(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  “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 he-whores.”

  “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.”

  “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.”

  “Heard it?” Makewell put his hand on Feival Ulosian’s knee, but the boy removed it. “We have rehearsed it for most of a year, and even performed it a few times in Silverside. What is new about that?”

  “If nothing else, it would be new to the Tessians,” Teodoros said with an air of great patience. “But I have changed it—rewritten much of the play. Also, I have made a larger part for you, Pedder, as great Perin, and for you, Hewney, as the fearsome dark god Zmeos, despoiler of a thousand maidenheads.” He smiled. “I know it will test you to play so against your own character, but I feel certain you will give it your best.”

  “Sounds like rubbish,” said Hewney. “But if it’s
good rubbish, it won’t chap me to mount it in Tessis.”

  “And I suppose you feel certain that I will let you clap a hundredweight of new speeches on me as the beleaguered virgin?” said young Feival. “I won’t have it, Finn. Already I have twice the lines of anyone.”

  “Ah, but now we come to my idea,” said Teodoros. “I sympathize with your plight, Feival, and so I have written you a new part instead—shorter, but with a great deal of verve and bite, so that the eyes of the audience will be rapt upon you whenever you enter.”

  “What does that mean? What part?”

  “I have made the goddess Zuriyal an important part of this new play—the wife of Zmeos and Khors’ sister-in-law. Although darkly beautiful, my Zuriyal is jealous and fierce and murderous, and it is she whose cruelties most threaten pure Zoria.”

  “Darkly beautiful is not beyond my skills,” Feival said lazily, “but surely in a play called after Zoria the virgin goddess, somebody must play the virgin herself? I would be happy to carry a lesser load, but is not Waterman here a jot too thickset and whiskery to play the divine mistress of all the pure virtues?”

  “Doubtless—so why not let Tim play the part?” Teodoros spread his hands and gestured toward Briony like an envoy delivering a gift to a jaded monarch. “He is younger than you, even, and fair enough in his way to pass for a girl, if not viewed from too closely?” He turned and gave Briony a pleased smile that made her want to take a stick to him.

  “Are you mad?” sputtered Makewell. “The child has no training, no skill. Does he know the Seven Postures of Femininity? Just because he held a spear for us when we played Xarpedon in some cow-byre does not mean he can stand up before the Tessians and pass as a woman—let alone a goddess! Are you really so desperate to claim another share, Teodoros, that you would put this boy up as a cheap front for your ambition?”

  “In other times I would have you for that, Makewell,” said the playwright coldly. “But I realize I have brought this to you as a surprise.”

  “I think he could do it,” said Birch. “He is clever, young Tim.”

  “Thank you, Dowan,” Briony said. “But I do not want to be a player at all, still less to go on the stage and mime my dear, holy Zoria, who would never forgive me.”

  “What, is our craft too low for you, then?” said Hewney. “Were we mistaken? Do we have a duchess in our midst after all, traveling in secret?”

  Briony could only stare at him. He must be making fun of her, but he was uncomfortably close to the mark.

  “Do not look so frightened,” Feival said, laughing. “Everyone here knows you are a girl by now.”

  “What?” Dowan Birch shook his head. “Who is a girl?”

  Feival Ulian whispered in his ear. The giant’s eyes grew round.

  “I knew he could not be a boy when he chose to stay with you, Teodoros,” said Pedder Makewell haughtily. “No handsome young man would subject himself to your pawings.”

  “And I haven’t seen anything but halfwit farm boys succumb to your charms, dear Pedder,” said Teodoros. “But this is beside the point.”

  “You all know?” Briony could not shake off her astonishment. And she had thought herself so clever!

  “You have traveled with us two tennights or more, after all,” Teodoros said kindly.

  “I didn’t know,” said Birch, wide-eyed. “Are you sure?”

  “Enough of this yammering,” said Feival. “If anyone should be unhappy at the thought of our Tim—shall we still call you that?—playing at the goddess Zoria, it should be me, since it is my contracted due to play the leading woman’s role. But if I like this Zuriyal-bitch that Finn has jotted out for me, I will raise no objection.” He smiled. “I am with Dowan on this. I think you have many hidden depths.”

  “Think on it, Tim,” said Teodoros. “And yes, we shall still call her…him that, because you may remember it is not lawful to have a woman on stage. If you will consent, we would have a new play for the Tessians, one that I can humbly say is my best. Much of my inspiration came from the talks you and I have had.”

  “Talks, is it?” Makewell shook his head and made a razzing noise with his lips. “Does that mean there are many scenes in this new work of a fat old playwright futtering a disguised child? I thought your winds only blew one direction, Finn.”

  “Don’t be jealous, Pedder,” said Teodoros serenely. “I promise you my relationship with young Tim has been as chaste as it would have been with Zoria herself. But Tim, the crudeness of Master Makewell left to one side, what do you say? You could be a great help to us and earn yourself a player’s share, which can be rich indeed in Tessis, since the Syannese love plays the way the Hierosolines love religious processions.”

  “I am flattered, I suppose,” Briony said carefully—she would be traveling with these people for days more, perhaps months, and didn’t want to offend them. “But the answer is no. Under no circumstances. It will not happen in this world or any other. You must think of something else.”

  She only had a tennight to learn the lines. There were dozens upon dozens of them, in teetering rhyme-that-was-not-rhyme. Rehearsals came at night after whatever performance they made for their supper, so most of the work was done by candlelight in tavern courtyards and barns, while chill winds blew outside and snow and rain fell, but they could also speak lines and discuss blocking—a word she had learned meant where the actors went in and out or stood—as they made their way down the Great Kertish Road toward Syan.

  I have fallen so far, she thought. From a princess in a castle to a false goddess with no home, with straws in my hair and fleas in my woolen hose.

  Still, there was an unfamiliar freedom in such a collapse from grace. Briony was not happy, but she was not sad, either, and she had to admit that however lonely and uncomfortable it might be, and however much she missed her home and family, she was having something that could only be described as an adventure.

  33

  The Crocodile’s Roar

  Argal and his brothers launched their attack upon the fortress Moontusk, and many gods were slain, o my children, a thousand times a thousand.

  In the end, betrayed by one of his own family, Nushash was prevented from destroying his half brothers, so he withdrew to the sun with his sister-wife, Surigali, Mistress of Justice. His true brother remained in the moon, taking as a spoil of war Nenizu, the wife of Xergal, to be his own wife.

  —from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One

  ALREADY SMOKE LAY OVER the Kulloan Straits like thick fog, great curtains of gray and black torn ragged by the wind. The Xixian ships churned up and down before the walls of Hierosol, their long banks of oars stabbing at the water like the legs of insects, fire spouting from their cannons. The defenders fired back: white spouts leaped up to show where the Hierosoline cannons were finding their range, and many of the Xixian sails were tattered, the flaming eye insignia in flames, but none of the besiegers had been sunk yet. Still, it was a little solace to Pelaya to see that the cannonfire that reached Hierosol’s walls did almost no damage.

  “Look, Babba,” she said, tugging on her father’s arm. “They bounce off like pebbles!”

  He smiled, barely. “Our walls are strong and thick. But that does not mean I want you here watching. You have given me your mother’s message, and my midday meal.” He turned to the armed servant, a tall man with the long-suffering look of someone in minor but almost constant pain. “See her back, now, Eril. And tell my wife that she and the children are no longer to come to the palace, not unless I say they may.”

  The servant bowed. “Yes, Kurs Perivos. And I will inform the kura, as you say.”

  Pelaya rose onto the tips of her toes to throw her arms around her father’s neck, not caring one little bit about either Eril’s frown of disapproval or her father’s distracted, half-attentive squeeze in return.

  “You should not act so, Kuraion,” the servant reproached her as they made their way out of the antechamber and onto the landing. He had called her “
Little Mistress” since she was small enough to enjoy it—a time long past. “Not before strangers.”

  “What strangers, Eril?” She was particularly nettled because she always did her best to uphold the honor of her house—and it was high honor, too: the Akuanai were of the blood of the Devonai, the dynasty that had ruled all Hierosol only a few short centuries before, and whose funeral masks lined the entrance hall of the family estate in Siris like an assembly of patient, placid ghosts. She might not be as timid as Teloni of speaking out in public, but neither did she run or giggle like a child: those who saw her, she had always felt sure, saw a young woman as grave and serious-minded as befitted her upbringing and her noble house.

  “There were soldiers there,” he said. “Your father’s men.”

  “Theo and Damian? And Spiridon? They have all been in our house,” she told him. “They are not strangers, they are like uncles.” She thought of Damian, who was really quite handsome. “Young uncles, perhaps. But they are not strange to me, and it is no shame to embrace my father in front…”

  She did not finish her statement because something outside the antechamber boomed like thunder, making the statue of Perin sway in the wall shrine above the landing. Pelaya squeaked with fear despite herself, then ran to the window.

  “What are you doing, child?” The servant almost grabbed her arm to pull her away, but then thought better of taking such a liberty. “Come away. A cannonball will kill you!”

  “Don’t be foolish, Eril.” Whatever else she might be, Pelaya was her father’s daughter. “They cannot shoot their cannon this far, all the way to the citadel, not unless they are inside our walls already. But, oh, sweet mother Siveda, look!”