(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  “Perin Skylord, clothed in light,”

  Vansen murmured to himself,

  “Guard us through the awesome night

  Erivor, in silver mail

  Smooth the seas on which we sail

  Kernios, of death’s dark lands

  Take us in your careful hands…”

  But it was pointless trying to remember childhood prayers—what help could such things be now? What good would anything do? The huge shape that was Jikuyin, so massive that he crushed stones that a strong man couldn’t lift into powder beneath his feet, was limping toward them, each grating step like something as big as the world chewing, chewing, chewing…

  Do not despair! The words came sharp as a slap.

  Vansen turned to see that Gyir was still upright, though his guards had prostrated themselves. Everything in the Storm Lantern’s featureless face showed in his eyes alone, wide with excitement and fear, but also hot with rage. Just beyond Gyir, Prince Barrick swayed as if in a high wind, scarcely able to balance even on his knees, his face a pale, sickly mask in the flickering light. For a moment Vansen could see the sister’s handsome features in the brother’s, and suddenly he felt his almost-forgotten promise stab at him like a dagger. He could not surrender while there was breath in him—he had an obligation. Despair was a luxury.

  Prayers to the Trigon brothers seemed pointless on the very doorstep of the Earthfather’s house. Unbidden, another prayer wafted into his thoughts like a fleck of ash floating on an updraft, a gentler prayer to a gentler deity—an invocation of Zoria, Mistress of the Doves. But although his lips moved, he could not make his clenched throat pass the words. Zoria, virgin daughter, give me…give to me…

  A moment later the Zorian prayer, Zoria herself, even his own name, all blew out of Ferras Vansen’s mind like leaves in a freezing wind as Jikuyin stopped in front of them and leaned down. His face was so huge it seemed the cratered moon had dropped from the sky.

  “A gift to you.” The demigod’s voice shook Vansen’s bones; his breath smelled like the fumes from a smelter’s furnace, hot and metallic. “You will witness my supreme moment—and even participate.” The curtain of dangling heads swayed stared sightlessly, shriveled lips helplessly grinning.

  I’ll be joining them soon, Vansen thought. How would the gods judge him? He had done his best, but he had still failed.

  Jikuyin’s great, bearded head swiveled to inspect Vansen and his companions, and Vansen had to look away—the god’s eye big as a cannonball, the power of that squinting, reddened stare, were simply too much to bear. “Your blood will unseal Immon’s Gate,” Jikuyin rumbled, “open the way to the throne room of the Dirtlord himself, that piss-drinking King of Worms who took my eye. And when Earthstar is mine, when his great throne is mine, when I wear his mask of yellowed bone, then even if the gods find their way back I will be the greatest of their number!”

  You are mad, said Gyir wonderingly. Many in the room heard his silent words: a moan of fear rose up, as though the slaves who could understand him expected to share his punishment.

  “There is no madness among gods!” Jikuyin laughed. “How will I be called mad when I can shape everything to my own thoughts? Soon the gate will open, the blood will flow, and then what I speak…will be.”

  My blood will dry to powder, to choking dust, before I let you spill so much as a drop in pursuit of this madness.

  Jikuyin reached out a giant hand, fingers spreading as though he would crush Gyir to jelly. Instead, he only flicked at him, knocking the Qar warrior into a mass of shrieking prisoners. After those who could escape had scrambled away, the Storm Lantern lay unmoving where he had fallen, his featureless face in the dust.

  “Who said it was your blood I wanted, you little whelp of Breeze?” Jikuyin laughed again, a booming roar of satisfaction that threatened to bring down the cavern roof. His hand reached out again, knocking Vansen to the ground, then it folded around Barrick, who let out a thin shriek of surprise and terror before the breath was squeezed out of him. Jikuyin dropped the limp prince among the guards. “Him—the mortal child. I can smell the Fireflower in him. His blood will do nicely.”

  Vansen struggled helplessly against the heavy shackles as the guards dragged Barrick toward the looming gate, but they were too tight to slip, too heavy to break. Ferras Vansen let out a howl of grief. Whatever happened, he would certainly die too, but the imminent death of the prince seemed a greater failure, a more horrifying finality.

  Something grabbed at his arm. Vansen kicked out and one of the stinking, shaggy guards fell back, but got up immediately and came toward him again. Fighting the inevitable, Vansen managed to land another kick (to even less effect) before he saw that something was strange about the creature’s expression. The apelike face was slack, and the eyes wandered lazily, fixed on nothing, as though the guard were blind. It was also holding a key in its clumsy, clawed hand.

  If they want me unshackled before they kill me then it only means I’ll take some of them with me. But why would they want to take that risk? As the creature fumbled roughly with the shackles, he suddenly realized he had seen that befuddled expression before on the creatures Gyir had controlled. Vansen looked to the fairy. The Storm Lantern was staring up into nothingness, squinting so hard in concerntration that his eyes were little more than creases. Another guard stood behind Gyir, doing something with his bonds as well, but even if the fairy was controlling them both, time was running out.

  The guards had dragged Prince Barrick to a spot just before the mighty doors which stretched above them higher and wider than the front of the great temple in Southmarch. Ueni’ssoh, the terrible, cadaverous gray man, walked slowly up to stand beside them and raised his skeletal hands in the air.

  “O Fire-Eyed, White-Winged, hear us through the empty places!” he intoned in his harsh, unfeeling voice, “O Pale Question, grant us audience!”

  Vansen could understand every word, but the tongue was nothing he had ever heard before, as inhuman as the sawing of a cricket: the sound of the gray man’s fluid speech was in Vansen’s ears, all tick and slur, but the meaning was in his head.

  “O Emperor of Worms, see us through all darknesses!” Ueni’ssoh sang, “O Empty Box, grant us audience!”

  The gray man’s voice now rose, or gained some other power, because it seemed to fill Ferras Vansen’s head like water poured splashing into a bowl, louder and louder until he could scarcely think, although the actual tones seemed as measured and unhurried as before. This was no song of Kerneia that he had ever heard, but Vansen thought he recognized a few words here and there, the ancient words of mourning his grandfather had sung at his grandmother’s grave in the hills, but the gray man’s terrible, flat voice made Ferras Vansen see pictures in his head that had nothing to do with his long-dead grandmother or his father’s burial plot. A crimson-lit world of scuttling shadows filled his thoughts, an end to all things so final and so terrible that it lay on his heart like an immense weight.

  The fairy-spelled guard still scrabbled at his shackles. Vansen was not free yet—he could not let the voice overwhelm him. He could not fail.

  “See now where the darkness twists in us like a river

  It is time to get up and go to the land of the Red Sunlight

  The land where the sun sets and does not rise.

  “O Burned Foot, let us shelter in your hard folds of shadow

  Where we can still see the dying sun until the last day.

  Crowfather

  Wearer of the Iron Gloves

  Husband to the Knot that cannot be Untied

  We are frightened, O King. Open the gate!”

  At first, in his terror and confusion, Ferras Vansen thought the massive stone portal was beginning to fade, or to melt away like ice. But no, he realized a moment later, something much stranger was happening: the great doors were swinging inward into shadow, the darkness beyond so absolute that it could smother the stars themselves. Vansen’s heart quailed. His body felt suddenly b
oneless, limp as an empty sack.

  Ferras Vansen, do not despair! The words came like a whisper from the other side of the world, but they gave him back a little of himself. It was Gyir speaking, Gyir in his head, but only faintly. He could feel the fairy’s powers stretched to their utmost as they touched Vansen, Barrick, the guards working at their bonds, and many others Vansen could not even name—Gyir’s will spreading among them in an invisible spiderweb of influence, although the web quivered and sagged now, near its breaking-point. The Storm Lantern’s strength was astonishing, far beyond anything Vansen could have dreamed.

  Fight! Gyir demanded. Fight for the boy—fight for your home! I need more time.

  Time? Why? It did not seem as though even the fairy’s heroic efforts would make much difference. Whether they were shackled or not, the world was ending right now, here in the darkness beneath the ground. Whatever was behind that door would swallow them all…

  But even now, when nothing mattered, Ferras Vansen could not forget his oath to Barrick’s sister. It was almost the only thing he could remember: his own name and history, all that had happened to him before this moment, were fading swiftly, swallowed in the gray man’s sonorous words.

  “O Silver Beak, Send your flying ones before us

  O Ravens’ Prince, Make a trail in the sky

  Show us the way to the gate, the gate of your servant.”

  The gray man’s incantation now filled the cavern like the noise of a rising storm, harsh and booming, but it was also as intimate as if he whispered in Vansen’s ear. Surely no human throat could sound like that…!

  “The ocean of mud where the breathless sleep

  Pass it by!

  The dreaming tree that lifts mountains with its crushing roots

  Pass it by!

  The forest of the beating heart

  Where the flutes of the lost play in the shadows beside the path

  Pass it by!

  The Storm of Tears

  With rain that wounds the faces of pilgrims like arrows

  Pass it by!”

  The gate was completely open, a hole into absolute blackness, but a blackness that was still somehow, inexplicably alive—Vansen could almost hear it breathing, and his heart seemed to swell in his breast until he thought it would push up into his throat and choke off the last of his air.

  “Skull Eater, destroy our enemies hiding beside the road;

  Roots of the Immortal Pine, fill our nostrils so we do not smell demons!

  Shepherd of the Mummies, lead us safely among the unquiet dead;

  Black Bones, hold us tightly in the icy winds!

  Cloak of Singing Dust, show us only to the stars!

  The gray man gestured. Two huge, hairy guards pulled Barrick up onto his knees in front of Ueni’ssoh, who was still chanting, then one of them yanked Barrick’s head back so that the boy’s chin jutted out toward Vansen and the others watching. The other guard unsheathed a strange, terrible knife with a jagged blade half as wide as it was long, and set it almost tenderly against the white flesh of the prince’s throat. Frenzied, Vansentried to struggle to his feet, and just at that moment he felt the creature behind give a last wrench at the shackles and they tumbled off his arms. Knives of pain stabbed in his joints as he raised his arms and staggered toward Barrick and the guards.

  “O Narrowing Way, open the gate!”

  The chanting words of the Dreamless filled every part of the world, every part of Vansen’s thoughts. They were heavy as stones, dropping on him, crushing him—or was that the thunder of Jikuyin laughing? The prince, the guards, and the gray man were washed by torchlight but framed against absolute darkness as if the gods themselves had forgotten to provide a world for them to inhabit.

  Ueni’ssoh’s voice surged in triumph.

  “O Spiral Shell, lead us to the center!

  O Cauldron Lord, give us back our names! Grass Chieftain, open the gate!

  Earthlord, open the gate!

  Black Earth! Black Earth! Open the gate between Why and Why Not…!”

  Something was in the black space of the door now, something invisible but so all-pervasive and life-crushing that Vansen shrieked in terror like a child even as he threw himself at the shaggy guard who held the knife to Barrick’s throat. A shadowy recollection of Donal Murroy’s teachings came to him as if from another person’s life: he grabbed, braced, and snapped the guard’s elbow against its own hinge, so that the creature howled with pain and dropped the queer blade. Vansen snatched it up and whirled to look for Ueni’ssoh, but the gray man seemed lost in some kind of trance, so Vansen lunged at the other guard instead, knocking Prince Barrick free from the creature’s grasp as he did so and sending the shaggy beast skidding face first across the rocky floor. Vansen snatched up a stone from the floor and began pounding on the lock of the prince’s shackles, intent on freeing him, ignoring Barrick’s cries of agony as the boy’s crippled arm was rattled in its socket.

  A moment longer, something whispered in his head. Ferras Vansen’s own thoughts were so tangled and diminished that for a long instant he could not understand who was talking to him, and even when he could, he could not understand it. Keep fighting a moment longer…!

  The lock broke and the prince’s shackles fell away just as the other guard attacked him. It was all Vansen could do to shove Barrick aside, then use the knife to dig at the guard’s stinking, hairy body. Vansen and the guard stood, locked in a helpless clinch, gasping into each other’s faces, each with a free hand gripping the other’s weapon, both weapons shuddering in front of an enemy’s wide, terror-staring eye. Vansen could see the monstrous open gateway past his attacker’s shoulder, the blackness roiling and bubbling with invisible forces that squeezed Vansen’s bones and guts until he thought his heart would stop.

  Vansen had a moment to wonder if Gyir really had made a plan, but that everything beyond getting the shackles off had simply failed to happen. Then the second guard hit him in the back, forcing him to let go of the other creature’s killing hand. He swung his weight and ducked to avoid the stabbing blow to his face and he and the two guards became tangled. Locked in a straining, gasping knot, the three of them hobbled a few steps, then stumbled together over the threshold of the god’s door and fell into darkness.

  Black.

  Frozen.

  Nothing.

  The apelike guards spun away and vanished into the void as they all plummeted downward; within a heartbeat their wordless screams had faded. His own voice was gone. He could feel his lungs shoving out a scream of absolute terror but he heard no sound except the almost silent whistle of his fall.

  Ferras Vansen hurtled down and down. Within moments he was far beyond the point where he could survive the impact, but still he fell. At last his wits flew away in the emptiness and wind.

  35

  Blessings

  Of all the rebel gods who had survived the battle against the Trigon, only a few were spared. One of them was Kupilas, son of Zmeos, because the Artificer proclaimed his allegiance to his uncles and promised he could bring many useful things to the three godly brothers and their heavenly city. And thus it proved to be. He taught them healing and other crafts, and even the making of wine, so that mortals could make offerings of drink to the gods as well as meat and blood.

  —from The Beginnings of Things

  The Book of the Trigon

  Utta stared at her reflection. Even looking in a mirror was an unusual experience, since Zorian sisters were generally given neither opportunity nor encouragement to contemplate their own reflections. “I cannot help it,” she said. “I look like something in a mummer’s play.”

  “You do not,” said Merolanna, invisible for a moment in a cloud of powder as her little maid Eilis vigorously applied the brush to Utta’s face. “You look extremely handsome—like a highborn gentleman.”

  “I am not supposed to be a gentleman, even in this ridiculous imposture, but an ordinary servant. In fact, though, I am neither of those. I am a
n old woman, Your Grace. What am I doing got up in such a semblance?”

  “You must trust me,” the duchess replied, waving away the last of the powder. The maid began to cough, so Merolanna sent the girl out of the room. “I simply cannot do what must be done,” she said when they were alone in the bedchamber, “since I am bound to be at the blessing ceremony, especially with Duke Caradon coming to Southmarch. The Tollys are swarming, so we Eddons must make a show. I have to go. That is why you must do your part, my dear.”

  But I’m not an Eddon. Utta looked at the duchess with what she hoped was a certain sternness. She thought Merolanna had grown a bit careless about this matter of her lost son, her plans getting stranger and more wild, as though the steps they were contemplating now really were nothing more dangerous than a mum-show. She also clearly felt that Utta had become some kind of foot soldier in the cause, bound to obey all orders.

  “I can understand how you feel about the child…” she began.

  “No, you can’t, Sister,” said the duchess with unconvincing good cheer. “Only a mother can. So let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

  Utta sighed.

  When she was finished, with all the unfamiliar ties and buckles done up, Utta took one last look at the dour creature in the glass—an aged, effeminate servant dressed in dun-colored robes and a shapeless hat. It seemed scandalous to be showing so much hose-covered leg, but that was what men did every day. She squinted.

  “You know, all the men’s clothes in the world cannot make a woman truly look like one. A man, I mean. Our faces just are not the right shape.” She traced the line of her own too-delicate jaw with her finger.

  “That is why we will wrap this close around you,” Merolanna said briskly, winding the tails of the hat around Utta’s chin and neck like a scarf. “It is a cold day—no one will take much notice. Especially not today.”