Shadowplay s-2

by Tad Williams

  I am completely ruled by something I cannot change or understand, he thought. Worse even than if these fairy-folk had made me a prisoner. At least then I would expect to be helpless. But this—this is worse by far! Home is behind us, there is no reason to go on into this place of madness, and yet on we go, and it seems I can do nothing to stop it.

  “We cannot follow this road any farther, Master,” said Skurn suddenly. His beak tugged at Vansen’s sleeve. “Cannot, Master.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The Northmarch Road , this is, and now I smell Northmarch too close. I told you we were coming near Jack Chain’s land.” The bird’s eyes were blinking rapidly. He fidgeted on the horse’s neck, almost comically frightened. “The bad is all on it, these days.”

  Northmarch Road of course, Vansen thought, no wonder they had found this so much easier a track than others they had followed. He could see nothing beneath his feet but undergrowth and grass and dead leaves, but still the hairs on the back of his neck stirred. Knowing the road was beneath him and had been for hours was like discovering he had been standing on a grave. Still, a part of him was loath to give up such ease of travel. “It has a fearful name, but surely it has been empty now for ages.”

  “You don’t understand, good Master.” Skurn flapped his wings in disquiet. “These lands be not empty. They be Jack Chain’s and you will lose your life at least an’ he catches you.”

  Vansen relayed the raven’s words to Barrick. The prince paused for a moment, as though listening to something that silent Gyir might be telling him, then at last slowly nodded his head.

  “We will make camp. There is much to decide.”

  Only days ago, in an ordinary world where the sun came up and the sun went down, Barrick Eddon knew he would have looked on the fairy Gyir as something hideously alien, but somehow he had come to know Gyir the Storm Lantern as well as he knew any other person, even those of his own family.

  Except for Briony, of course—Briony, his other half... Barrick did his best to push the thought of her away. If he was to survive he must harden himself, he had decided, cast even the most precious of those beads of memory behind him. He couldn’t let himself be weak as other men were weak—like Vansen the guard captain, still living in the old ways and as out of place here (or anywhere in the new world that was coming) as a bear sitting at a table with a bowl and spoon. Barrick knew that Vansen had saved the disgusting, corpse-eating raven mostly because it spoke his mortal speech, as if being able to mumble that outdated tongue was anything other than a mark of irrelevance.

  The bird Skurn had many vile habits, and seemed to reveal a new one every few moments. Only an hour had passed since they had made camp and already the creature had defiled it, not even leaving the vicinity to defecate but instead simply pausing beside the campfire and discharging a spatter as wet and foul-smelling as the goose turds that had made it such a hazard to walk beside the pond in the royal residence back home. Now the disgusting old bird was crouched only a few steps from Barrick, noisily finishing off a baby rat he had found in a nest in the wet undergrowth, the tail danging from his mouth as he chewed the hindquarters. A moment later the whole of it, tail following to the very end, slid down his throat and disappeared.

  Skurn belched. Barrick scowled.

  Do not waste your fires on anger, Gyir told him. Especially on one such as that. You will have need of every spark, cousin. The words were simply there, as though whispered inside his skull. There was no sound, no quirks of speech as with regular talk, but the words had a shape and a feeling that Barrick could tell, even without comparison, made them Gyir’s and no one else’s.

  Cousin? Why do you call me that? Because we share something. What? What could we share?

  The love of our lady, and loyalty to her. She saved you as she saved me. Saved me from... And then the fairy’s words trailed off, or changed, so that they felt like words no longer, but rather a sensation of cracking thunder and a rain as heavy and terrifying as a flight of arrows.

  “Highness,” said Vansen suddenly, his speaking voice as harsh as a frog’s croak after the taut musicality of Gyir’s soundless words. “I think we need to listen to what the bird says...”

  “Listen!” snarled Barrick. “Listen! It is you who cannot listen!” How could the man continue to scrape and bray like that when he could have words and silence, music and stillness, both the plucked string and the expectant pause before the lute sounded? But perhaps the guardsman couldn’t. Perhaps Barrick was being unfair. He himself had been touched by the Dark Lady—poor, earnest Ferras Vansen had not. “I apologize, Captain,” he said, and was pleased by his own magnanimity. No wonder he had been chosen from the crowded, mad battlefield, singled out like the oracle Iaris, who of all men had been given the words of Perin to bear back to humanity. “What is it that...that squawking gore-crow has to say?”

  “Cannot go this way,” the raven said. “The High One with no food-hole, the caulbearer, he knows it. These be Jack Chain’s lands now, since the queen sleeps and the King has grown so old. Us that care for our life don’t go there.”

  “He’s talking about Northmarch, Highness,” Vansen said. “It seems to belong to some enemy—some dangerous person.”

  “I am not stupid, Vansen. I understood that.” Barrick scowled. At this moment, the captain reminded him more than he would wish of Shaso: the old man, too, had always been judging him, always underestimating him, speaking words that sounded full of reason to the ear but made him sting with shame. Well, half a year in the stronghold had no doubt made Shaso dan-Heza a little less proud and scornful.

  A twinge of shame, a distant thing but still painful, made him want to think about something else. Shaso had brought his doom on himself, hadn’t he? Nothing to do with Barrick.

  “I am sorry, Highness,” Vansen said, and bowed, the first time he had done that since they had crossed over the Shadowline. “I have overstepped.”

  “Oh, stop.” Barrick’s mood had gone sour. He turned to Gyir, tried to form the words in his head so the other could understand him. It was so easy when the faceless man spoke to him first—like a flying dream, no labor, just the leap and then the freedom of the air. What is this creature talking about? Is it true?

  I do not know. I have not traveled here, in this part of... Here another idea floated past that seemed to have no words, a jumble of formless shapes that somehow spiraled inward like snailshells. Except when the army went to war, but none would have dared to attack us in that force. Still, there are many here behind the Mantle that do not love... Again there was a picture rather than a word, this one a paradoxical image of black towers and shining light. Only after it had ceased to glow in his head did Barrick perceive the words that went with it. Qul-na-Qar.

  What is that? Is that you, your people?

  That is the place we have made the heart of our... Here an idea that seemed to mean not so much “rule” or “kingdom” as “story.” That is where the Knowing make their home. Those Qar who know what was lost, and what sleeps.

  Barrick shook his head—too many ideas he could not understand were floating through his mind, although he had finally come to understand one of Gyir’s idea-sounds, Qar, meant “people like myself”—those Barrick still thought of in the back of his mind as “fairy folk.” Still, even the clearest of Gyir’s ideas were as slippery as live fish. I need to know if what this unpleasant bird says is important, Barrick said. The...the Lady...has given you a charge, that you told me. You must do what she asked. Although he had no idea of Gyir’s task, he knew as well as he knew that his bones were inside his body that what the dark woman wanted must be done.

  I am not allowed to delay, it is true. My errand is too vital. Still, it is hard to believe that one of our enemies has grown so strong here, an enemy that was thought dead. If it is true, I fear my luck—the luck of all the People, perhaps—has turned for ill. We are far from my home and in dangerous lands. I am wounded, perhaps crippled forever, your companion has my sw
ord, and I have no horse.

  Gyir’s thoughts were heavy and fearful in a way that Barrick had not felt before. That alone was enough to make the prince really frightened for the first time since the giant’s war club had swung up high above him and his old life had come to an end.

  “I don’t know what that fairy’s done to you, Highness, what kind of spell he’s put on you, but I’m not giving him back his sword. He may pretend friendship, but he’ll likely kill us if we give him a chance. Don’t you remember what he and his kind did to the men of Southmarch at Kolkan’s Field? Don’t you remember Tyne Aldritch, crushed into...into bloody suet?”

  The prince stared at him. “We will talk more of this,” Barrick said, and mounted his horse. The faceless man Gyir, with an agility that Vansen carefully noted—he was recovering very swiftly indeed from wounds that would have killed an ordinary man—swung himself up behind the prince.

  Vansen pulled himself up into his own saddle. Unlike Barrick’s strange black horse, Vansen’s mount was beginning to look a little the worse for wear, despite the long pause for rest. It shuddered restively as Skurn climbed the saddle blanket with beak and talons and hopped forward to a perch on the beast’s neck. Pleased with himself, the black bird looked around like a child about to be given a treat.

  Mortal horses weren’t meant for this place, Vansen thought. No more than mortal men.

  Although a dragging succession of hours had passed, and Vansen himself had slept long enough to feel heavy in his wits, his head was foggy as the tangled forest into which Barrick and Gyir now rode.

  “Where be they going, Master?” Skurn asked, agitated. “Us must turn back! Didn’t uns listen? Don’t uns see that this be all Jack Chain’s land round about?”

  “How should I know?” Vansen had no command of the situation, and the addition of the fairy-warrior to their party had made things worse, if anything. Gyir, the murderer of Prince Barrick’s people, a proven enemy, now seemed to have become the prince’s confidant, while Ferras Vansen, the captain of the royal guard, a man who had already risked his life for Barrick’s sake, had become some kind of foe. “Why do you ask me, bird? Can’t you understand that Gyir thing?”

  The raven groomed himself nervously. Up close he was quite repulsive, scaly skin visible in many places, what feathers remained matted with the gods only knew what. “Not us, Master. That be a trick of the High Ones, to talk so, without voices, not such as old Skurn. Us knows nothing of what they are saying or where they think they go.” “Well, then, that makes two of us.”

  The remains of the ancient road stayed wide and relatively flat beneath them, but now the trees had grown thick again around them, shutting out anything but the briefest glimpses of the gray sky, as though they traveled down a long tunnel. Birds and other creatures Vansen could not identify hooted and whistled in the shadows; it was hard not to feel their approach was being heralded, as though he were back on one of the Eddons’ royal progresses with the trumpeters and criers running ahead, calling the common folk to come out, come out, a king’s son was passing. But Vansen could not help feeling that those who waited in this place did not wish them well.

  His sense of danger, of being visible to some hostile, lurking force, grew stronger as the day of riding wore on. The unfamiliar bird and animal sounds died away, but Vansen found the silence even more foreboding. Barrick and the faceless man ignored him, no doubt deep in unspoken conversation, and even Skurn had fallen quiet, but Ferras Vansen’s patience had become so thin that every time the little creature moved and he caught a whiff of its putrid scent, he had to steel himself not to simply sweep it off onto the ground.

  “This was once a great road, Highness, just as the bird said,” he called at last, and then wished he hadn’t: the echoes died almost immediately in the thick growth on either side of the road, but even the absence of an echo made the noise seem more stark, more exceptional. He could imagine an entire gallery of shadowy watchers leaning forward to listen. He spurred his horse forward so that he could speak more quietly. “This is the old Northmarch Road , not simply a forest path. If we follow it long enough we will arrive at something—perhaps the raven’s Jack Chain—but it will not be something we’ll like. Can’t you feel that?”

  The prince turned his cool stare on him. Barrick’s hair was stuck to his forehead in damp red ringlets. “We know, Captain. We are looking for another road, one that crosses this one. If we ride overland through this tangled forest, we will come to grief.”

  “But it is only a short way to Northmarch, and that is where Jack Chain has his hall!” squealed Skurn, hopping up and down, which made Vansen’s horse snort and prance so that he had to tighten his grip on the reins. “Even if we are lucky and One-Eye bes far away, and there be no Night Men about, still Jack-Rovers and Longskulls there be all around here, as well as the Follower-folk who remember not sunlanders nor nothing even of the High Ones! They will capture us, poor old Skurn. They will kill us!”

  “They will certainly hear us if we stop to argue every few paces,” Barrick said harshly. “I did not bring you here, Vansen, and I certainly did not bring that...bird. If you wish to find your own way, you may do so.”

  “I cannot leave you, Highness.”

  “Yes, you can. I have told you to do it but you do not listen. You say you are my liegeman, but you will not obey the simplest order. Go away, Captain Vansen.”

  He hung his head, hoping to hide both the shame and rage. “I cannot, Prince Barrick.”

  “Then do as you wish. But do it silently.”

  They had been riding for what seemed like most of a day when an astonishing thing happened, something that alarmed not only Vansen, but the raven, too, and even Gyir the Storm Lantern.

  The sky began to grow dark.

  It crept up on them slowly, and at first Ferras Vansen thought it no more than the ceaseless movement of gray cloud overhead, the blanket of mist which thickened and even sometimes thinned without ever diminishing much, and which gave the light of these lands its only real variety. But as he found himself squinting at trees beside the wide road, Vansen suddenly realized he could not doubt the truth any longer.

  The twilight was dying. The sky was turning black.

  “What’s going on?” Vansen reined up. “Prince Barrick, ask your fairy what this means!”

  Gyir was looking up between the trees, but not as though searching for something with his eyes—it was an odd, blind gaze, as though he were smelling rather than staring. “He says it is smoke.”

  “What? What does that mean?”

  Skurn was clinging to the horse’s neck, beak tucked under a wing, mumbling to himself.

  “What does he mean, smoke?” Vansen demanded of the raven. “Smoke from what? Do you know what’s happening here, bird? Why is it getting dark?”

  “Crooked’s curse has come at last, must be. Must be!” The black bird moaned and bobbed its head. “If the Night Men catch us or don’t, it matters not. The queen will die and the Great Pig will swallow us all down to blackness!”

  He could get nothing more out of him—the raven only croaked in terror. “I do not understand!” Vansen cried. “Where is the smoke coming from? Has the forest caught fire?”

  “Gyir says no,” Barrick said slowly, and now even he sounded uneasy. “It is from fire someone has made—he says it stinks of metal and flesh.” The prince turned to look at silent Gyir, whose eyes were little more than red slits in his blank mask of a face. “He says it is the smoke of many small fires...or one very big one.”

  7. Chasing the Jackals

  Twilight had been jealous from the first of his brother’s gleaming songs, and when Daystar lost the depth of his music and flew away, Twilight climbed into his brother’s place among the Firstborn. He made children with both Breeze and Moisture.

  From the womb of Breeze came the brothers Whitefire and Silvergleam, and Judgment their sister. From the womb of Moisture came Thunder, Ocean, and Black Earth, and though their mothers were twinn
ed, from the very first these six children could not find harmony among themselves.

  —from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

  Even the weak morning light seeping in from the high, small windows was enough to tell Briony that she was not in her own paneled chamber in the royal residence. In fact, she was surrounded by white plastered walls and dark-skinned women in loose, soft dresses, all busy making beds or darning clothes, and talking in a quiet, musical language Briony could not understand. For a long moment she could only stare, dumbfounded, wondering what had happened.

  The truth did not wait long, though: as she rolled over and sat up, clutching the blanket close around the flimsy nightclothes she had somehow acquired, memories began to leak back.

  “Good morning, Bri-oh-nee-zisaya.” Briony turned to find a slender middle-aged woman standing beside the bed. The woman smiled, showing a flash of unusual color. “Did you sleep well?”

  Of course. Shaso had brought her to this place in the back alleys of whatever this Marrinswalk town was called... Lander’s something...? They had taken refuge in the house of one of Shaso’s Tuani countrymen, and this was the goldtoothed mistress of the house.

  “Yes. Yes, thank you, very well.” Suddenly she felt shy, knowing she had been lying here sleeping, perhaps snoring, while these dark, delicate women worked quietly around her. “Is...I would like to speak to Shaso.” She remembered the reverence with which the women had spoken of him, as though Princess Briony should be his servant instead of the other way around, something that irritated her more than she liked to admit. “Lord Shaso. Can you take me to him?”