(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  From the room, Luian let out a shriek of startled fright. Qinnitan could not help taking a few instinctive steps toward one who had been her friend and was now in danger, then her better judgment stopped her.

  Tanyssa’s voice was hoarse, as though the gardener herself was a bit frightened, too, but there was also a note of triumph in it. “Favored Luian of the Royal Seclusion, I am here as the hand of God. You have betrayed your sacred trust. You have betrayed the Master of the Great Tent.”

  “Wh-what are you talking about?”

  “There is no argument,” said the gardener. “The Golden One has put his seal on it.”

  Luian’s squeal of alarm suddenly turned into a loud grunting, a noise so horrid that for the first moments Qinnitan couldn’t even imagine it coming from a person.

  “You . . . are for . . . the worms.” Tanyssa, breathing hard, spoke in almost ordinary tones now—Qinnitan could barely hear her, although she stood trembling only a pace or two from Luian’s doorway—but there was clear hatred in the voice. “You fat, meddling bitch.” The grunting turned to a choking hiss, then Qinnitan heard only the drumlike thumping of flesh on the stone, heels or hands beating helplessly until they too fell silent.

  Her bones turned to leaden bars by terror, Qinnitan could scarcely move. She stumbled to the shadowed cross-corridor and looked back to see the hangings on Luian’s door billow outward. Her head was pounding. She pushed her face against the wall, burrowed into the space where the tapestry hung a little away from the cool stone, and prayed. The footsteps went past more slowly this time, so slowly that it was all Qinnitan could do to keep her face turned into the wall, to stand unmoving. Whether because of the darkness of the passageway or because her mind was taken up with what she had just done, the gardener who was also an executioner did not pause or even slow but walked on down the corridor. Qinnitan listened until she could no longer hear the footfalls.

  She wanted to weep, but she felt as though some terrible cold fire had swept through her and evaporated every tear. Even her mouth was parched. Where could she go? What could she do?

  She stood in the passageway only a few moments, stepping from foot to foot in an agony of indecision. Was Luian only the first of Tanyssa’s tasks? Was she even now on her way to Qinnitan’s chamber?

  I can’t go back there. But where can I go? Where can I hide? She thought for a moment of the little room off the Scented Garden that Jeddin had used for their assignation, then realized with a lurch of fear that such a place must now be infamous to the autarch’s lieutenants. In fact, there was nowhere she could hide, nowhere at all. They will turn the whole palace over like a jewelry box to shake me out.

  The only faint hope she had was to get out of the Seclusion. But how? How in the name of the Hive could she hope to get out past guards who would undoubtedly be looking for her?

  Jeddin’s seal ring! She reached into her sleeve and found it and its chain, still in the secret pocket she had sewn there. A premonition—that, and the knowledge that there was no privacy for anyone within the Seclusion—had kept her from leaving it hidden in her chamber. But what good will it do me? Even if by some tiny chance they are not looking to execute me, too, even if my name has been kept from them, trying to pass the gate with a forged message from Jeddin would catch their attention for sure.

  Now the tears finally came, hot tears of helplessness that burned against her cheeks. Could she believe that Jeddin had given up Luian but had kept silent about Qinnitan herself ? No. The chance was so small as to be invisible.

  You can’t stand here weeping! she told herself. Stupid girl! Get out of the hallway! Hide! But where could she go? She was in the middle of the autarch’s own palace and now she was his enemy. The most powerful man in the world wanted her dead, and that death was not likely to be either quick or painless.

  Poison, the terror of the Seclusion, suddenly seemed a blessing. If she had possessed any, Qinnitan would have drunk it then.

  36

  At the Giant’s Feet

  BLACK SPEAR:

  He is smeared with blood and fat

  He is fire in the air

  He is called “One Rib” and “Flower of the Sun”

  —from The Bonefall Oracles

  “I AM IMPRESSED,” TINWRIGHT said as he looked down from their high perch and across the choppy water. The narrow reach of Brenn’s Bay between the castle and the mainland city teemed with small watercraft, strange in such unsettled weather but not surprising in such an unsettled time: now that the causeway had been dismantled all those who would travel between city and keep had to do so by boat, braving the high, white-capped waves. “I did not think anyone but the royal household were allowed into the Towers of the Seasons.”

  “I am part of the royal household.” Puzzle drew himself up to his full height, but couldn’t stay unbent very long; after a moment he rounded his shoulders and let his head nod forward again. “I am the king’s jester, you know. And when Olin comes back, I will be in good odor once more.”

  If such a day ever comes. Matty Tinwright couldn’t help feeling sorry for the old fellow who had lost favor, but he knew he would be no different. When the royal family reached out to touch you, it was like air to a drowning man—anyone with a bit of ambition would tread water forever in hopes of continuing to breathe that air, scorning any other.

  And look at me, he thought then. Look how far I have come since I tasted that air—how high! It was far more than poetic metaphor. He stood on a balcony of the Tower of Winter with nearly all of Southmarch below him, only the black stones of Wolfstooth Spire looming at his back like a stern parent. A month ago I was in the mire. He watched the overloaded boats being pushed back from the Winter-side water gate by soldiers, heard the faint sound of people pleading, children crying. I would have been begging for sanctuary like the rest of them. Instead, I am assured my place. I am fed and housed by the Eddons—by the word of Princess Briony herself. Ah, the gods, and most specially Zosim, Patron of Poets, have smiled on me.

  Still, he couldn’t help wishing the gods would do something about the war that had brought so many frightened souls into the castle that Tinwright now found himself sharing his bed in shifts again, just as in his days at the Quiller’s Mint. For a moment he felt a twinge of real fear.

  It could not be that the gods have some plan to trick me, could it? That they have brought me to this high estate only to let me die at the hands of warlocks and fairies . . . ? He shook his head. The gloomy day had put foul thoughts in his mind. Briony Eddon herself elevated me, defends me. She recognizes my art and has brought me under her mantle. And everyone knows this castle will never be taken by siege—the ocean will defend it just as the princess regent protects me.

  Dark thoughts banished, Tinwright took a long swallow of the wine and then passed the heavy jug to Puzzle, who had to hold it with both hands, trembling with the effort as he lifted it to his lips. The thin jester swayed a little, like a sapling.

  “It’s a good thing you’re holding that,” Tinwright told him. “The wind is growing fierce.”

  “Good, that.” The old man wiped his lips. “Wine, I mean. Warms a man up. Now, sir, I did not call you up here merely to admire the view, although it is very fine. I need your help.”

  Tinwright raised an eyebrow. “My help?”

  “You are a poet, sir, are you not? Winter’s Eve is almost upon us. There will be a feast, of course. I must entertain the princess regent and the others. The good old duchess will be there.” He smiled for a moment, lost in some memory. “She likes my jests. And the other great and good—all will be gathered together. I must have something special for them.”

  Tinwright was watching the bay again. A small boat had capsized; a family was in the choppy water. It all seemed very distant, but still Tinwright was glad to see that a number of other boats, mostly Skimmer crafts, were moving toward the place. A Skimmer man, one long arm still holding the tiller of his tiny sailboat, reached out and pulled what looked like
a small child out of the gray-green water. “Sorry,” Tinwright said. “I don’t understand.”

  “A song, man, a song!” The intensity in the jester’s voice was such that Matty Tinwright turned away from the rescue. Puzzle’s lined face seemed lit from within, full of glee. “You must write something clever!”

  How much wine has the old fellow drunk? “You want me to write a song for you?”

  Puzzle shook his head. “I will write the tune. I was much known for it in my younger days. For my voice, too.” His face sagged. “Never grow old. Do you hear me? Never grow old.”

  In truth, Tinwright could not quite imagine such a thing, although he knew it lay in the distance somewhere, just as he had been told there was another continent far to the south, a place he had never seen and thought of not at all except to borrow the occasional metaphor set there—“dusky and sweet as a Xandian grape”—that he had heard used by other poets. Old age was like that to him as well. “What kind of song do you wish to sing?”

  “Nothing to make people laugh. These are not the times for levity.” The old man nodded, as if being unfunny was for him a careful decision instead of the helpless tragedy of his life’s work. “Something heroic and lighthearted. Some tale of Silas or one of the other Lander’s Hall knights might do. Perhaps The Ever-Wounded Maid—that takes place at a Winter’s Eve feast, after all.”

  Tinwright considered it. There was no obvious value in the favor: Puzzle, despite his reminiscences, was no closer to the heart of power in Southmarch these days than Tinwright himself. Then again, what if the king did return? Odder things had happened.

  Also—and it took Tinwright a moment to understand this, so unusual was the impulse—he liked the old man and would enjoy doing him a favor. After all, the gods knew that Puzzle had not been blessed with the natural gifts of art, as Matt Tinwright had in his own calling.

  “Very well,” he said. “But you have not given me much time.”

  Puzzle beamed. “You are a stout fellow, Tinwright. Truly, you are a friend. It need not be overlong—the attention of the court tends to wander by the time the meal is over and they have been well into the wine. Ah, thank you. This calls for another drink.” He heaved up the jug for a healthy swallow, then passed it to Tinwright, who almost dropped it, his attention again on the water.

  “The Skimmers have saved that family,” he noted. “May the gods bite other gods, look at them! Half-naked in this cold! I will never understand Skimmers. They must have blubberous hide like a seal.”

  “It is cold,” said Puzzle. “We should go down.” He squinted into the distance. “Look, you cannot even see Landsend for the fog. And it has come down out of the hills, too, and all across the downs. It will cover the city soon.” He wrapped his thin arms around himself. “Shadow-weather, we used to call it.” He turned suddenly to Tinwright. “You do not think it has anything to do with the Twilight People, do you?”

  Tinwright looked at the thick mists crawling down from the tops of the nearby hills, combs of white that mirrored the wind-slapped waves of the bay. “This is a spit of land between the bay and the ocean. There are always fogs here.”

  “Perhaps.” Puzzle nodded. “Yes, of course, you are right. We older folk, when the cold gets into our bones, it makes us think of . . .” He wiped his eyes: the wind had made them water. “Let us go down. There will be a fire in the kitchen and we can finish the jug and talk about my Winter’s Eve song.”

  “Who is your master?” Chert asked.

  The girl Willow suddenly looked shy, the first thing she had done that seemed in keeping with her age and appearance. “I do not know his name . . . but I know his voice.”

  He shook his head. “Look, child, I don’t know you or what brings you here. It could be that at some other time I would go with you, if only to find out what sort of strangeness this is, but I have just returned from a journey beneath the earth that would make the Lord of . . . that would make Kernios himself fall down and nap for a week. Our boy is in the other room, sick, perhaps dying. My wife has been terrified for us both. I cannot go with you to see your master, especially when you cannot even name him.”

  For a long moment she faced him, narrow face solemn, as though the words he had spoken had not yet reached her ears. Her heavy-lidded eyes fell shut. When she opened them, she said, “Do you have the mirror?”

  “The what?”

  “The mirror. My master says that if you cannot come yourself, you must send the mirror with me.” She reached out her hand, guileless and direct as a girl half her age demanding a sweet. Even in his startlement, Chert couldn’t help wondering about her. She was tall even for one of the big folk, and pretty enough, but even though she was washed and her frock was clean, if plain, there was something offhand and bedraggled about her, as though she had dressed herself in the dark.

  “Your master . . . wants the mirror?” Without thought Chert put his hand into the pocket of his tattered, sweat-stained shirt, closed it on the smooth, cool thing. Too late he realized he had given away that he had it, but the girl was not even looking at him. She stood, palm still extended, staring into the middle distance as though looking right through the wall of the house.

  “He says that each moment that goes by brings Old Night closer,” she said.

  Chert was startled to hear Chaven’s words, Chaven’s terrible warning, coming from the mouth of this moonstruck child. He groaned.

  “I must tell my wife,” he said at last.

  Few folk were still on the streets of Funderling Town now that the lamps had been lowered for evening, but those who were out watched Chert with surprise. Most had already heard about the bizarre little parade that had signaled his return from the depths, but even that could not have prepared them for this sight: Chert Blue Quartz, only just finished one set of wild adventures, glumly following one of the big folk back out of town as though walking to his own execution. And in truth, his thoughts were nearly that heavy.

  Opal didn’t even shout, he thought as he followed the girl toward the town gates. I could have borne it if she had shouted at me, called me names. I can scarcely believe I am going out again myself. But to see her turn her back on me, with nothing more than, “You do what you must.” Is it the child? Has she found something she cares for more than me?

  Or perhaps she’s just like you, old fool, a part of him suggested. Perhaps with the boy so still and deathly she’s got enough under her pick that she doesn’t have time for something she doesn’t understand. Not that you understand it either.

  Music drifted out of the guildhall as he passed, the voices of men and boys lifted in song. The men’s choir was practicing for year’s end, the timeless songs of their people shared between them like a meal. Schist the chorister would be pacing back and forth, listening, frowning, absently wagging one hand to show the rhythm. For the singers all was ordinary tonight, even the threat of war and tales of Chert’s weird adventures largely a diversion. The Funderlings outlasted wars, or at least they always had: builders, diggers, miners, they were too valuable to kill and too hard to catch in their serpentine retreats even if someone wished to kill them. We stone folk stay close to the ground, his father used to say. The view is not so proud, but we’re harder to knock down.

  Would they outlast Old Night, too, if it came?

  Why has my life been broken into pieces? Chert wondered. Why have I been singled out?

  To his growing amazement, the girl led him into the very heart of the castle. A crush of people surrounded the Raven’s Gate, guards arguing with a variety of petitioners, but one of them recognized her and let her through, although he cast a mistrustful eye over Chert before allowing the Funderling to follow her into the inner keep. Willow did not speak to anyone, but led him through open spaces, gardens, and covered walkways until even his fine sense of direction was confused. The sun had set and the air was bitingly cold. Chert was glad that he had brought his warm coat, although it had been hard to believe he would need it when he left, so much wa
s he still remembering the heat of the depths. It made him a little sad that Opal had not reminded him to take it as she usually did, but he told himself that even his all-seeing, all-knowing wife couldn’t remember everything, especially in the midst of such a strange day.

  As he finally pulled on the coat, Willow led him through a gate and into an arbored garden lit by a few torches in stands. Chert did not know what garden it was, and he certainly didn’t recognize the man waiting on a low bench. He had half-suspected he would find Chaven on the other side of this mysterious summons and it was hard to fight a feeling of disappointment bordering on real fear to discover this stranger instead.

  The man turned his face toward them as they approached; his eyes seemed as disturbingly incurious as the girl’s. He was almost Chaven’s opposite, younger than the physician and much thinner, with hair close-cropped in an awkward way that looked as if he had done it himself with a knife, and without looking.

  Perhaps that’s why he needs the mirror, Chert thought, but he was not amusing anyone today, least of all himself. “You sent for me,” he said aloud, as firmly as he could manage. “As though you were my master and not just the girl’s. But you are not, so tell me your business.”

  “Did you bring the mirror?” The man’s voice was slow and quiet.

  “You will answer my questions first. Who are you and what do you want?”

  “Who am I?” The stranger said it slowly, as though it were an unexpected question. “Here, in this place, I am called Gil. I think I have another name . . . but I cannot remember it.”

  Chert felt a quiver of panic move down his backbone. The man had the detachment of the mad, as calm as Chert’s old grandfather had been in his last years, sitting beside the fire in his house like a lizard in the sun, barely moving at all from unseen dawn to day’s end.

  “I don’t know what that nonsense means, but I know you have called me out of my home at a time when my family has great need of me. I will ask you again—what do you want?”