vansen could tell. “Prince Barrick, your pardon. Are you well?”
“Captain Vansen.” The young man continued staring out at the night sky. The wind had herded the clouds away and the stars had come out. Ferras Vansen couldn’t help remembering how, as a small child, he had once thought they were the cook fires of people like himself—sky shepherds, perhaps, living on the other side of the great bowl of the heavens, who called the fires of the Vansen family and their neighbors stars in turn.
“It is getting cold, Highness. Perhaps you would be more comfortable back with the others.”
The prince didn’t answer immediately. “What was it like?” he finally asked.
“What was it like . . . ?”
“Behind the Shadowline. Did it feel different? Smell different?”
“It was frightening, Highness, as I told you and your sister. Misty and dark. Confusing.”
“Yes, but what was it like?” His bad arm was hidden in his cloak, but the other hand
pointed at the sky. “Did you see the same stars—Demia’s Ladder, the Horns?”
Vansen shook his head. “I can’t quite remember now. It—it was all very much like a dream. Stars? I’m not sure.”
Barrick nodded. “I have dreams about . . . about the other side. I know that now. I’ve had them all my life. I didn’t really know what they were, but hearing what you said about . . .” He turned to fix Vansen with a surprisingly sharp glance. “You say you were frightened. Why? Were you afraid you’d die? Or was it something else?”
Vansen had to stop and think for a moment. “Afraid to die? Of course. The gods give us the fear of death so that we won’t squander their gifts too lightly—so that we will use what is given us to the fullest. But that isn’t what I felt there—that’s not the whole of it, anyway.”
Barrick smiled, although there was something incomplete in it. “So we will use what is given us to the fullest. You are a bit of a poet, Captain Vansen, aren’t you?”
“No, Highness. I just . . . that is what the village priest taught me.” He stiffened a little. “But I think it’s true. Who knows what will happen to us in Kernios’ cold hands?”
“Yes, who indeed?”
Now the memories of his days in the shadowland were seeping back, as though the lid he had put on them had been kicked loose. “I was afraid because the world there was strange to me. Because I could not trust my own senses. Because it made me feel like a madman.”
“And there is nothing more frightening than that.” Barrick was darkly pleased by something. “No, that is true, Captain Vansen.” He peered at him again. “Do you have a first name?”
“Ferras, Highness. It is a common enough name in the dales.”
“But Vansen isn’t.”
“My father was from the Vuttish Isles.”
Barrick had turned back to the stars again. “But he made his home in Daler’s Troth. Was he happy? Is he still alive?”
“He died, Highness, years ago now. He was happy enough. He always said he would trade all the wide ocean for a crofter’s patch and good weather.”
“Perhaps he was born out of his place,” said Prince Barrick. “That happens, I think. Some of us live our whole lives as if we were dreaming, because we haven’t found where we’re meant to be—stumbling through shadows, terrified, strangers just as you were in the Twilight Lands.” He suddenly tucked his other hand under his cloak. “You’re right, Captain Vansen—it’s getting cold. I think I will have some wine and try to sleep.”
The prince turned and walked down the hill.
He is still a boy, really, for all his philosophy, Vansen decided as he followed several paces behind, alert for any threat, even here among the campfires. A child—clever, angry, and fearful. The gods grant that he lives long enough for some of that knowing to turn into wisdom.
The murmur of disapproving conversation, which at times threatened to become a roar, had begun the moment Briony walked into the room and had not stopped since she took her place at the head of the table. Meals in the Great Hall were seldom quiet or restful, and on any other day she would have taken something quietly in her chambers, but she had decided on a brave show and she would take what came.
Hierarch Sisel sat on her right. Brone, although a few others at the table outranked him, took the place on her left because he was the lord constable and the castle was at war—or soon to be so. The hierarch, after an initial widening of the eyes and pursing of the lips when he saw her, had made polite conversation just as though she were wearing proper womanly clothing; she was not certain whether she admired this or disliked it. Brone was disgusted, of course, but she had come to know him well enough to feel certain that his annoyance had more to do with her making what he considered an unnecessary spectacle of herself at a delicate time than any particular disapproval of this provocative unsexing. The lord constable had other things on his mind he deemed more important, and he clearly meant to use the stir over the arrival of the main courses to speak to her.
As the chicken carcasses were carried away, and the huge half-bullock sweating in its own juices was carted in, surrounded by what to Briony’s taste was an overly festive array of peacocks roasted and then dressed again in their own feathers, the dogs barked excitedly and snuffled in the rushes for dropped bones. She reached down and scratched a furry head, glad somebody here was deservedly happy, anyway.
“The work on the fortifications is largely done,” Brone told her quietly. “But the strongest walls will not hold if the hearts inside are weak. The nobles are restive. Several have gone already, preferring to take their chances in their own homes, or even to take to the sea lanes if things seem to go badly.”
“I know.” She had granted enough spurious requests in the last days, thin excuses that she felt certain she could pull to tatters in an instant if she chose. “Let them go, Lord Brone. Those are not the folk we’ll want at our sides if things do grow worse rather than merely seem bad, as they do now.” She glanced at Hendon Tolly and his sister-in-law Elan, halfway down the table but in a different world, surrounded by admirers like Durstin Crowel, the Baron of Graylock, all but the girl laughing broadly at one of Tolly’s jokes. “In truth, it’s too bad they do not all leave. Southmarch might be harder to defend, but the waiting would be more pleasant.”
“But that is just the thing . . .” Brone leaned back and waited for one of the squires to drop a slice of beef onto his trencher. “For every fainthearted noble that rides off south or sets sail to the east,” he said when the youth had moved on, “a retinue of men-at-arms goes with him, and we can scarcely afford to lose a one of them.”
Briony waved her hand: what could she do? One could not compel love, she had decided, especially not for the child when it was the father who had earned it. All the faces that had come before her, mouthing reasons why they were urgently needed on the family lands or promising to return with a fresh muster of troops had begun to look as distant and dead as the likenesses in the portrait hall. But she would remember them, if one day the sun shone on Southmarch again. She would recall who left and she would most certainly recall who stayed, and she would punish and reward them accordingly. She owed that to her father and Kendrick, now that they were helpless to protect this place both had loved so much.
She was startled to realize that she had been thinking about her father again as though he were dead. She made the sign of pass-evil, something she had scarcely done since childhood when she learned it from one of her nursemaids. He is well, she told herself. I will write him another letter tonight, send it out with a courier on a ship going south. She felt a wash of shame. I have told him nothing of this coming war, if that is what it is, and only the barest details of Kendrick’s death. But was this the sort of news to send to a man imprisoned, that his kingdom stood threatened, and so strangely? Even prisoned in Hierosol, he would have heard about Kendrick, and of Shaso’s imprisonment, whether or not he had received her last letter—was that not heartache enough? She suddenly missed her father so badly she found it hard to breathe. Barrick, too. She wished her twin were beside her now, that they could escape together later to discuss all these yawning, greasy-mouthed courtiers, Lady Comfrey M’Neel with her hair already half-undone after drinking too much wine, fat Lord Bratchard who saw himself against all evidence as a wit and a ladies’ man, who used to paw Briony’s hair and face when she was small and tell her what a pretty young woman she was growing to be.
I hope that if this castle falls, the Twilight People take the lot of them and march them off to Vansen’s foggy shadowlands with chains around their necks.
It was a stunningly uncharitable thought, and ignored the many kind and good hearts around her, but at this moment the shout of conversation and clanking of cups and knives seemed little better than the clamor of the barn-yard, and these people, for all their finery, little better than pigs shoving to reach the trough.
Hierarch Sisel was trying to say something to her, but at that moment a loud bray of laughter
from handsome, stupid Durstin Crowel pricked at her like a needle and she flinched. The Baron of Graylock was roaring at something that Hendon Tolly had said, laughing so hard that he choked on his wine and sprayed some on his ruff and down his front, occasioning fresh laughter from the others around him. The author of the remark met her eye, his lips drawn in a satisfied smile. She knew, or felt certain she did, who was the butt of Hendon Tolly’s jest.
“Lord Tolly,” she called, “like Erilo putting a blessing on the grape harvest, it seems you are bringing much-needed mirth to our table tonight, when otherwise people might be sitting quiet and thoughtful, wondering what the gods have in store for us.”
Beside her Brone cleared his throat and on the other side the hierarch tried his remark again, some innocuous comment about how all the fortification work had made him think about some additions to the temple, but she was paying neither of them any attention. She and Hendon Tolly had locked eyes. She was waiting for his reply, and now others were, too: a few dogs beneath the table were growling and playing tug-o-war with a bone, but otherwise the room had grown remarkably still.
“It is a credit to your hospitality, Princess Briony, that you provide us many diversions. You have given us so many interesting things to think about that I had almost forgotten that I am mourning the loss of my brother, Duke Gailon.”
“Yes, we have all been saddened by Gailon’s disappearance,” she said, ignoring another warning cough from Avin Brone. “It was especially a blow because his departure from this house followed so soon after the death of my own brother.”
A palpable unease had fallen over the table. Even Crowel, who had been ready to laugh, sat with his mouth open, surprised.