by Tad Williams
HALL OF PURSUIT:
A strong man who does not sing
A singing man who does not turn
Even when the door closes
—from The Bonefall Oracles
“I don’t want to hear any more.” He was tired and his head hurt. He still felt deathly ill—felt as though he would never again be truly well. He wanted only to go back to what he had been doing, bouncing the hard leather ball against the floor that had already been pitted with age in his great-grandfather’s day, thinking about nothing.
“Please, Barrick, I beg of you.” Gailon Tolly, Duke of Summerfield, was doing his best to keep impatience from his voice. It amused Barrick, but it angered him too.
“Prince Barrick. I am prince regent, now. I am not your little cousin any longer and you cannot treat me that way.” Gailon bobbed his head. “Of course, Highness. Forgive my disrespect.”
Barrick smiled. “Better. Well, then, tell it to me again.”
“I have…” The duke regained his look of patience. “It is simply this. Your sister has seen the envoy from Ludis again this morning. The black man, Dawet.”
“By herself? Behind closed doors?”
Gailon colored. “No, Highness. In the garden, with others present.”
“Ah.” Barrick bounced the ball again. It did trouble him, but he wouldn’t show it and give Gailon the satisfaction. “So my sister, the princess regent, was talking in the garden to an envoy of the man who’s holding our father prisoner.”
“Yes, but…” Gailon scowled and turned to Avin Brone. “Prince Barrick does not want to understand me, Brone. You explain.”
The mountainous lord constable shrugged, a motion that looked as if it might start an avalanche. “She appears to enjoy the man’s company. She listens very closely to what he has to say.”
“While you were ill, he had a long audience with her, Highness,” said Gailon. “She ignored everyone else who was present.”
Ignored, thought Barrick. Through all the disturbing images that had not entirely left his head, through weariness and the strands of fever that still draped him like cobwebs, it was a word whose meaning he understood immediately. “She is paying more attention to him than to you, is that what you mean, Gailon?”
“No… !”
“It seems to me that you are trying to drive a wedge between my sister and myself.” Barrick flung the leather ball down against the floor. It hit on the edge of a flagstone and went bouncing across the room. Two young pages dove out of the way as one of the larger dogs scrambled after it, then chased it into a corner behind a chest and growled in excited frustration. “But my sister and myself are almost the same thing, Duke Gailon. That is what you must know.”
“You wrong me, Highness.” Gailon turned to Brone, but the big man was watching the dog rooting behind the chest, making it clear that he wanted no responsibility for the duke’s little embassy. “We are in a terrible time. We need to be strong—all the houses of Southmarch must stand together, Eddons, Tollys, all of us. I know that. But neither should the common people begin to whisper of… dalliances between your sister and your father’s kidnappers.”
“You go too far.” Barrick was angry, but it was a distant fury like lightning over far hills. “Leave this room now and I will forgive your clumsy tongue, Gailon, but be careful. If you say such things in front of my sister, you may find yourself fighting for honor, and she will not ask for a champion. She will fight you herself.”
“By the gods, is this whole family mad?” the duke cried, but Brone already had Gailon Tolly’s shoulders and was steering him toward the door, whispering words of calm in his ear. The lord constable gave Barrick an odd look as he urged Gailon out, something that could equally have been surprised approval or disdain imperfectly masked.
Barrick did not feel strong enough to try to make sense of it all. In the three days he had been out of bed, through the ghastly funeral and the equally drawn-out and exhausting ceremony in the castle’s huge, incense-choked Trigonate temple that had conferred the regency on both Briony and himself, he had never felt entirely well. That terrible fever had swept through him like a wildfire through a forest glade. Fundamental things were gone, roots and branches, and they would take time to grow back. At the same time, the fever itself seemed to have left behind unfamiliar spores, seeds of new ideas which he could feel quickening inside him, waiting to hatch.
What will I become? he wondered, staring at his bent left hand. I was already a monster. Already a target for scorn, haunted by those terrible dreams, by… by Father’s legacy. Am I a target for treachery now as well? These new thoughts would not go away, feelings of distrust that scratched away at him at all hours, sleeping and waking, like rats in the walls. He had prayed and prayed, but the gods did not seem to care enough to relieve his misery.
Should I be listening to Gailon more carefully about this? But Barrick did not trust his cousin at all. Everyone knew that Gailon was ambitious, although he was by no means the worst of his family: his brothers, sly Caradon and the dangerously reckless Hendon, made the Duke of Sum-merfield seem almost maiden-shy by comparison. In fact, Barrick did not trust any of the Southmarch nobles, not Brone, not Tyne Aldritch of Blueshore, not even the old castellan, Nynor, no matter how valuable a servant any of them had been to his father. He trusted nobody but his sister, and now Gailon’s words had begun to eat away at that bond, too. Barrick stood up, so full of rage and unhappiness that even the dog shied away. His two pages waited, solemn-faced, watching him as small animals watch a larger one who might be hungry. He had shouted at them more than a few times since dragging himself out of his fever-bed, and had struck both of them at least once.
“I must dress now,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
The council was meeting in an hour. Perhaps he should ask Briony straight out what her business was with the dark man, the envoy. The memory of Dawet’s lean brown face and superior smile sent a little shudder of unease up Barrick’s spine. It was so much like something from the fever dreams, those shadowy, heartless creatures that pursued him. But waking life had also been nightmarish since then. It was all he could do to remind himself that he was awake, that the walls were solid, that eyes did not watch him from every corner.
I almost told Briony about Father, he realized. That was one thing he must never do. It could be the end of any happiness either of them would ever have together. “I am waiting, curse it!”
The pages had been lifting his dark, fur-trimmed gown out of the chest; now they hurried toward him, awkward beneath the weight, bearing the heavy thing like the body of a dead foe.
What did Briony want with that envoy? And more importantly, why hadn’t she told him, her brother? He couldn’t help remembering that she had seemed quite prepared to take the regency without him, to leave him alone in his bed of pain.
No. He forced the thoughts away but they did not go far: like starving beggars rebuffed, they moved only out of immediate reach. No, not Briony. If there is anyone I can trust, it is Briony.
His knees were shaking as the two young pages stood on their toes to drape the gown across his shoulders. He did not need to see these boys’ faces. He knew they were looking at each other. He knew they thought something was wrong with him.
Am I still fevered? he wondered. Or is this the thing that Father spoke of? Is this the true beginning of it?
For a moment he was back in the shadowed passages of his illness, looking down a great distance into red-shot darkness. He could see no way out.
* * *
Sister Utta’s long face showed amusement, but concern as well, and she spoke carefully. “I think it is a very bold idea, Highness.”
“But not a good one, is that what you’re saying?” Briony fidgeted. So many things were moving inside her these days, a torrent of feeling and need and sometimes even . . well, it felt like strength, the kind that she had been asked to hide over and over again. All of these competing forces yanked at her limbs and though
ts as though she were on puppet strings. “You think I am asking for trouble. You want me not to do it.”
“You are the princess regent now,” said Utta. “You will do as you see fit. But this is a disturbed time—the waters are roiled and muddy. Is it really the time for the mistress of the nation to wear what everyone will think of as a man’s garments?”
“Is it the time?” Briony clapped her hands together in frustration. “If not now, when? Everything is changing. Only a week ago, Kendrick was about to send me to marry the Bandit of Hierosol. Now I rule in Southmarch.”
“With your brother.”
“With my brother, yes. My twin. We can do whatever we want to do, whatever we think is right.” “First,” said Utta, “remember that Barrick is your twin, but he is not you.”
“Are you saying he will be angry with me? For dressing as I want to, wearing sensible, sturdy clothes instead of the frills of an empty-headed creature who is meant only to be pleasing to the eye?”
“I am saying nothing except that your brother, too, has seen the world he knows turned upside down. And so have all the people of the country. It has not been just a few days of change, Princess Briony. A year ago at the autumn harvest your father was on the throne and the gods seemed happy. Now all has changed. Remember that! There is a dark, cold winter coming—there is already snow in the high hills. People will huddle around their fires and listen to the wind whistling in the thatch and wonder what is coming next. Their king is imprisoned. The king’s heir is dead—murdered, and no one can say why. Do you think during those dark, cold nights they will be saying, ‘Thanks to the gods that we have two children on the throne now who are not afraid to turn all the old ways upside down!’.”
Briony stared at the Zorian Sister’s beautiful, austere face What I would not give to look like her, Briony thought Wise, so wise and calm —no one would doubt me then! Instead I look like a milkmaid most of the time, red-faced and sweaty. “I came to you for advice, didn’t I?” she said.
Utta made a graceful little shrug. “You came for your lesson.” “Thank you, Sister. I will think about what you’ve said.”
They had scarcely gone back to reading Clemon’s. The History of Eion and Its Nations when someone knocked quietly at the door.
“Princess Briony?” called Rose Trelling from the corridor. “Highness? It is nearly time for you to see your council.”
Briony got up and gave Utta a kiss on her cool cheek before going out to her waiting maids. There wasn’t room for them to walk three abreast in the narrow passageway so Rose and Moina dropped behind her, Briony could hear the sides of their skirts brushing the walls.
Moina Hartsbrook cleared her throat. “That man… says he would be honored if he could find you in the garden again tomorrow.”
Briony couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s disapproving tone. “By ‘that man’ you mean Lord Dawet?"
“Yes, Highness.” They all walked on in silence for a while, but Briony could sense Moina trying to work up the courage to speak again. “Princess,” she said at last, “forgive me, but why do you see him? He is an enemy of the kingdom.”
“And so are many foreign envoys. Count Evander of Syan and the old wheezing fellow from Sessio who smells like horse dung—you don’t think those are our friends, do you? Surely you remember that fat pig Angelos, the envoy from Jellon, who smiled at me every day and fawned over Kendrick, until we woke up one morning and found that his master King Hesper had sold Father to Hierosol. I would have killed Angelos myself if he hadn’t already made the excuse of a hunting trip and slipped away back to Jellon. But until we catch them doing something wrong, we put up with them.That’s called statecraft.”
“But… but is that really why you talk to him?” Moina was being stubborn; she ignored Rose’s elbow bumping her ribs. “Just for… statecraft?”
“Are you asking if I spend time with him because I find him handsome?”
Moina blushed and looked down. Briony’s other attendant was also having trouble meeting her eyes. “I don’t like him either,” Rose confessed.
“I’m not planning to marry him, if that’s what you’re wondering.” “Highness!” Her ladies-in-waiting were shocked. “Of course not!”
“Yes, he is handsome. But he is almost my father’s age, don’t forget I’m interested in what he has to say about the many places he has seen, the southern continent where he was born and its deserts, or old Hierosol with all its ruins. I have not had much chance to see other places, you know.” Her maids looked at her with the expressions of young women who associated journeying in foreign lands with little beside hardship and possible ravishment. She knew they would never understand her longing to learn of things beyond this damp, dark old castle. “But I am even more interested in what Dawet has to say about Shaso, of course. Who, you may remember, is in chains because he seems to have killed my brother. Is it acceptable to the two of you, that I should try to understand the reasons why Prince Kendrick was murdered?”
Rose and Moina were both caught up in sputtering apologies, but Briony knew she had not been entirely honest: there was more to her feelings about Dawet than simply admiration for his wide experience, although she was not exactly sure what those feelings were. She was no mere girl, she told herself, to fawn over a lovesome face, but something about the man truly had caught her attention and she considered him more than she should, wondered what he thought both of her and her court.
He would have earned me off to Ludis without a second thought, she reminded herself. That is the kind of man he is. If Kendrick had announced it a day earlier, I would be halfway to Hierosol by now, on my way to meet my new husband, the Lord Protector.
It suddenly occurred to her that since she felt certain Kendrick had in the end decided to give her to Ludis for the greater good of Southmarch, the prince regent’s death had occurred at the last possible moment to prevent that from happening. The idea was so obvious and so surprising that she stopped in the middle of the hallway and her two ladies bumped into her from behind. It took a moment before they were all sorted out and moving again, but now Briony wished she did not have to go to the council chamber. This strange new thought made everything look different, as a cloud passing in front of the sun turned a bright day into sudden twilight.
But who would be so anxious to stop Kendrick sending me away? And where would Shaso fit into such a conspiracy? Or had it been arranged not to keep Briony herself in Southmarch, but by someone who wished to take the throne? But even if it was someone in the family with a blood-claim, someone like Gailon Tolly or Rorick, there are still two better claims ahead of any of them — Barrick’s and mine. They would have to kill us, too.
No, there are more than two claims ahead of both Gailon and Rorick, Briony remembered. There are three. There is also the child in Anissa’s belly.
And, of course, that infant would be the heir to the throne if he or she was born brotherless and sisterless into the world.
Anissa? Briony suddenly did not want to think about such things anymore. She had never much cared for her stepmother, but surely no woman would murder an entire innocent family for the sake of an unborn child— a child who might not even live? Surely not. But it was disturbingly hard to clear away such suspicions once they had begun to take root. Wasn’t Anissa’s family in Devonis related in some way to King Hesper of Jellon, the one who sold Briony s father to Hierosol in the first place?
Gailon, Rorick Longarren, her father’s wife—she could not think of any of them now without suspicion This is what murder does, she realized. She had reached the door of the council chamber and now waited to be announced. Barrick was slouched in one of the two tall chairs at the head of the table, arms folded tightly across his chest as though he were cold, the face framed in the collar of black fur even more pale than usual. It does not make one phantom only —it makes hundreds.
Once these halls were full of people I knew, even though I might not have liked them all. Now the house is crowded wit
h demons and ghosts.
* * *
Wait and I will call for you, the message from Avin Brone commanded. Even without the Eddon wolf and stars and Brone’s own sigil both stamped in wax at the bottom, the lord constable’s thick, black pen strokes would have been unmistakable.
Ferras Vansen waited in his dress cloak just inside the doorway to the council chamber between two of his guardsmen Two more guards waited out in the hall with the man they would present to the councillors. The council room, known as the Oak Chamber for the massive wooden table at its center, was an old room that had once been the castle treasury in the dangerous days of the marauding Gray Companies, a large but windowless space with only two doors, nested in the maze of corridors behind the throne hall. The captain of the royal guard had never much liked the stark, stony room: it was the kind of place built for last stands, for the dreadful heroics of defeat and disaster.
The guard captain had been furious at first that Lord Brone should treat their news so offhandedly, ordering it held until the end of a long council session full of far more trivial matters, but as first one hour passed, then another, Vansen had come to believe he understood Brone’s thinking. Many days had passed since Prince Kendrick’s death—a killing still unexplained as far as most of the people of Southmarch were concerned, even if the murderer himself had been captured. The business of the land had been almost uniformly ignored since then, and many things had already waited in pressing need of answer before the prince regent died. If Vansen had been allowed to present his own news first, it was possible that none of this other business would have had its audience.
So he waited—but it was not easy.
He let his eye rove across the dozen noblemen who made up today’s council, playing a game of anticipating an attack on the royal twins first by this one, then by that, and trying to decide how he would counter it. The nobles looked bored,Vansen thought. They didn’t seem to realize that after the recent events boredom was a privilege, perhaps even a luxury no one could afford.