(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  Still, here he came through the world, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg the shorter, and everywhere he went was mocked by those that had won, the brothers and their kin, although they were glad enough to have the things he made, the clever things he made.

  So clever he was that when he lost his left hand in the forge fire he made another from ivory, more nimble even than the one he’d been born with, and when he touched pizen with his right hand and it withered away he made himself a new one from bronze, strong as any hand could ever be. Still they mocked him, called him not just Crooked but also No-Man because of what they themselves had taken from him, but, aye, they did covet the things he could make. For Sky Man he made a great iron hammer, heavier and grander than even his war hammer of old, and it could smash a mountain flat or knock a hole in the great gates of Stone Man’s house, as it did once when the two brothers quarreled. He also made the great shield of the moon for her what had took his father’s place, and for Night her necklace of stars, Water Man’s spear what could split a mighty whalefish like a knife splits an apple, and a spear for Stone Man, too, and many other wonderful things, swords and cups and mirrors what had the Old Strength in them, the might of the earliest days.

  But he did not always know the very greatest secrets, and in fact when first he was become the servant of the brothers whom had vanquished his people, though he was clever beyond saying, still he had much to learn. And this is how he learned some of it.

  So here he came on this day, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg shorter, walking like a ship in a rolling sea, wandering far from the city of the brothers because it plagued him and pained him to have to speak always respectfully to his family’s conquerors. As he walked down the road through a narrow, shadowed valley, the which was fenced with high mountains on either side, he came upon a little old woman sitting in the middle of the path, an ancient widow woman such as could be seen in any village of the people, dry and gnarled as a stick. He paused, did Crooked, and then he says to her, “Move, please, old woman. I would pass.” But the old woman did not move and did not reply, neither.

  “Move,” he says again, without so much courtesy this time. “I am strong and angry inside myself like a great storm, but I would rather not do you harm.” Still she did not speak, nor even look at him.

  “Old woman,” he says, and his voice was now loud enough to make the valley rumble, so that stones broke loose from the walls and rolled down to the bottom, breaking trees as a person would break broomstraws, “I tell you for the last time. Move! I wish to pass.”

  At last she looked up at him and says, “I am old and weary and the day is hot. If you will bring me water to slake my thirst, I will move out of your way, great lord.”

  Crooked was not pleased, but he wasn’t mannerless, and the woman was in truth very, very old, so he went to the stream beside the road and filled his hands and brought it back to her. When she had drunk it down, she shook her head.

  “It does not touch my thirst. I must have more.”

  Crooked took a great boulder and with his hand of bronze he hollowed it into a mighty cup. When he had filled it in the stream he brought it back to her, and it was so heavy, when he set it down it made the ground jump. Still, the old woman lifted it with one hand and drained it, then shook her head. “More,” she says. “My mouth is still as dry as the fields of dust before the Stone Man’s palace.”

  Marveling, but angry, too, at how his journey had been halted and bollixed, Crooked went to the stream and tore up its bed, pointing it so that all the water flowed toward the old woman. But she only opened her mouth and swallowed it all down, so that within a short time the stream itself ran dry, and all the trees of the valley went dry and lifeless.

  “More,” she says. “Are you so useless that you cannot even help an old woman to slake her thirst?”

  “I do not know how you do those tricks,” he says, and he was so angry that his banished uncle’s fire was a-dancing in his eyes, turning them bright as suns, pushing back the very shadows that covered the valley, “but I will not be courteous any more. Already I must carry the load of shame from my family’s defeat, must I also be thwarted by an old peasant woman? Get out of my way or I will pick you up and hurl you out of the road.”

  “I go nowhere until I have finished what I am doing,” the crone says.

  Crooked sprang forward and grabbed the old woman with his hand of ivory, but as hard as he pulled he could not lift her. Then he grabbed her with his other hand as well, the mighty hand of bronze which its strength was beyond strength, but still he could not move her. He threw both his arms around her and heaved until he thought his heart would burst in his chest but he could not move her one inch.

  Down he threw himself in the road beside her and said, “Old woman, you have defeated me where a hundred strong men could not. I give myself into your power, to be killed, enslaved, or ransomed as you see fit.”

  At this the old woman threw back her head and laughed. “Still you do not know me!” she says. “Still you do not recognize your own great-grandmother!”

  He looked at her in amazement. “What does this mean?”

  “Just as I said. I am Emptiness, and your father was one of my grandchildren. You could pour all the oceans of the world into me and still not fill me, because Emptiness cannot be filled. You could bring every creature of the world and still not lift me, because Emptiness cannot be moved. Why did you not go around me?”

  Crooked got to his knees but bowed low, touching his forehead to the ground in the sign of the Dying Flower. “Honored Grandmother, you sit in the middle of a narrow road. There was no way to go around you and I did not wish to turn back.”

  “There is always a way to go around, if you only pass through my sovereign lands,” she told him. “Come, child, and I will teach you how to travel in the lands of Emptiness, which stand beside everything and are in every place, as close as a thought, as invisible as a prayer.”

  And so she did. When Crooked was finished he again bowed his head low to his great-grandmother and promised her a mighty gift someday in return, then he went on his way, thinking of his new knowledge, and of revenge on those whom had wronged him.”

  It was strange, but Vansen was wondering if being lost again behind the Shadowline was not stealing his wits. Even after the raven’s harsh voice had fallen silent Vansen could feel words in his head, as though someone was muttering just out of earshot.

  “Foolishness,” Barrick said after a long pause. “Gyir says the bird’s tale is foolishness.”

  “All true it is, on our nest, us swears it.” Skurn sounded more than a little irked.

  “Gyir says that it is impossible that the one you call Crooked would not know his great-grandmother, who was the mother of all the Early Ones. It is a foolish raven story, he says, told from between two leaves.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Vansen.

  “From where a raven sits, in a tree,” Barrick explained. “We might say it is like groundlings discussing the deeds of princes.”

  Vansen stared for a moment, wondering if he were being insulted, too, but Barrick Eddon’s look was bland. “The fairy talks in your head, yes?” Vansen asks. “You can hear him as though he spoke to your ears?”

  “Yes. Much of the time. When I can understand the ideas. Why?”

  “Because a moment ago I thought I heard it. Felt it. I don’t know the words, Highness. A tickling, almost, like a fly crawling in my head.”

  “Let us hope for your sake that you did indeed sense some of Gyir’s thoughts, Captain Vansen. Because there are other things behind the Shadowline, as you doubtless already know, that you would not want crawling around in your head, or anywhere else on you.”

  Will you tell me now who this Jack Chain is that the raven has been prattling about? Barrick asked Gyir. And the Longskulls? And the things he called Night Men?

  You are better not knowing most of that. The fairy-man’s speech was growing more and more like ordinary talk in Barrick�
��s head. It was hard to remember sometimes that they were not speaking aloud. They are all grim creatures. The Night Men are those my folk call the Dreamless. They live far from here, in their city called Sleep. Be grateful for that.

  I am a prince, Barrick told him, stung. I was not raised to let other people do my worrying for me.

  He could feel a small burst of resigned frustration from Gyir, something as wordless as a puff of air. “Jack Chain” is a rendering of his name into the common tongue, he explained. Jikuyin he is called among our folk. He is one of the old, old ones—a lesser kin to the gods. The one in the bird’s story, Emptiness, she was his mother, or so I was told. In the earliest days there were many like him, so many that for a long time the gods let them do what they would and take pieces of this earth for their own, to rule as they saw fit, as long as they gave the gods their honor and tribute.

  The gods? You mean the Trigon—Erivor and Perin and the rest? They’re truly real? Not just stories?

  Of course they are real, Gyir told him. More real than you and I, and that is the problem. Now be quiet for a moment and let me listen to something.

  Barrick couldn’t help wondering exactly what “be quiet” was supposed to mean to someone who wasn’t talking out loud. Was he supposed to stop thinking, too?

  There is nothing to fear, Gyir said at last. Just the sounds that should be heard at this time, in this place.

  But you’re worried, aren’t you? It was painful to ask, painful even to consider. He was still uncertain how he felt about the fairy, but in these few short days he had grown used to the idea of Gyir as a reliable guide, someone who truly knew and belonged in this bizarre land.

  Anyone who knew what I know and did not worry would be a fool. Gyir’s thoughts were solemn. Not all lands under the Mantle are ruled from Qul-na-Qar, and many who live in them hate the king and queen and the rest of the…People. One word was a meaningless blur of idea-sounds.

  What? What people? I don’t understand.

  Those like myself and like my mistress. Can you understand the idea of High Ones better? I mean the ruling tribes, those who are still close to the look of the earliest days, when your kind and the People were not so different. As if without witting thought, his hand crept up to the tight drumskin of his empty face. Many of the more changed have grown to hate those who look similar to the mortals—as though we High Ones had not also changed, and far more than any of them could understand! But our changes are not on the outside. He dropped his hand. Not usually.

  Barrick shook his head, so beset by not-quite-understandable ideas that he almost felt the need to swat them away like gnats. Were…were you mortals once? Your people?

  We Qar are mortal, unlike the gods, Gyir told him with a touch of dry amusement. But if you mean were we like your folk, I think a better answer is that your folk—who long ago followed ours into these lands you think of as the whole world—your folk have stayed much as they were in their earliest days walking this world. But we have not. We have changed in many, many ways.

  Changed how? Why?

  The why is easy enough, said Gyir. The gods changed us. By the Tiles, child, do your people really know so little of us?

  Barrick shook his head. We only know that your people hate us. Or so we were taught.

  You were not taught wrongly.

  Gyir’s thoughts had a grim, steely feel Barrick had not sensed before. For the first time since they had begun this conversation he was reminded of how different Gyir was—not just his viewpoint, but his entire way of being. Now Barrick could feel the fairy-warrior’s tension and anger throbbing like muffled drums behind the unspoken but still recognizable words, and he realized that what the faceless creature was thinking of so fiercely was about slaughtering Barrick’s own folk and how happily he, Gyir, had put his hand to it.

  Very few of my people would not gladly die with their teeth locked in the throat of one of your kind, boy—sunlanders, as we call you since our retreat under the Mantle. Startled by the force of Gyir’s thought, Barrick turned to look back at the fairy. He had the uncomfortable feeling that if the Storm Lantern had anything like a proper mouth, he would have grinned hugely. But do not be frightened, little cousin. You have been singled out by the Lady Yasammez herself. No harm will come to you—at least not from me.

  In the days they had traveled together, Barrick had tried to winkle information about the one called Yasammez, with little success. Much of what Barrick did not know the faceless Qar thought too obvious for explanation, and the rest was full of Qar concepts that did not make words in Barrick’s head but only smeary ideas. Yasammez was powerful and old, that was clear, but Barrick could have guessed that just from his own muddled memories, the bits of her that still seemed to drape his mind like spiderwebs. She also seemed to be in the middle of some kind of conflict between the fairy rulers Gyir thought of as king and queen, although even these concepts were far from straightforward—they all seemed to have many names and many titles, and some of them seemed to him oddly contradictory: Barrick had felt Gyir think of the king as recently crowned, but also as ageless, as blind but all-seeing.

  It was hard enough just to understand the simple things. You were going to tell me about Jack Chain. Jikuyin. Is he really a god?

  No, no. He is a child of the gods, though. Not like I am, or you are, or any thinking creature is—a child of great power. His kind were mostly spawned by the congress of the gods and other, older beings. The gods walk the earth no more—that is the first reason we are living the Long Defeat—but a few demigods such as Jikuyin apparently still remain.

  Barrick took a deep breath, frustrated again. They had left the overgrown road hours ago because it had been blocked by a fallen tree, and had wandered far afield before they had spotted the road again, now on the far side of a rough, fast-moving stream. They were trying to make their way back to it on something that was closer to a deer track; the rains had stopped, but the trees were wet, and it had occurred to Barrick several times that every branch that smacked him in the face was one that did not hit Gyir, who rode behind him. I don’t understand any of that. I just want to know what this Jack Chain is and why he worries you. Why is the bird still so frightened? Aren’t we going away from Northmarch where he lives?

  Yes, but Jikuyin is a Power, and like any of his kind, he rules a broad territory. I think among your people there are bandit lords like that, who respect no master but their own strength, yes?

  There used to be. Barrick at first was thinking of the infamous Gray Companies, but then he remembered the adventurer who held their father even now—Ludis Drakava, the so-called Lord Protector of Hierosol. Yes, we have people like that.

  So. That is Jikuyin. As the bird said, he has made the ruined sunlander city of Northmarch his own, although it was ours before it was yours—it is an old place.

  The Qar lived in Northmarch?

  So I am told. It was long before my time. There are certain places of power, and people are drawn to them, places like… Here another strange concept bounced uselessly in Barrick’s head, a shadowy image of light the subtle gold of a falcon’s eye gleaming from deep underwater, all muddled with something that was bright, piercing blue and as tangled and twined as a grapevine. In the old days all the Children of Stone lived there in peace, and their roads ran beneath the ground in all directions—some say as far as the castle where you were born… Gyir’s words suddenly changed, insofar as Barrick was able to tell, the voice in his head growing suddenly cautious, withdrawn. But all that does not matter. The simple tale is this—we are skirting Jikuyin’s lair as widely as we can.

  But what about those…things that the bird said would be hunting us—Night Men and Longskulls…?

  Gyir was dismissive. I do not fear the Longskulls, not if I am armed. And no Dreamless, I think, would be willing servants to Jikuyin—surely the world has not changed so much. They have their own lands and their own purposes…

  The Dreamless—Barrick shivered at the name. Will we
have to cross their lands, too? he asked.

  At some point, all who go to Qul-na-Qar, the great knife of the People, the city of black towers, must cross their lands. For a moment, there was something almost like kindness in Gyir’s thoughts—almost, but not quite. But don’t fear, boy. Many survive the journey. He considered for a moment; when he spoke again, his thoughts were somber. Of course, none of your kind has yet tried it.

  11

  A Little Hard Work

  The three children Oneyna birthed were Zmeos, the Horned Serpent, his brother Khors Moonlord, and their sister Zuriyal, who was called Merciless. And for long no one knew these three existed. But Sveros was a tyrannical ruler, and his true sons Perin, Erivor, and Kernios made compact to dethrone him. They fought courageously against him and threw him down, and then returned him to the Void of Unbeing.

  —from The Beginnings of Things

  The Book of the Trigon

  THE SKIES OVER HIEROSOL were bright on this mild winter day, clouds piled high and white as the snowfall on the distant summit of Mount Sarissa and its neighbors. The thousand sails in the huge Harbor of Nektarios seemed a reflection of those clouds, as if the bay were a great green mirror.

  The small inspector’s boat that had tied up beside the much larger trading vessel now cast free, the rowers ferrying the petty official back to the the harbor master’s office in the labyrinth of buildings behind the high eastern harbor wall where all legitimate business of the mighty port was transacted (and a great deal of its shadier workings, too). The trading ship, having duly submitted to the official’s inspection—a rather cursory one, noted Daikonas Vo—was now free to move toward its designated harbor slip.