by Tad Williams
The castle’s Zorian shrine had none of the ostentation of the Erivor Chapel, let alone the huge and grand Trigonate temple. Little more than a single large room, it stood in a corner of the keep near the residence, just below the Tower of Summer. The altar was simple and only one small stained-glass window brought in the daylight, a rendition crafted in the previous century of Zona with her arms outstretched and seabirds landing on her hands and flying about her head. It was a strangely beautiful picture, Briony had always thought, and even in today’s poor sunlight the colors glowed. The shrine was empty, although Briony knew that an older Zorian priestess and at least two or three young novices lived in the apartment beside the chapel. They were Utta’s friends—her family, really, since her true kin were far away in theVuttish Isles and far in the past as well.
“When did you last see any of your family?” she asked her tutor. “Your blood family.” Utta appeared startled by the question. “My brother visited me here once some years ago. Before that—oh, my, Princess Briony, I have not seen any of them since I joined the Sisters.”
Which must have been thirty years or more, Briony guessed. “Don’t you miss them?”
“I miss the time when I was young. I miss the sense of being in that house, on that island, and feeling that it was the center of the whole world. I miss how I felt about my mother then, although later I came to feel differently.” She bowed her head for a moment. “Yes, I do, I suppose.”
Briony thought it strange to have to consider whether or not you missed your family. She hid her puzzlement in the act of choosing and lighting a candle and setting it on the altar before the statue of Zoria.This version of the goddess was much more staid than the one in the colorful window; her arms hung at her side and her eyes were cast down as though she looked at her own feet, but there was a faint smile on her lips that Briony had always liked, the smile of a woman who kept her own counsel. Moina and Rose came forward and lit candles also, although they both seemed a little confused and made the three-fingered sign of the Trigon over their breasts as they set the candles down. They were doing their best, Briony reminded herself, fighting annoyance: they were both girls from country families and had barely been exposed to Zoria’s worship or sisterhood at all until coming to live in Southmarch castle.
Merciful Zoria, robed in wisdom, bring my brother Barrick home safe, Briony prayed. Bring them all back safe, even Guard Captain Vansen. He is not such a bad man. And help me do what is best for Southmarch and her people. She looked up, hoping to see something in Zoria’s face that would tell her the goddess had heard her and would honor her request (she was the princess regent, after all—didn’t that count for something?) but the serene features of Perin’s virgin daughter were unchanged.
She suddenly remembered. And bring Father home safe again from Hierosol. She had prayed for that thing every day, but today she had almost forgotten. A quick chill moved over her. Did it mean anything? Was a god whispering to her, trying to tell her something had happened to him? Could it be her fault—had she shown too much pride in her own abilities as ruler of Southmarch?
“I hoped this place would bring you some peace, Princess,” said her tutor. “But you look troubled.” “Oh, Utta, how could I look otherwise?”
* * *
Brother and sister were silent as they rode down the causeway across Brenn’s Bay toward the great field where the mustered soldiers had been quartered, a swath of harvested land an hour’s ride distant, at the southernmost edge of Avin Brone’s fiefdom of Landsend. The day was cold and clear but the wind was rising. It wrapped the new cloak Merolanna had embroidered for him around Barrick’s neck in a strangler’s grip. He grunted as he used his crippled arm to free himself, but still did not speak. He knew Briony wanted him to, but he did not want to hear what she would say in turn. He had heard it enough times already.
From the center of the causeway they could see that the low-tide shallows and mud flats at the base of the castle mount were full of workers— almost another army, it seemed, swarming above the mud on makeshift platforms. They had demolished the ramshackle market town before the gate, and now were pulling apart the stones of the causeway itself beneath the castle walls, preparing to replace it with a wooden bridge that could be torn down in moments, thus completely cutting the castle off from the land and forcing any invader to ride over sucking mud with water up to the horses’ necks, or else find a way to get boats across the bay’s tricky currents under fire from the walls when the tide came back in. Little wonder, Barrick reflected, that Envor of the Dark Seas had always been held the special patron of the Eddons. Who else but the sea god had given them this almost unconquerable vantage? Briony and the others will be safe here no matter what, he thought.
His twin didn’t seem to be sharing his thought, but gnawed at her lower lip in the way she did when she was worrying about something, a habit carried over from childhood so completely it almost seemed a cherished memento. He followed the line of her sight.The captain of the guard, Vansen, was riding a short distance to the side of them. Barrick felt a touch of jealousy, although he knew it was absurd.
She still hates that one, he thought Loathes him to the point of unfairness, as if it were all his fault Kendrick died. They rode in silence for a long time, so that Barrick was almost drowsing in his saddle when his sister finally spoke, and at first he could make no sense of her words.
“He won’t defend the city.”
“Who? What city?”
“Avin Brone,” she said, as if the name tasted bad. “The rest of South-march, of course, the mainland. He said that the walls are too long and too low on the inland side, and it’s too hard to defend.”
“He’s right How would we do it?” Barrick pointed to the thicket of gabled roofs stretching away down the coastline and outward as far as the base of the hills. He was grateful to be distracted from his own heavy thoughts, but it seemed odd to be talking with his sister about such things—as though they were playing at being adults.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But we can’t possibly get all those people inside the keep…” “The gods save us, no, we bloody well can’t, Briony! You couldn’t get a quarter of them into the castle and have room for them to sit down, let alone feed them all.”
“So we should just abandon them if there’s a siege?”
“We have to hope there won’t be a siege. Because if there is, we’ll have to do more than leave those people to fend for themselves. We’ll have to burn that part of the city down.”
“What? Just to keep the besiegers from getting their hands on the stores there?”
“And the wood, and everything else that we don’t destroy. As it is, you… we… will probably have to stand by while the catapults throw the stones of our own city onto us.”
“You don’t know that, and neither does Avin Brone.” Her anger seemed mostly sadness. “Nobody knows anything! There haven’t been any sieges of proper cities in the Marchlands for half a hundred years—I heard Father talk about it once. Some people say there won’t ever be again because of cannons and bombards and . and all those other things that blow stones and metal balls through the air. There’s no point.”
It annoyed Barrick to be told things about war by his sister. It annoyed him even more that she had clearly been paying more attention than he had. “No point? So what should we do, just surrender?” “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
The hour wore on as they rode in silence up the coast road into the lower reaches of Landsend. The chill air carried little except the clean tang of the pines and the ever-present smell of the sea.
Briony finally said, “We can’t be certain it will be a siege, Barrick. We don’t even know what these twilight creatures plan—they’re not men, they’re something else Only the gods can guess what they’ll do.”
“We’ll have an idea soon enough. If they’ve marched into Daler’s Troth, we’ll meet people who know something about them and how they fight. We’ll send you back wo
rd as soon as we hear anything.”
She turned abruptly to face him. “Oh, Barrick, you will be careful, won’t you? I’m so angry with you, I don’t want you to go.”
He felt himself stiffen. “I’m old enough to decide for myself.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s right.” She stared, shook her head. “I’m frightened for you. Don’t let’s argue anymore. Just…just don’t do anything foolish, please. No matter what… what dreams you have, what you fear.”
The cold heaviness that had cast a shadow over him all day was abruptly pierced by a shaft of regret and love. He looked at his sister, her so-familiar face—his own face, but seen in a bright mirror, open where he was pinched and hidden, golden and pink where he was angry, bloody-red, and corpse-pale—and wished that things had turned out a different way. For just as he had been struck earlier that day by the powerful certainty that some unstoppable downward slide had begun, so also he couldn’t help feeling deeply, wordlessly, that he and his beloved twin, his best and perhaps only friend, would never again be together in this way.
The certainty hit him now like a blow in the stomach: a gulf would open between them, something wide and deep. Was it death whose cold breath he could almost feel, or something stranger still? Whatever it was, he began to shudder and it quickly became so strong that he could barely stay upright in his saddle. Suddenly he pitched forward, falling down some dark tunnel, flailing away into a nothingness where a cold, knowing presence awaited him…
“Barrick!” He heard her terrified voice as if from the other side of a crowded, noisy room. “Barrick, what’s wrong?”
The roaring in his ears eased a bit. The gray day returned and pushed back the darkness. He was leaning low over his saddle, his head almost on his horse Kettle’s neck. “I’m well enough. Leave me alone.”
A measure of Briony’s fright was that she had seized his crippled arm. He snatched it back and straightened up. No one around them seemed to be staring, but he could tell by the studied way in which they all looking at anything except the prince and his sister that they had only just averted their eyes.
“The gods make a mockery of us,” he said quietly.
His attention distracted by his near-swoon, he had failed to notice that they had arrived at the field. The mustered men were waiting below them in ragged array among the shorn stalks of grain, a thousand or more of the earliest arrivals who had been chivvied into lines by their sergeants, but still did not look much like an army. More men streamed in every day from the provinces, but instead of joining this westbound company most of the newcomers would bolster the defenses of Southmarch itself.
“Don’t say such things about the gods,” Briony pleaded. “Not when you are about to go away. I can’t bear it.”
He looked at her and despite his shame and misery, felt a thump of love for her in his chest. After all, what else did he have in this world? What else did he fear to lose? Nothing. He reached out and patted her hands where they clutched the reins of her horse Snow. “You’re right, strawhead. I’m sorry. And I don’t mean it. I don’t believe the gods are mocking us.”
And he was telling the truth. For in this open place, beneath this low gray sky, Barrick had suddenly decided that he did not believe in the gods at all.
* * *
After clambering all the way down the treacherous paths hidden below the balcony at the end of the Maze—who could have guessed there even were such things as paths going down to the Sea in the Depths? Who used them, the temple brothers?—Chert had finally reached the shore to stand on the rounded stones in a madness of shimmering colors, but he couldn’t find any evidence of how the boy had crossed the silvery sea. He couldn’t help wondering whether he was being punished by the Earth Elders for bringing an outsider down to the sacred Mysteries, for approaching their deep haunts without the proper ceremony. He felt impious just being so close to the Shining Man, which loomed like a mountain at the center of its island. Even here on the shore he could still make little sense of it except for its roughly manlike shape. It wasn’t easy even to see that much the Shining Man’s uneven glow lit the ceiling and reflected from the Sea in the Depths as well, so that all the walls of the huge cavern were painted with smears of wobbly, many-hued light.
But why would the Elders punish me and yet allow the boy to cross? Chert felt a moment of doubt. Perhaps he had not seen Flint at all—perhaps he had been fooled by a bat’s shadow, by his own fatigue, or more likely by the heady, disturbing air of the deepest Mysteries.
Then he saw a movement again on the island, a shadowy silhouette against the glow of the Shining Man that pushed all uncertainty from his mind. “Flint!" he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth, jumping up and down on the rocky shore. “Flint! It’s me, Chert!”
He fancied that the shadow froze for a moment, but there was no reply to his call and an instant later it vanished in the confusion of pulsing light.
Cursing, he hurried up and down the shore again, but still could find no trace of how the boy had crossed the metallic underground sea. As he stood, muttering in exhausted frustration, he suddenly remembered another small person in his charge, one he had almost completely forgotten in the excitement of seeing what he felt sure was the boy.
“Beetledown! Fissure and fracture, I’ve left him up there alone for an hour or more!” And sick, too, having trouble getting a full breath. Chert was stabbed with the sharp point of his own helplessness—so many things gone wrong and no way to fix any of them. The boy—everything in life had gone wrong since the moment he and Opal saw that sack dropped beside the Shadowline.
We should have left him there, he thought, and even with the aching in his heart, the love he had to admit he felt for the pale-haired child, it was hard to argue with that thought.
He scrambled back up the path, which was really little more than a goat track—but whoever heard of goats living a thousand teet below the ground? That thought had scarcely passed through his head when he saw something gleaming farther up the cliffside, something pale that stood between himself and the balcony at the end of the Maze. He stared in amazement at what he could only believe in these hot, flickering depths must be a sort of fever-vision.
Even on the surface in the waking world—at least this side of the Shadowline—there was no such thing as a deer with skin white to the point of translucence, a ghostly stag with weirdly slender legs and antlers like a tangle of sprouting roots, not to mention those huge, milky-blue eyes that glowed bright as candleflame. But that was what seemed to be staring down at him, at least for one astonishing moment. A heartbeat later it was gone.
Chert paused, clinging to a jutting outcrop, suddenly light-headed and fearful he might fall. Could it have been real? Or had he breathed too deeply of the Mysteries?
Oh, Lord of the Hot Wet Stone, help me —was that what I saw on the island, too? One of those things and not Flint at all? But unless the light and shadow had distorted the island-shape beyond anything he could credit, surely what he had seen there walked on two legs, had a round head—had been, in fact, a person.
When he reached the spot where the glassy-white deer had stood, he found no sign of anything living.
Chert was feeling quite sickened with terror of the gods and their sacred places by the time he reached the spot where he had left Beetledown it took him a few stupefied moments to be quite certain he was standing before the same knob of stone where he had left the Rooftopper, even though his own coral lantern was sitting where he had placed it, still gleaming.
The little man, however, was nowhere to be seen.
His stomach now roiling so that he feared he might be sick—he had lost everyone in his charge, all those who needed him most!—Chert got down on his hands and knees, holding the lantern close to the ground as he searched desperately around the base of the limestone knob for some sign of his companion. He could only pray to the very gods he had impinged upon that when he found him, Beetledown would still be alive.
I
t was an undignified position to be in, but he did not care at all until he heard a small voice, a yard or so from his ear, say, “Didst tha drop somewhat?"
“Beetledown! Where are you?"
“Just here, hinden this clutter of stone whatnots, but mind tha come quiet. Don’t scare un away.” “Scare who away?” The Funderling crept forward, his gloom lightening a little for the first time since he realized he could not reach the Shining Man’s island. Against all reason, he felt a small swell of hope. “Is it Flint? Did you find my boy?”
“Not unless thy boy wears whiskers and long tail.”
Chert stopped. The bowman was crouching a bit unsteadily in the fork of a two-part stalagmite, a formation that did not reach Chert’s waist but was a hilltop for the little man. Beetledown had his bow trained on something Chert couldn’t see until he crawled closer and marked the shiny black eye and twitching nose in the shadows. Startled by his appearance, the rat flinched and began to skitter along the stone wall, but one of Beetledown’s tiny arrows smacked against the wall just in front of its head and it froze again, only its nose moving.
“How long have you been trying to kill it?” Chert asked, amused as well as relieved. He would never have taken the Rooftopper for such a poor shot, but he supposed the heady, close airs of the caves had taken a toll. “Are you really that hungry?"
“Hungry? Th’art a huge, daft thing. No idea to eat it, I foremeant to ride it.” “Ride it?”
“Too far for me to walk back to the good air,” explained Beetledown. “But now here tha stand with thy huge, daft shoulder.” The tiny man smiled weakly. “So will tha carry me back home again?”
“You were going to ride this rat?” Chert was coming to his understanding slowly, but he had the beginnings of an idea. “All the way back up?”
“A Gutter-Scout am I,” Beetledown said a little indignantly. “Well-used am I to breaking a wild ratling to the saddle.” He shook his head. “And I’ll tell ‘ee true—I cannot take this heavy, choking air much longer.”