(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  They do not hunt alone, or even in packs of three, sunlander. Gyir seemed to bite back a rage that, if freed, could not be captured again. They are cowardly. They like company.

  Hunt?

  In Jikuyin’s service they are slavers or harvesters. Either way, those three were out hunting. They were scouts for a larger troop—I know it as I know that the White Root is in the sky overhead. This last came to Barrick as no more than the idea of a bright light shining through fog. The more disturbed Gyir became, the less work he put into choosing concepts Barrick could easily understand. Would you rather be enslaved or eaten? It is not a good choice, is it?

  And who is Jikuyin? You keep talking about him, but I still don’t know!

  The one the bird calls Jack Chain. He is a power, an old power, and now that Qul-na-Qar has lost so much of its…—again an idea Barrick could not understand, something that came to him as “glow” but also “language” and perhaps even “music,” an impossible amalgamation. Clearly Jikuyin is confident of his strength, if he dares to spread his song so far into free territory.

  Barrick understood almost none of this. His arm was hurting him fiercely—the wet weather in these lands had done him no good at all—and the rib he had injured in a fall still pained him too. But it was rare to get Gyir to speak at any length. He was reluctant to give up the chance.

  What kind of power is he? Is he another king, like the blind one you the talk about?

  No. He is an old power. He is one of the gods’ bastards, as I told you. We defeated most of them back in the Years of Blood, but some were too clever or too strong and hid away in deep places or high places. Jikuyin is one of those.

  Some kind of god? And he’s hunting…for us? Barrick suddenly felt as if he might fall out of his saddle—a swooning, light-headedness that for several heartbeats turned the forest around him into a meaningless rush of green. When the rushing ended, Gyir’s arm was gripping his belt, holding him upright.

  “I’m well, I’m well…” Barrick said out loud, then realized Vansen and the raven were staring at him. They were riding almost beside him when he had been certain they were a dozen or more lengths behind, as though he had lost a few moments of time during his spell of dizziness.

  Shouldn’t we turn back, if this…creature, this Jack Chain, is searching for us?

  Not searching for us, I think. He would not send mere Longskulls to capture one like me. There was arrogance and pride in the thought, but also regret. He could not know I have been…damaged.

  Damaged?

  Now the regret felt more like shame. Barrick did not need to see Gyir’s face (which obviously never revealed much anyway) to understand the fairy’s grim mood. The Followers, when they attacked me—I fell. They struck my head several times and then I hit it again on a stone. I am…blind.

  The word didn’t seem right, somehow, but Barrick still reacted with astonishment. What do you mean, blind? You can see!

  Only with my eyes.

  While Barrick puzzled over this, Ferras Vansen rode up beside them again—as close as Vansen’s mortal horse would come, anyway: even after a tennight traveling together, the animal always stayed at the stretched end of his tether when the company made camp, keeping as distant from the fairy-horse as he could. “Your Highness, are you ill?” the soldier asked. “You almost fell out of your saddle…”

  “There is nothing wrong with me. Let me be.” He wanted to talk to Gyir again, not swap braying mortal speech with this…peasant.

  A peasant who came with you when he didn’t have to, an inner voice reminded him, and for once he was hearing himself, not Gyir. A peasant who came to this wretched place with full knowledge of what it was like.

  Barrick took a breath. “I do not mean to be…I am well enough, Captain Vansen.” He could not bring himself to apologize. “You and I will talk later.”

  The soldier nodded and reined up a little, letting Barrick’s horse take the lead again. As they fell back, the scruffy black bird crouching on Vansen’s saddle watched the prince with disconcertingly shrewd eyes, like Chaven the physician seeing through one of Barrick’s tantrums to the real matter beneath. For a moment the prince was painfully lonely again for Southmarch, for familiar faces and familiar things.

  You said blind. Why? he asked. Your eyes work, don’t they?

  Gyir would not speak for long moments. I am the Storm Lantern, he said finally. It is given to me to see in darkness, to see what is behind the light, to see things that are far away. I have an eye inside me, inside my head. Never before would three Longskulls have crept so close to me. Never before would I have to learn of it from a mere raven! But now I am blind.

  There was so much misery in this thought, so much fury, that for a moment, as the sensations buffeted him, Barrick felt as though he would vomit. He put one hand on the saddle to steady himself—he did not want Vansen riding up again, prying at him with questions.

  Because of the wound to your head?

  Yes. Yes, and now I am all but helpless—forced to hide and skulk in terror in my own country, like a forest elemental caught out by Whitefire in the naked sunlands!

  Barrick didn’t know what Gyir meant, but he knew that sort of rage and despair when he heard it—knew it all too well. Will you get better?

  I do not know. The wound is healed, at least the flesh is. How can I say?

  Barrick took a breath. It does no good to fight against what the gods have done, he told Gyir, repeating without realizing it something Briony had often said to him. Perhaps we should find a place to hide, a place to wait and see if your wound finally heals? Wouldn’t that be better than riding across this place you think is so dangerous, with those creatures out hunting?

  You do not understand, Gyir said. We cannot afford so much time. As it is, we may be too late.

  Too late? For what? I…I carry something. My mistress gave it to me, and I must take it to Qul-na-Qar, and soon. If I arrive too late—or do not arrive at all—many will die.

  What are you talking about?

  Many of your race and many of mine will die, little sunlander. There was no mistaking the grim certainty of the silent words. At the very least, every human remaining in that castle of yours, and likely countless more—of both our kinds. I have been tasked to outrun doom.

  “I don’t understand.” Vansen’s legs ached. They had been riding fast without a break for what must have been a few hours. “What are we running from?”

  “Longskulls.” Skurn was huddled so low against the horse’s neck that he looked like little more than a particularly ugly growth. “Like the dead ’uns you saw.”

  “You said that already. Why are they after us?”

  “Not after us’n, after whatever they can find—meat and slaves for Jack Chain.”

  “You keep talking about him? Who is he?”

  “Not a him, not like you mean. An Old One. Does no good talking. Save your breath.”

  “But where are we? Where are we going?”

  “Not our patch, this.” The raven closed his eyes again and lowered his head near the horse’s rolling shoulders and would not be roused to say any more.

  Vansen knew that whatever small control he had maintained over this doomed expedition was long gone. Gyir was armed again, they were on the run from something Vansen could not understand, and now the fairy-warrior was actually leading them. All this in a place that Ferras Vansen had intended never even to approach again in his life—a place which had all but killed him once already. Yet here they were, careening along the ancient, overgrown road, heading…where? Deeper into the Twilight Lands, that was all he knew. So even if he could have forced himself to desert the prince, Vansen could no longer turn back—he would never find his way back to the sunlands on his own. Doomed, doomed, he mourned. Why did I ever swear myself to these cursed, lost, mad Eddons?

  Half a day seemed to have gone by when they finally stopped to let the two horses drink. Vansen stood as his mount lapped water from a muddy streamlet that cros
sed the road. The trees were thinner here, the land ahead hilly but a bit more open, and even in unending twilight it was good at least to be able to see a little distance.

  Skurn was drinking too, but farther downstream, since Vansen’s horse had startled when he had fluttered down next to it. Some yards away from both of them, Barrick’s gray steed drank with the same silent concentration it brought to everything else. Vansen’s horse’s ribs were still heaving as it caught its breath, but the fairy-horse seemed as fresh as when they had begun.

  Is it truly stronger, Vansen wondered, or is it merely that it is at home here and mine is not? The same question, he reflected, could be asked about Gyir, who stood impatiently waiting while the horses drank their fill. Barrick had not even bothered to dismount, but sat and stared out at the road ahead, which was little more than a trail between rows of ghostly white trees of a sort Vansen had never seen, a tangle stretching away on either side like the traceries of frost on a window. The track itself looked considerably less magical, a lumpy swath of mud and pale grass, the stones of the old human road long since carried away by water or some more intentional pilferage.

  “Highness,” Vansen called—but not too loudly: it was easy to imagine those trees listening to the unfamiliar sound of human speech like coldly curious phantoms. “When will we stop and make camp? It must be day again, if we can call it such, and both you and I need food even if the fairy doesn’t. In fact, we have used everything in my saddlebags, so before we can eat, we must also find something worth eating.”

  “Gyir says it is indeed day, but he does not want to stop until we have crossed the…the…Whisperfall.”

  “What is that?”

  “A river. He says that Longskulls do not like the water. They can’t swim.”

  Vansen laughed despite himself. “Perin’s fiery bolts, what a world! Very well, then, we’ll camp by the river. But we must eat before then, Highness.”

  “Us will catch summat for you,” offered Skurn.

  “No, we will find our own.” He’d seen too much already of what Skurn thought edible. He and Barrick had struggled by so far on a few unfamiliar-looking birds and an injured black rabbit, all caught by Vansen with his bare hands—they could survive without the raven’s help a little longer. “Unless you can find us something wholesome—eggs, maybe.” He looked at the spotty old bird and decided he needed to be more specific. “Bird’s eggs.”

  But can we afford to be particular? Vansen wondered. I have no bow, so I can’t even hope to bring down a squirrel, let alone a deer or something really toothsome. In fact, now that he thought of it, other than the Followers and Longskulls Gyir had killed, they’d seen no creature bigger than Skurn during this whole venture into the shadowlands. He pointed this out to Barrick, who only shrugged.

  “And what does that fairy eat?” Vansen asked suddenly. “We’ve been traveling together for over a tennight and I’ve never seen him eat. Even if he doesn’t have a mouth, he must take food somehow!”

  “When I was young,” the prince said, “the nurse told me that fairies drank flower-nectar and ate stardust.” His smile was mirthless. “Gyir tells me that what he eats is none of our affair, and that we must get riding again.”

  They found little more to fill their stomachs that day, only a few handfuls of pale, waxy berries Skurn and Gyir agreed the two sunlanders could probably eat without harm. They were sweeter than Vansen had feared, but still with a strange, smoky flavor unlike anything he had tasted. He also tried, at the raven’s suggestion, a piece of fungus that grew on some of the trees they passed, which Skurn said would take the edge off his hunger. It was one of the most disgusting things Vansen had ever eaten in his life; for a veteran of several field campaigns (and a man who had dined more than once at the Badger’s Boots Inn) that was saying something. The outside of the fungus was slimy with rain, so that putting it in his mouth was like biting into something plucked from a tidal pool, but the inside was dry, powdery, and as tasteless as dust. Still, he choked it down, and found that although it made him feel a little light-headed it did relieve the pain in his stomach. He pulled off a piece for the prince, who after a silent colloquy with Gyir, ate it with evident distaste.

  They rode on with only a few short breaks for rest, cheered only by an occasional break in the cold drizzle. The forest continued to thin, and at times Vansen could see what looked like flatter, more open land in the distance. Once he even spotted the lead-colored gleam of what Gyir confirmed was the Whisperfall, although it was still far, far away.

  “It looks like it will be easier going ahead,” Vansen said to Skurn.

  The bird stirred and flapped its wings. “Them be emptier lands, true, afar of the Whisperfall. Has to watch out, though. Be woodsworms there.”

  “Woodsworms? What are those?”

  “Perilous big, Master. Dragons, some’d call they, but looks like trees—like fallen…what? Logs. Aye, lay up, they do, and wait for something to move too close. Then down them come, like a spider as has summat in’s web.” The raven peered at Vansen’s expression. “Heard of they, have you? Heard them was fearful?”

  “I’ve…oh, gods, I think I’ve seen one.” Collum’s dying scream was in his head, and always would be. That thing…that horrible, sticklike thing… “Is that the only way we can go?”

  “Bad, they woodsworms, aye, but them are few. Jack Chain be worse, all say.” And with these uncheering words Skurn fluffed his feathers and lowered himself against the saddle horn again.

  Another hour or so went by and they did not see the Whisperfall again. Gyir at last and with evident reluctance allowed them to stop and make camp on a hillside overlooking a shallow canyon. Skurn found more berries the sunlanders could eat, and some dark blue flowers whose petals were sharply tangy but edible; when Vansen curled up under his cloak to sleep he had, if not a light heart, at least no heavier a mood than the night before.

  He was shaken awake just as he had been the previous night, but this time by Barrick. “Get up!” the prince whispered. “They’re on the ridge behind us!”

  “Who?” But Vansen already knew. He grabbed his sword and rose to his feet. He patted his horse to keep it quiet while he stared up the wooded slope. He could see torches at the top, the flames strangely red against the half-light, and shadows moving down the hill toward them between the trees. “Where is our fairy?” Vansen hissed, half-certain they’d been betrayed, that all the pretense of companionship had been leading to this.

  “Here, behind me,” Barrick said. “He says ride straight downhill, then turn downstream when you reach the bottom of the valley. When we come out of the trees we’ll be on a slope heading toward the Whisperfall. If you can get to the river, he says ride out into the middle of it—we should be safe there.”

  Something in the heights above them loosed a honking bellow that sounded more like some giant, raw-throated goose than a dog, let alone a person. Vansen’s skin, already prickling with fear, seemed to tighten and bunch all over his body.

  “Go!” Barrick hurried toward his own horse. Gyir was already mounted; he helped the prince up. “They’re coming—they know we’re awake now!”

  “Are those hounds they have? Wolves?”

  Something thrashed down out of the tree and dropped onto him just as he climbed into the saddle. “Don’t forget us, Master!” Skurn croaked, dodging Vansen’s panicky swat. “Take us with!”

  “Get behind me, then.” He had to get low in the saddle and didn’t want to be trying to see his way past the raven’s south end.

  The honking sounded again as Vansen spurred his mount downslope after the prince’s horse, which he could already barely see through the trees and the shadowland’s eternal evening. Branches slapped at him as though they were angry.

  “Them be not hounds, Master,” Skurn screeched, huddled close against Vansen’s back, talons sunk through the fabric at his belt. “Them be those Sniffers. Need no hounds, them sniff so well.” Another honking call split the night, closer now
. “Loud, too,” the little creature added needlessly.

  The squawking and gabbling noises seemed to come from at least a half a dozen different places up the slope; when Vansen turned he could see the curious red torches in at least that many different spots, all moving steadily downward.

  All we can do is pray that the horses do not stumble in the dark and break a leg, he thought. “Do they run well, these Longskulls?” he called back to Skurn. “Will they be able to catch us on flat ground?”

  “Oh, Master, us thinks not, but them can track we forever. Smell a nest in the top of a tall tree, they can.”

  “Left!” Barrick shouted from somewhere below.

  Vansen had just opened his mouth to ask him what he meant when the huge shadow heaved up directly in front of him—a rock the size of a cabin, a protruding bone of the hill’s heavy stone skeleton. He yanked the reins and veered, alm. ost falling headlong as the angle of the slope pitched more steeply downward.

  Within moments they had swept out of the thickest woods and onto a patch of grassy slope. Vansen felt a flicker of hope, if only a tiny one: surely on horseback they could beat these honking monsters down to the river, and if Gyir was right about their dislike of water…

  The beak-faced things were charging down through the trees on all sides, torches bobbing as the hooting clamor grew louder. He thought about drawing his sword, but instead bent even lower over the horse’s neck and concentrated instead on staying in the saddle as branches whipped at his face. Barrick and Gyir were just a few yards ahead, but the dark fairy-horse was bigger than his and was beginning to pull away despite carrying two full-sized riders. Vansen dug his heels into his mount’s ribs, afraid of falling too far behind in this dark, unfamiliar place.

  He crashed out of a small spinney to see a scatter of torches had somehow appeared on the hillside just in front of him. Some of the pursuers had been farther down and had come out of the woods, missing Barrick’s horse but cutting off Vansen’s. He yanked at his sword hilt, praying for a clean pull. Skyfather Perin or someone heard him: the blade slid out in one swift glide and Vansen was swinging it at the nearest flame before he could even see the creature holding the brand.