Shadowmarch s-1

by Tad Williams

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 who Vansen knew well and did not think could muster 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 reahzed 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 gram-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.

  “Highness, Princess Briony, lovely and serene and wise, it is a pleasure beyond words to see you. And look, you are robed for battle, as is fitting for a warrior queen.” He leaned in close for a conspiratorial whisper. “I have heard that our land is threatened, glorious princess—that the army is being mustered. Would that I were one who could meetly raise a sword as your champion, but my own war must be fought with stirring songs and odes, inducers of brave deeds which I will construct for the good of crown and country!”

  He was not at all bad to look at—he was in fact quite handsome, which was likely one of the reasons Barrick disliked him—but she was far too impatient for even this harmless nonsense today. “Do you want to go with the army so you can write poems about the battlefield, Master Tinwright
? You have my permission. Now, if you will excuse me…” He seemed to be swallowing something the size of a shuttlecock. “Go with… ?”

  “The army, yes. You may. Now if that was all…”

  “But I…” He seemed dazed, as though the possibility that he might be directed to join the army of Southmarch had never occurred to him. In truth, Briony was mostly being spiteful—she did not actually wish to saddle any commander with both her brother and this idiot poetaster. “But I did not come to ask .” Tinwright swallowed again. It was not getting easier for him. “In truth I came to you, Highness, because Gil wishes an audience with you.”

  “Gil?”

  “The potboy, Mistress. Surely you have not forgotten already, since it was his errand that first brought me to your attention.”

  She remembered now, the thin man with the strange, calmly mad eyes. “The one who has dreams—he wishes to speak to me?”

  Tinwright nodded eagerly. “Yes, Highness. I was visiting him in the stronghold—the poor man scarcely sees anyone, he is almost a prisoner— and he asked me specially to speak to you. He says that he has something important to tell you of what he called ‘the upcoming struggle.’ ” For a moment Tinwright’s forehead wrinkled. “I was surprised to hear him use such a term, to be honest, Mistresss, since he is not at all educated.”

  Briony shook her head as if to clear it, a bit overwhelmed by the poet’s swift and highly inflected speech. He was a popinjay in more than just his cheapstreet finery. “Gil the potboy wants to talk to me about the upcoming struggle? He must have heard about it from the guards in the stronghold.” The stronghold held another prisoner, she could not help remembering. A moment of dislocation washed over her, something approaching real panic. Shaso dan-Heza was the one who should be commanding both this war party and the defense of the castle that might come later. Had someone anticipated just that? Had he been made to look guilty of Kendrick’s murder for just that reason?

  “Yes, Highness,” Tinwright confirmed. “Doubtless that was where he heard of it. In any case, that is the message I was asked to give you. Now, about this riding off with the soldiers…”

  “I already gave you my permission,” she said, then turned and headed off at a fast walk toward Sister Utta’s room. Behind her she could hear her guards snarling as they struggled to push past Matty Tinwright, who seemed to be following her.

  “But, Highness…!”

  She turned. “The potboy—he gave you a gold dolphin to write that letter, did he not?” “Y-yes…”

  “So where did a potboy get a thick, shiny gold piece?” She saw that Tinwright obviously had no answer to that and turned away again.

  “I don’t know. But, Highness, about what you said… the army… !” Her mind was too full. She scarcely even heard him.

  * * *

  “We do not often go deeper than the temple,” Chert explained to his small passenger as they made their way down the twisting slope known as the Cascade Stair. The curve of the wide spiral, at its uppermost reaches wider in circumference than Funderling Town itself, was beginning to tighten, and the air was noticeably warmer. A seam of white quartz in the limestone directly above them seemed to undulate back and forth above their heads like a snake as Chert descended. They had left the last of the Funderling wall lamps behind, Chert was glad he had brought coral from the Salt Pool. “I think the acolytes come down this way to make offerings, especially on festival days, and of course all of us come here for the ceremonies when we reach manhood or womanhood.” Even with all his worries he couldn’t help wondering how many young ones the acolytes would take down into the depths this year. Chert would know them all, of course—Funderling Town was a small, clannish community and there were never more than a couple of dozen who had reached the proper age on the night the Mysteries were formally celebrated. As he walked, he told Beetledown some memories from his own initiation into adulthood, so many years ago now—the giddiness brought on by fasting, the strange shadows and voices, and most frightening and exhilarating of all, that brief glimpse of the Shining Man that the young Chert had not been entirely certain was real. In fact, much of the experience now seemed like a dream.

  “Shining Man?” asked Beetledown.

  Chert shook his head. “Forget I said it. The others will already think it bad enough I bring you to these sacred places.”

  As they stepped down from the Cascade Stair and into a natural cavern full of tall, hourglass-shaped columns, Chert walked forward until they stood in front of the one unnatural thing in the chamber. It was a wall even larger than the Silk Door, with five big arched doorways in it, each one a black hole into which the coral-light could not reach.

  “Five?” said Beetledown. “Have thy people naught better to do than dig tunnels side by side?"

  Chert was still keeping his voice low, although the unlit lamps in these chambers suggested that if the acolytes had been down today they had already left. “That is more to do with the weight of stone and less to do with the number of tunnels. If you cut one tunnel it makes an arch in the fabric of the living stone above it—I cannot think of the words to explain it, since we use an old Funderling word, dh’yok, to describe such a thing.That one arch will be a small one, and eventually the stone above it will crush the tunnel closed again.”

  “Wind from the Peak!” swore Beetledown, scrambling in from the point of Chert’s shoulder to the presumably greater protection next to the Funderling’s head, making Chert’s neck itch and tickle in the process. “The stone crushes un?"

  “Even that doesn’t happen right away, never fear. But when you make several tunnels beside each other, the dh’yok, the… arch in the stone is much bigger and stronger, and even when the weight of the stone above starts to collapse it at last, it takes the outer tunnels first, giving us plenty of warning to shore up the inside tunnels and eventually to stop using them altogether.”

  “You mean, someday mountain will just crush all down? All thy building? All thy digging?” He sounded almost more outraged on the Funderlings’ behalf than fearful of the danger.

  Chert laughed a soft laugh. “Someday. But that’s a long time—that’s stone time, as we call it. Unless the gods take it into their minds to send an earthshaking—a far stronger one than we’ve ever had before—even these outside tunnels will still be standing when the grandchildren of the men and women joining the Guilds today are brought down to see… brought down for their coming-of-age.”

  His explanation didn’t seem to mollify Beetledown all that much, although the little man was reassured when Chert chose the middle tunnel, presumably the safest, to continue their journey, and Chert didn’t share the less inspiring truth with him—that nobody ever used any of the other tunnels anyway, since they existed purely to support the passage through which he and the Rooftopper were descending to the next level.

  “But why build tunnels here at all?” Beetledown asked suddenly, perhaps to break the silence in the close-quartered passage, whose abstract carvings seemed just as weirdly unsettling to Chert now as they had on that long-ago night of his initiation, and which must seem even more so to a stranger like the tiny man.”All else down here in deeps be touched by no hand.”

  Again he was struck by the sharpness of the little man’s wits and his keen eye for details in an unfamiliar place. “A good question, that.” But Chert was beginning to feel the power of the place, the importance and the strangeness of it, and did not feel much like talking. His people didn’t enter the Mysteries lightly, and even though he would walk into the smoking heart of J’ezh’kral Pit itself to find the boy and save his Opal from feeling so miserable, he could not be happy about his responsibility for this comparative parade of outsiders, first Flint and now Beetledown, both of whom were in the ceremonied depths because of Chert Blue Quartz and no other.

  “I don’t want to tell the whole story now. Perhaps it will be enough to say that our ancestors came to realize that there was another set of caverns they could not reach, and that they
cut these tunnels to reach down from the caverns we knew—those in which we have been traveling until now— into these deeper and more unfamiliar spaces.”

  It was not enough, of course—it barely explained anything, let alone the profound revelations at the heart of the Mysteries, but there was only so much that could be put into words. Or that should even be put into words at all.

  * * *

  The idea of needing to talk to the potboy had upset her, but not because of the potboy himself. Even if the fellow was some kind of dream-scryer, even if he could do to her what he did to Barrick, calling up and naming the things that haunted her sleep, what Briony feared was no secret from anyone who had any wits at all. She feared that she would lose her brother and father, what remained of her family. She feared that she would fail Southmarch and the March Kingdoms, that in this time of growing danger, with Olin imprisoned and her brother strange and often ill, she would be the last of the Eddons to wield power.

  No. I will not let that happen, she swore to herself as she strode along the Lesser Hall toward the residence. I will be ruthless if it is needed. I will bum down all the forests that lie beyond the Shadowline, throw every Tolly into chains. And if Shaso truly is a murderer, I will drag him to the headsman’s block myself to save our kingdom.

  This was what had upset her, of course, the thought of her father’s trusted adviser still locked up in the stronghold during such times. If she went to see the potboy Gil in his makeshift accommodations there, could she avoid speaking to Shaso? She didn’t even want to see him: she was not certain of his guilt and never had been, despite all the signs, but much of the autumn had passed with no change in the circumstances and she and Barrick couldn’t avoid passing judgment on him forever. If he had murdered the reigning prince, he must himself be put to death. Still, Briony knew she didn’t really understand what had happened that fatal night, and the idea of executing one of her father’s closest advisers—a man who also, for all his sour temper and rigidity had been almost another parent to her— was very disturbing. No, it was terrifying.