by Tad Williams
The rainswept roads of Kertewall and southern Silverside were surprisingly busy, with peddlers’ carts bumping in the rutted tracks and unbound peasants, whole families or even small companies, heading south to seek work for the coming spring. Briony, who had long since recovered from wounds and burns got in Dan-Mozan’s house, and from her worst starving days lost in the forest, was feeling stronger and healthier than she had in a long time. For one thing, the pleasure of getting up each day and putting on boy’s clothes did not dim, although she could have wished them a deal cleaner and less lousy. It was not that she loved the clothes themselves or wished to be a boy, although she had always envied her brothers their ease of movement and expression, but she mightily loved the freedom of wearing nothing more confining than a loose tunic and rough hose. She could stand, sit, bend over, and on those few occasions where she was allowed to, even ride the company’s hard-working horse without having to give thought to propriety or practicality. Why had no one back in Southmarch been able to understand that?
Thinking of the old days at Southmarch and the almost daily battle with Rose and Moina over what she should wear made her feel homesick, but although she missed the two girls very much, not to mention Merolanna, Chaven, and many others, it was as nothing compared to how she ached every time she thought of Barrick.
Had she really seen him in Idite’s looking glass, or had it just been her pained heart creating a phantom of what it wished to see? What had the demigoddess Lisiya meant when she had said, “There are stranger things afoot with you and your brother than even I can guess”? That it hadn’t just been a dream or Briony’s feverish imagination, but somehow the truth? But Briony knew she was no Onirai— the gods chose their oracles early in life. In any case, the Barrick she saw had been a prisoner—shackled and miserable. It was almost better to think she had not truly seen him, even though that vision proved him alive, than to think of him so wretched, so...alone.
That was the nub of it, of course: she and her brother were both alone, and in a way that only twins could be, who had scarcely been separated their entire lives before this, and certainly never in such fearful conditions. If it was a true vision, had he seen her too? Did he mourn for her as she did for him, or was he still such a prisoner of anger and discomfort that he spared hardly a thought for his loving sister?
And what, she suddenly thought, has happened to Ferras Vansen, charged with my brother’s safety? She had to fight through a flare of anger at the thought he had let her poor, crippled brother be captured. After all, who was to say that the guard captain had not saved Barrick from something worse? Or that he hadn’t given up his own life trying to protect the prince?
That last thought brought a shockingly powerful pang of remorse—even of fear: Vansen dead and her brother alone? She could not in that moment say which would be the worse result.
I must pray for them, she told herself. She saw Vansen in her mind’s eye, tall but not overbearing, his hair the color of a walnut husk, his face either carefully expressionless or open and wounded like that of a puzzled child’s. Who was he to stay in her thoughts so? Others far more important were also lost, like her brother and father, and Shaso and Kendrick were dead. Why should she think of Vansen? He was a guardsman, a nobody—a failure, to be absolutely fair, since he had lost half his troop or more the first time he had been given a responsibility. What female weakness or pity or even—the Three defend her from her own foolishness!—desire had made her give him a second chance, she wondered, and especially with the care of the most precious thing she could have given him to protect?
She pushed all thoughts of Vansen out of her mind, tried to concentrate on her brother, to make sense out of the mysterious mirror-vision. How had it come to her? If Lisiya was alive, was some other god watching over them too? Had Erivor, their house’s patron, granted her the vision for some reason she was too blind to understand?
Great lord of the sea, help your foolish daughter! Zoria, lend me your wisdom for a little while!
Her heart sank again to think of her brother lost in some foreign place. He had always been like a hermit crab, the claws of his anger no real threat to others at all. Only his shell protected him, because without it he was too soft to live, too frightened to keep the world at bay.
One year—they had both been, what, nine or ten?—their father had allowed the Master of Hounds to give them a puppy to be their own, a beautiful black hound. Barrick had wanted to name him Immon, but Briony had refused. She had been very religious then and had not used even the mildest curses, not even silently to herself. Barrick had always laughed at her, calling her “the Blessed Briony,” but she had been firm. They were certainly not going to name him after the powerful god of burial, the Earthfather’s gatekeeper—that would be blasphemy. She named the puppy Simargil instead, after the faithful dog of Volios (although she toyed with sacrilege herself by generally referring to him as “Simmikin”) and except for the ordinary high spirits and growling, nipping play of a young male dog he had been an exceptionally sweet animal. Briony had been as attached to him as if he had been a baby brother.
She had been shocked, then, when Barrick refused to play with him, saying that he was vicious and evil.
Being who she was, Briony would not let her brother rest until she had forced him to join her in playing with the dog— or at least being in the same room with the animal, since at first Barrick hung back in the doorway while Briony scratched Simargil’s stomach and engaged him in playful, mock-fights, the dog growling in delight and throwing himself from side to side as he struggled to catch up with Briony’s moving hand.
When she at last convinced Barrick to come forward, she quickly saw the problem. He approached the dog like someone entering a wolf’s den. Simargil was already on his guard, watching Barrick not as he had watched Briony, with the bright gaze of a friend waiting to see what new fun would come, but with the narrowed eyes of someone who expected to be cheated or worse.
“Just stroke him gently,” she said. “Reach out and scratch his head—he likes that. Don’t you, Simmikin? Don’t you, my Simmikin?”
The dog looked to Briony, white showing at the corners of his eyes as he struggled to keep watch on Barrick, too. If he had spoken to her, told her out loud that he was confused by this sudden change of mood, the animal could not have more clearly let her know what he felt.
Barrick’s hand moved toward the dog’s face as though toward a hornet’s nest. When Simargil let out a low growl, Barrick snatched it back, making the dog lunge. Briony caught his collar.
“Do you see?” Barrick said.
It was her brother, not the dog. Something about him, perhaps only his mistrust, but maybe some scent of fear, had the dog’s hackles up. Still, Briony could not believe that her beloved Simmikin could ever do anything really bad— not with her right here on the floor beside him. “Stroke him again. I’ll hold his head. He just needs to get to know you.”
“He has known me since he was born, and each day he hates me worse.”
“Hush! That’s not true, redling. Just let him smell your hand and don’t yank it away just because he growls.”
“Oh, should I let him bite it off?” He scowled. “It’s not as though I have one to spare like most folk.”
Briony rolled her eyes. She felt sorry about her brother’s terrible injury, of course, and would have done anything to spare him the pain it brought him every day, but she was not going to let it be an excuse to treat him like a child half his age. “Stop sniveling. Put your hand out.”
His scowl deepened but he did as he was told. Simargil growled, but only for a moment, and Barrick actually managed to touch his head. Briony should have known that the dog’s sudden silence was a bad sign rather than good, but she was too pleased with her own peacemaking activities between her favorite animal and her beloved twin to pay the sort of attention she should have. As Barrick gave the animal a tentative touch on the head, letting his fingers slip down near Simargil’s throat, Br
iony let go of the collar to stroke the dog’s chest. The dog’s ears went back and he snarled, a high sound almost like a yelp of fear, and snapped at Barrick’s right hand, getting his sharp teeth into the meat behind the knuckles. Barrick shrieked and leaped back. For a moment, the dog hung on, but Barrick hit him on the snout hard enough to make him whimper and let go.
An instant passed, the dog’s ears still back, Barrick staring at the beast as though he had never seen anything worse in his life. Her brother’s face was bone-white, his eyes wide in horror. Then blood came flooding back into his features like waves rushing onto a muddy strand, a demon-mask of red that almost blurred into the roots of his hair, as though his entire head had caught fire. He snatched up one of Briony’s bows from where it leaned against the wall and brought it whistling down so fast she could not even move as the end of the staff hissed past her face. He beat at the dog until the bow cracked and the animal scrambled snarling and whining onto the floor, then tried to retreat under Briony’s bed, snapping at the bloody weals on its own back as Barrick continued to belabor its hindquarters. Shrieking, she grabbed her brother’s arm, and was splattered by blood that might have been from his hand or the dog’s tattered back, or both.
At last, with the dog wedged so far under the edge of the bed that only its feet could be seen, Barrick had thrown down the splintered bow and run out, sobbing and cursing the gods.
If it had been anyone else but her brother, Briony would not have understood now why she missed him with such a painful yearning. Simargil would not have understood: the dog had limped thereafter, and used to lay himself down on the floor at the first sound of a raised voice. Although her brother never touched him again, he would also dart out of any room some time before Barrick arrived, which often made it easy to track the prince: wherever black Simargil was moving hurriedly, she had only to retrace the dog’s steps to find Barrick.
If it had been anyone else, Briony would have cursed them as a bully and a coward and that would have been the end of it—an enemy forever. No one else convicted of such crimes in her private court could expect to have the sentence of her disgust commuted. But she knew her twin too well, had known even at that tender age that all his worst angers were the spawn of his fears, those night terrors that followed him around in the way that Simargil, before he limped, had followed Briony herself.
Barrick was monstrous sometimes, but she ached for him. No one but Briony knew the sweetness that lay behind that sour, even cruel mask he showed the world. Since their mother had died, only she had held him in the night, when he woke crying and uncertain where he was or even who he was. Only she had heard him say she was his very heart, that without her he would die. And how he feared that when he did die his soul would wander homeless forever, because of his blasphemous thoughts and his stiff neck which would not bend even to Heaven, as Father Timoid always said of him.
“My black thorn bush,” their father had often called Barrick, alluding to the colors the boy had worn ever since he was old enough to choose his own clothing. “Fit to lash the fiercest penitent’s back,” Olin had gently mocked.
Had her father always known the curse he had passed on to his younger son? It was painful to think about it—not the thing itself, their shared ailment, although that was terrible enough, but the fact that her twin and her beloved father had conspired to keep this thing secret from her. It made all Briony’s other memories seem suspect or outright false. At best they felt shallow now, as though her entire childhood, her life, had been nothing more than something devised by her family to keep her busy while the real matters of importance were being settled.
Each thought of her lost brother and father carried enough pain that the gods would have forgiven her for trying never to think of either of them again. And yet, of course, she did think of them, and suffered anew when she did so, which was at least once in almost every hour of every single day.
As they reached the lake lands near the Syannese border the road wound between the fens and across the ridges of the tiny principality of Tyrosbridge, and Makewell’s Men went several days without encountering a town or even a village large enough to be worth mounting a performance. They were short of food and drink, so, on a large farmstead just inside the border of Syan they earned themselves a few meals and a few night’s dry lodging by helping the landowner to repair his old lambing pen and sheepfold and to build a new lambing house and several new walls around his pasture land as well. The work of carrying and stacking stones was hard, the day cold and wet, but the company was good, and to Briony’s surprise she found herself feeling almost happy.
But what kind of life is this when our family’s throne has been stolen? Up to my knees in mud like a peasant, hands red and sore, struggling in the rain to prop up a stone wall, doing nothing to save my family or get revenge on the Tollys. Still, they had reached Syan, the first of her destinations, and she had to admit it was a relief to deal with only what stood just in front of her, to think about nothing but the action of the moment. Most of the people of her kingdom worked this hard every day, she realized. No wonder they flocked to see the players. And no wonder they grew restive in hard times, when their lives were already so hard! If she ever regained her throne she would have all her courtiers join her in building sheepfolds in the dampest, most chill pasture she could find.
She laughed out loud, startling huge, kind Dowan Birch. “Blood of the Three, boy!” he swore. “I thought I dropped a stone on you and crushed you, a noise like that.”
“I’ll try to find a different way to laugh when I’ve been crushed, so you’ll know,” she said.
“Hark to him,” Birch called to Feival, the principal boy. “Our Tim has a tongue as sharp as Hewney’s.”
“Let us hope for the child’s sake his tongue has not been in as many foul spots as Master Nevin’s has,” said Feival tartly. “Nor uttered half so many blasphemies.”
“Did the child live six lifetimes,” Hewney shouted, “he could not curse as much in all of them together as I do each morning when I wake up with my head and bladder both swollen misery-full of last night’s ale and realize I am still a part of this wretched troop of thieves, blockheads, and hewhores.”
“He-whore? He-whore? Do I hear an ass braying?” Finn Teodoros, who with the excuse of his age and portly figure, seemed to spend more time resting than working, pushed himself away from the wall. “Ah, no, it is only our beloved Nevin kicking at the door of his stall again. But were we to throw the door open, would he run away or fling himself at our feet and beg to be put back in harness?”
“It is an inexact metaphor,” Hewney grumped. “No one keeps an ass in a stall. Unless he is so rich that he is able to act the ass himself.”
“Besides,” said Feival, “no one will ever get a harness on Hewney until he’s dead, which will be too late to get any good out of him.”
“Unless someday a man is needed who can drink a river of ale dry and save a city, as Hiliometes drained the flood,” said Pedder Makewell.
“Too much talking, not enough working,” his sister complained. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go claim our meal and some dry lodgings.”
“Which will be a stable,” Feival said. “Leaving none happy but our lead donkey, Master Hee-haw Hewney.”
“Quiet, you, or you will find out what a kick truly is,” Hewney said, glowering.
Briony worked on, amused and, for the moment, cold but content.
“Here,” she said to the red-faced young player Pilney. “Try again. Remember, this stick is a sword now, not a stick. You don’t beat someone with it, you use it as an extension of your arm.” She scraped an empty place in the straw to make better footing, then lifted her own stick. “And if you’re going to hack at someone like that, they’re going to do this.” She flicked his weapon aside, sidestepped his crude charge, and poked him in the ribs.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked, breathless. “My...my old master. He was gifted at swordplay.”
&nb
sp; “Gather around me, children,” Finn Teodoros called. “You may beat each other to death later.”
Most of the company was already seated in the comfortable straw of the large stable, quite willing to ignore the smell of the horses and cows, since the presence of so many animals kept the place as warm as a fire would have.
“I have been thinking,” said Teodoros, “that we will be in Tessis in less than a tennight, and if we are to impress the Syannese in that venerable capitol, we will have to show them something new. They have enough players of their own, after all, and the audiences are a hardened lot. Tessis has more theaters east of the river than exist in all the north of Eion put together. So we must bring them a spectacle.”
“My Karal is spectacle enough,” growled Hewney. “Even Makewell cannot help but make a royal impression in it.”
“Never have a drunkard’s words had such fair speaking before,” Makewell said. “I refer to my playing of Hewney’s work, of course. But he is right—the Tessians love The Death of Karal, since it is their own beloved king whose life we play. And we have other historicals and a comedy that we can give them.”
“Yes, they loved Karal when we brought it to them four years ago,” Teodoros agreed. “And it has remained in good enough favor that several Tessian companies have mounted it, too. But that does not mean the groundlings will come to see it again.”
“Even with the playwright himself upon the stage?” Hewney was so outraged that he spilled some of his ale on his sleeve, which he then lifted to his mouth and sucked dry.
“What are you saying, Finn?” Estir Makewell demanded. “That we must buy some Tessian court play, some bit of froth done up for the Revels? We cannot afford it. We shall barely be able to feed ourselves until we get to Tessis, even with the money we had from...” She trailed off as Teodoros gave her a harsh look.
“Less speaking, more listening,” he growled. Something had just happened, although Briony could not recognize what it was. “A loose tongue is an unbecoming ornament to anyone, but especially to a woman. I do not speak of buying anything. I have written a play—you have all heard it. Zoria, Tragedy of a Virgin Goddess is its name.”