(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  “Ah, there you are, small bastard,” said Aislin suddenly, to no one he could see. “There you are, my love.”

  The black and white gull, which had been staring back at Tinwright so raptly he had thought it only another particularly well-made object, yawped and shrugged its wings. Tinwright flinched back and almost fell over. “It’s alive!”

  “More or less,” she cackled. “He’s missing a leg, my Soso, and he can’t fly, but the wing should heal. Still, I don’t think he’ll go anywhere—will you, my love?” She leaned down and offered her pursed mouth to the gull, which pecked at it in an irritated fashion. “You have it too good here, don’t you, small bastard?”

  Aislin had taken her hood off and unwrapped her head scarf, freeing a bristling tangle of white hair. Her face showed the usual Skimmer features, eyes far apart, lips wide and mobile. Like other old Skimmer-folk he’d seen she also had a curious hard look to her skin, as though instead of sagging and growing loose as ordinary folk’s flesh did when they aged, hers had begun to turn into something thick and rigid. Even the curl of inky tattoos on each cheek and at the bridge of her nose seemed to be disappearing into the horny flesh like unused roads disappearing under grass and weeds.

  “Will you have something to drink, then?” she asked. “Warm yourself up?”

  “Wickeril?”

  “That muck?” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t drink it. That’s for Perikali sailors and other barbarians. Black Wrack wine, that’s your drink.” She slid between dangling charms toward the corner of the little house where pots and pans hung from wooden pegs—the kitchen, you’d have to call it, Tinwright supposed. She was shaped like a brewer’s barrel, but without the heavy cloak she moved with surprising nimbleness through the confines of her crowded nest.

  “What’s it made with?” he asked—“Black Wrack” didn’t sound all that promising.

  “What do you think? Don’t you know what wrack is? Seaweed! Grandsire Egye-Var protect you, boy, what do you expect? You wanted a tanglewife—what do you think ‘tangle’ means? Seaweed, of course.”

  Tinwright didn’t say anything. He hadn’t known—he’d thought it was just the word for an old woman who made healing simples and…and other things.

  “What do they call someone like you in a place where they don’t have seaweed—or Skimmers?”

  She chortled with pleasure, a sound like a joiner’s rasp. “A witch, of course. Now drink this. It will take the hair right off your chest.”

  Aislin was frowning as she emtpied her cup. She clearly contemplated pouring herself yet another, but instead sat back in the room’s only chair with a sigh. Tinwright was balanced much more precariously on his stool, especially after finishing his own cup. He couldn’t remember how much of the smoky wine he’d drunk while trying to explain the difficult, frightening business that had brought him, but he had downed more than a few. The wine was almost as salty as blood but still quite refreshing, and his fear had receded into a general smear of unconcern. He stared at the old woman, trying to remember how exactly he had come to this strange place.

  “It’s not that I have any scruples, boy,” she said. “And I’m not frightened of much of anything, which you can see by me letting you in here in the first place.”

  Tinwright shook his head. Soso the gull gave him a baleful look and feinted toward his ear. The bird didn’t seem as fond of the poet as he was of Aislin, and he especially didn’t like it when Tinwright moved—he’d given him a few painful pecks on the ankles and hands already. “What do you mean, letting me in? I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Hurt me? Should say not—I’d pop you like a bulb of rockweed, boy,” she said with an evil, self-satisfied chuckle. “No, because you’re a drylander…what was your name?” She stared at him, blinking slowly. “Ah, never mind. Because you’re a drylander, and your kind isn’t much liked around here just now.”

  “Why?” There was no resisting the notion, once it had crept into his head, that Aislin the tanglewife looked and sounded like nothing so much as a huge, gray-haired frog in a shapeless dress. It made conversation tricky. That last cup of wine wasn’t helping, either.

  “Why? By the Grandsire’s soggy cod, boy, didn’t you see? Big piece of Sealer’s Walk burned down? Who do you think did that?”

  Tinwright stared aghast at the goggle-eyed Skimmer woman. “It wasn’t me!”

  “No, you fool, and be glad it wasn’t, but it was drylanders from up in the town, a gang of them, young and stupid and hateful. Three of our people were killed, one of them a child. Folk around here aren’t very happy.”

  “Why did they do it?” Suddenly he understood the way some of the Skimmers had watched him and a chill swept over him. “I hadn’t heard anything about a fire.”

  “You wouldn’t. We take care of our own, and what happens here doesn’t interest the ordinary run of castle folk—not unless the whole place went up in flames and threatened the rest of the town.” The tanglewife settled back again, waving her broad hands as though to waft away a foul smell. “It’s been bad ever since those Qar creatures crossed the Shadowline. We folk are different—they used to call us kilpies and sea-fairies, did you know?—so things go bad for us. It happened when they came the last time, too, in my great-grandmother’s day. Everyone was driven out of Southmarch by them, eventually, but our folk were driven out first—and by our own neighbors.”

  “Sorry.” The cursed wine had fogged his brain—how had they started talking about this? “What’s…what’s a Kwar?”

  “You’re not quite saying it right, but close enough for a drylander. Qar is another name for the Old Ones living beyond the Shadowline—the Twilight People.” She stared at him for a moment. “You’ve been sitting here much of the afternoon, boy. Better get up and going before it turns dark. I don’t think it’s going to be a good night for someone like you to be wandering around land-legged on Sealer’s Walk.”

  “Right, then.” Tinwright stood up, sketched a somewhat uneven bow, and began to bob through the dangling charms in search of the door, doing his best to ignore the black and white gull pecking aggressively at his feet.

  “What are you doing?” Aislin called. “Didn’t you come here to buy something from me?”

  He stopped, a thought suddenly gnawing at his mind. “Ah. Yes.”

  “You have no head for Black Wrack, boy, that’s certain.” She grunted as she lifted herself to her feet. “Let me get to my powders and potions. Don’t sit down again, you’ll fall asleep.”

  After she had been gone for no little time (a span during which Tinwright and the gull eyed each other with feigned disinterest) she came back carrying a small stoppered glass bottle no bigger than a child’s thumb.

  “This venom comes from an octopus out of the southern seas—a small thing you would never think to be so deadly. Dip a needle in it and use that one drop only. Just that, and her journey will be painless. But be careful with it or you will murder yourself. This poison knows no master.”

  Tinwright took it and stared at the thing in his hand. It was hard to know for certain through the blue glass vial, but the fluid inside looked clear and harmless as water. “Careful…” he breathed. “I’ll be careful.”

  “You had better.” Her laugh was sharp and raw. “There’s enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. I don’t like handling it, myself. I had an accident once.” She sat down heavily. “And it goes without saying that from here out, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ve no qualms about much of anything but I don’t want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, someone will come looking for you in turn. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Those Skimmer men testing the blades of their fish-gutting knives as they watched him pass was a picture he wouldn’t soon forget. The Black Wrack in his stomach seemed to sour and bubble. He hesitated for a moment before carefully putting the little flask into his sleeve pocket.

  “Grandsire’s sake, boy, wrap i
t in something,” she said, disgusted. “Here, take this bit of kelp leaf, that’s thick enough. If you fall down and break the jar while it’s sitting in your shirt like that, you’ll never get up again.”

  When he was finished Tinwright was feeling ill indeed. He stared at Aislin for a moment, swaying, then swiveled toward the door.

  “Didn’t you forget something?”

  “Pardon?” He turned back. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “No, you daft herring, my money. That’s a gull and two coppers you owe me.” She smirked. “And I’m giving you the lovesick poet’s rate.”

  “Of course.” He fumbled out the money, handed it to her. After a moment’s assessment, which seemed mostly to consist of running her thumb around the circumference of each coin, she whisked them down the gap in her shiny, wrinkled bosom, an expanse which looked like nothing so much as a well-worn saddle. “Now be on your way. And remember what I said. Better you drink that whole jar right now than breathe a word to anyone of where you got it.”

  Feeling as though some poison had already taken away his powers of thought and speech, Tinwright nodded and staggered toward the door, then out into the cold gray day, or what was left of it.

  When he reached Silverhook Row he turned to look back down the alley. Aislin the tanglewife stood in her doorway beneath the great length of pale horn, staring at him. She lifted a hand as if to wave him farewell, but her strange, pop-eyed face had gone cold and remote. She turned and went back inside.

  Matt Tinwright hurried out of the lagoon district as fast as he could, acutely conscious of both the fast fading afternoon light and the tiny jar full of treason and murder concealed in his shirt.

  Opal came back from market with her sack mostly empty and her face full of worry.

  “You look terrible, my old darling,” Chert told her. “I’ll only be gone up to the castle for the day. I’m sure there’s nothing to fear.”

  “I’m not worrying about you,” she growled, then shook her head angrily. “No, of course I’m worried about you, all caught up in this big-folk madness again. But that’s not what’s bothering me. There’s nothing to eat in this house and scarcely anything to be had even at the market.”

  “Why is that?”

  She snorted. “You are a dunderhead, Chert! Why do you think? The castle is surrounded by fairy folk, half the merchants won’t send their ships here to Southmarch, and there’s no work for the Funderlings. Surely in your time loitering around the guildhall you must have heard something of that?”

  “Of course.” He scratched his head. She was right: it wasn’t as though there were no ordinary problems. “But Berkan Hood, the new lord constable, promised that he’d put two hundred of ours to work repairing the castle walls, so Cinnabar and the rest are saying not to worry.”

  “And what are they going to pay them with?” She had her shawl off now and was washing her hands vigorously in a bowl of water. “The Tollys are already spending money hand over fist trying to lure merchants to bring in food and drink for Southmarch, not to mention the ships they’ve had to buy and mercenary seamen they’ve had to hire, all to protect the harbor.”

  “You heard all this at the market?”

  “Do you think we spend all day talking about vegetables and sewing?” She dried her hands off on her shapeless, oft-mended old dress and Chert felt a pang that his wife had nothing nicer to wear. “Honestly, you menfolk. You think you do it all yourselves, don’t you?”

  “Not for years, my good old woman.” He laughed ruefully. “Not since I’ve had you around to keep me straightened out.”

  “Well, just go and talk to the boy before you disappear for the day. He’s had a bad night and I have a hundred things to do if I’m going to make a meal out of these sad leavings.”

  Flint was sitting on the bed, his white-gold hair disarranged, his face distant and mournful.

  “How are you, lad?”

  “Well.” But he didn’t meet Chert’s eye.

  “I wonder if that’s really true. Your mo…Opal says you had a bad night.” He sat down beside the boy and patted his knee. “Did you not sleep well?”

  “Didn’t sleep.”

  “Why not?” He peered at the pale, almost translucent face. Flint looked as though he needed sun. It was a strange thought—he certainly couldn’t remember ever thinking it about anyone else. Of course, most of the people he knew never even saw the sun if they could help it.

  “Too noisy,” the boy said. “Too many voices.”

  “Last night?” It was true that in the early part of the evening Cinnabar and some of the other Guildsmen had stopped by to talk about where Chert was going today, but they had been gone by the time the darklights came on. “Really? Well, we’ll try to keep it more quiet.”

  “It’s too crowded,” Flint said. Before Chert could ask him to explain, he added: “I have bad dreams. Very bad.”

  “Like what?”

  Flint shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Eyes, bright eyes, and someone holding me down.” His chest heaved with a sob. “It hurts!”

  “Come on, lad. Don’t be feared. Things will get better, you’ve just had a rough time.” Helplessly, Chert put his arm around him and felt the child’s entire body shudder.

  “But I want to go back to sleep! Nobody understands. They won’t let me sleep! They keep calling me!”

  “Lie down, then.” He did his best, half helping, half forcing the child back into the bed. He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Ssshhh. Go to sleep, now. Opal’s just in the other room. I have to go out to work, but I’ll be back later.”

  Flint miserably allowed himself to be stroked and soothed into a thin, restless slumber. Chert got up as quietly as he could, desperate not to wake him.

  What have we done to that boy? he wondered. What’s wrong with him? Odd as he was before, he was always alert, lively. He seems only half alive since I found him down in the Mysteries.

  He didn’t even have the heart to talk about it to Opal, who felt the boy’s distraction and strangeness even more than he did: he only waved to her as he passed, tying on his tool belt.

  “Vermilion Cinnabar had a message for you from her husband,” Opal called.

  Chert stopped in the doorway. “What’s that?”

  “She said to tell you that Chaven wants to see you again before you go upground.”

  He sighed. “Why not?”

  The physician was waiting in the middle of the mirrored floor of the Guild’s great hall. Several Funderlings were preparing the hall for the next meeting, politely avoiding him as he stood staring down, like children circling an absentminded father. For the first time Chert’s own people looked small to him in their own great hall.

  The physician didn’t look up even after Chert coughed politely. “Chaven?” he said at last. “You wanted to speak to me?”

  Startled, Chaven turned. “Oh, it’s you! Sorry, so sorry, it’s just…this place. I find it strangely…restful is not the right word, not quite. But it is one of the few places where my cares, they just…slip away…”

  Chert had never felt the presence of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be particularly restful, even in statue form. He looked up to the image of Kernios sunk deep in the ceiling, then down to the mirror-version below their feet. Being suspended, as it were, between two versions of the black-eyed, somber-faced earth god seemed even less soothing, especially when the mirroring rendered Chaven and himself as blobs with feet in the middle and heads at each end, suspended halfway between Heaven and the Pit. “I heard you wanted me.”

  Chaven dragged his attention away from the representation of the god. “Oh, yes. I just felt I should talk to you again about what you should say.”

  “Fracture and fissure, man,” Chert cursed, “we’ve been over this a dozen times already! What more can there be to say?”

  “I am sorry, but this is very important.”

  Chert sighed. “It would be different if I were actually going to prete
nd to know something I don’t, but if he asks me something I don’t know an answer for I’ll just make important-sounding humming noises, then tell him I need to confer with my Funderling colleagues.” He gave Chaven an annoyed look. “And then, yes, I’ll come right to you and tell you, and find out what to say.”

  “Good, good. And what will you look for to know if it’s my mirror?”

  “A dark frame of cypress wood, with wings that open out. It is carved with pictures of eyes and hands.”

  “Yes, but if there’s no frame, or if he’s put a new one on it?”

  Chert took a deep breath. Patience, he told himself. He’s been through a great deal. But it was more than a little like dealing with a drunkard, someone forever trying to shake the last dribbles of mossbrew out of an empty jar. “The glass itself has a slight outward curve to it.”

  “Yes. Good!”

  “May I go now? Before Okros decides to ask someone else to do it instead?”

  “Will you write down anything you are unsure about? It will help me understand what Okros is trying to do. Do you promise?”

  Chert said nothing, but tapped the slate hanging on a string around his neck. “Really, I must go now.”

  Worriedly repeating all that they had just discussed, Chaven followed him to the door but, to Chert’s relief, went no farther, as if he did not want to travel far from the reassuring presence of the earth lord and the haven of the guildhall’s great room.

  Chert hadn’t been out of Funderling Town for many, many days—was it almost a month?—and he was surprised by the obvious differences since the last time he’d been upground. The spirit of ragged camaraderie he’d seen everywhere in the castle had now just as obviously expired, overcome by weariness and fear of the unchanging siege conditions, the strange, suspended watchfulness that in some ways was worse than even a real and imminent danger of attack.