(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay

by Tad Williams

  Now came the difficult part, trying to find his way across the residence to the castellan’s chambers without anyone noticing him (or at least without anyone realizing he had bypassed the gatehouse). He sighed as he reached the end of the first long hall. Half the hour must be gone now. Okros would be very angry.

  After several false turnings, one of which led him into a parlor where a surprised group of young women sat sewing—he bowed repeatedly as he backed out—Chert found the inner gardens and made his way across the nearest one to the center of the residence, then back down the main corridor to the offices and official chambers near the front entrance. I would have been better off to let the guards abuse me, he thought in disgust. I have wasted twice as much time this way. Still, he had finally reached the section of the residence to which he had been summoned, so he no longer needed to hide himself whenever he heard footsteps. With the help of a slightly suspicious page he discovered the hallway to the castellan’s chambers, and was about to rap on the beautifully carved and polished oak door when something stung his hand.

  Chert cursed and swatted, but his attacker was no hornet or horsefly: instead, something like a long, slender thorn hung from the flesh of his hand. He brushed at it in irritation but it did not come out, and when he at last plucked it painfully from his skin, he discovered to his astonishment that it was a tiny arrow only half the length of his finger, fletched with tiny strips of butterfly wing.

  For a moment he could only stare at it, completely befuddled, but when he looked up and saw a little manlike shape clinging to a tapestry just across the hall, Chert finally realized what had happened. But why should the Rooftoppers want to hurt him? Wasn’t he their ally—hadn’t he and Beetledown been something like friends?

  The minuscule assassin did not try to escape, but waited as Chert strode toward him. For a moment he was tempted to reach up and, like some terrible giant, simply pluck the little creature from the hanging and throw him down on the floor, perhaps even step on him. But even at the end of a bad morning, late to an appointment and with his hand throbbing, Chert was not the kind of man to hurt another without good cause, and he did not understand yet what had happened.

  He leaned his face close. It was a young Rooftopper male, but not one he recognized. At least his attacker looked suitably frightened. “What are you after?” Chert growled.

  The little man was hanging from a thread like a mountaineer on a rope. He waved one of his hands and piped, “Quiet, now! Be tha Chert, Beetledown’s companion?”

  “Yes, I be bloody Chert. Why did you arrow me?”

  “Beetledown—un sent me to say tha beest in danger! Go not inside!” The little man looked terrified now, and Chert considered how he must look to the fellow, a mountain with a frowning face. He leaned a little ways back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “No time—hide ’ee!” The Rooftopper, as though seeing something Chert could not see, scuttled up the thread to the top of the tapestry and disappeared behind it.

  Before Chert could do more than blink, the door of the castellan’s chamber across the hall rattled as the bolt was pulled back. Hide? Why? He had been summoned, hadn’t he? He had every right to be here!

  But why would Beetledown send someone to shoot an arrow at me just to get my attention if I wasn’t truly in danger?

  Suddenly his hackles were up and his skin was tingling. It must be some misunderstanding—but if it wasn’t…?

  There was no room to slip behind the tapestry, but a marble statue of Erivor stood in a little alcove shrine only a few steps down the passage on the same side as the door. Chert bolted for it. The statue rocked as he pushed his way behind it, and he barely had time to steady it before the door creaked open.

  “He knows, curse him,” said a voice that he recognized—Okros. “I should have simply had your men take him, Havemore.”

  “It would have been better not to alarm the little diggers, and if he had come of his own accord they would have been none the wiser,” said the other man. “But now the soldiers will have to search for him.”

  “Yes, send them at once and search his house. The more I think, the more I believe he knows where Chaven is. That question I told you of, what he asked about the mirror—that was too close to the mark.” Okros’ voice seemed hard and hot at the same time, like iron being shaped. Chert, with growing horror, could no longer pretend they were talking about someone else. They were sending soldiers to his house!

  “Come with me, Brother,” said the milder voice of the man called Havemore. “You will have to accompany the soldiers yourself because they may not recognize what is important.”

  “I will go, and gladly,” Okros said. “And if we do find Chaven Makaros, I ask you only for a few hours alone with him before we inform our lord Hendon. It might…benefit us both.”

  The two men walked quickly down the corridor, followed by several soldiers. They had been waiting for him! If Beetledown hadn’t sent the little man with the arrow, Chert would have been arrested and dragged off to the Earth Elders only knew what end—imprisonment at the least, more likely torture.

  And they’re on their way to Funderling Town! To my house! Opal and the boy were in terrible danger—Chaven too if he was not hidden. Chert knew he had to get them all into hiding, but how? Cursed Okros and the man Havemore were already on their way down with armed soldiers!

  He looked to make sure the hall was empty, then quickly extricated himself from the alcove shrine. He tugged gently on the tapestry and hissed for the little man.

  “Help me, please! Can you get a message to Funderling Town quickly?”

  After a moment the little man appeared again at the top of the tapestry and shimmied down on his thread. “No, can’t, sir. Take too very long. P’raps if someone by bird went, but cote’s all the way t’other side o’ the Great Peak. Couldn’t get to Fundertown fast enough ourselves, which be why Master Scout Beetledown sent me here to find ’ee.” His tiny chest puffed up a little. “Travel faster, me, than nigh any other.”

  Chert sank to the floor in despair. It was hopeless. Even if he could somehow sneak out of the residence and through the Raven Gate, running as fast as he could, Okros and the soldiers would still get there before him. All this because of Chaven and his damned, blasted mirror! Ruined by his cursed secrets…!

  Then he remembered the passage underneath Chaven’s observatory. That would get him to the outskirts of Funderling Town in only moments, perhaps while Okros and the soldiers were still trying to find their way through the confusing stone warren of dark streets to locate his house—he doubted any Funderling would give the big folk much help. Nothing made Chert’s neighbors more resentful than people from aboveground throwing their weight around, especially in the little folk’s own domain.

  It’s barely a chance, but it’s better than naught, he told himself. He jumped to his feet and put his head close to the Rooftopper.

  “Thank you, and tell Beetledown I thank him, too,” Chert whispered. “I will ask the Earth Elders to lead him to great blessings—but now I must go save my family.”

  Chert ran off down the passage, leaving his tiny savior spinning on his thread like a startled spider.

  The last two days had brought Matt Tinwright attention that at any other time would have delighted him, but just now was wretchedly inconvenient. Because he had been invited to read a poem by Hendon Tolly himself, and in front of Hendon’s brother Duke Caradon, many of those at court had decided Tinwright was becoming a pet of the Tollys and therefore someone whose acquaintance was worth cultivating. People who had never bothered to speak to him before now seemed to sidle up to him wherever he went, desiring a love poem written for them or a good word spoken about them to the new masters of Southmarch.

  Today he had finally found a chance to slip off on his own. Most of the castle’s inhabitants and refugees were in Market Square at the festival celebrating the third day of Kerneia, so the corridors, courtyards, and wintry gardens of the inner keep we
re largely empty as Tinwright made his way out of the residence and into the warren of cramped streets that lay in the shadow of the old walls behind the residence.

  When he reached the two-story cottage at the end of a row of flimsy, weatherbeaten houses not far from the massive base of the Summer Tower, he went up the stairs quietly—not because he thought anyone would hear him (the street’s inhabitants were no doubt all drinking free ale in Market Square) but more because the magnitude of his crime seemed to demand a certain respect best shown by silence and slow movements. Brigid opened the door. The barmaid was dressed for the tavern, her bodice pushing up her breasts like biscuits overflowing a pan, but that was the only thing welcoming about her.

  “Tinwright, you miserable lizard, you were supposed to be here an hour gone! I’ll lose my position—or worse, I’ll have to turn my tail to Conary again to keep it. I should go right to your Hendon Tolly and tell him all about you.”

  His guts turned to water. “Don’t even joke, Brigid.”

  “Who’s joking?” She scowled, then turned to look back at the pale figure lying on the bed. “I’ll say this for you, she’s pretty enough…for a dead girl, that is.”

  Tinwright swayed a little and had to grab the doorframe. “I told you, don’t joke! Please, let me in—I don’t want anyone to see me.” He edged past her and stopped. “Brigid, love, really truly, I’m grateful. I treated you badly and you’ve been more kind than I had any right to hope.”

  “If you think that you can honey-talk me instead of paying me…”

  “No, no! Here it is.” He pulled out the coin and put it in her hand. “I’ll never be able to thank you properly…”

  “No, you won’t. Ah, well, the wee thing is all yours now, right and proper.” Brigid smirked. “I always knew you were a bit of an idiot, Matty, but this goes beyond anything I’d guessed.”

  “Has she showed any signs of waking?”

  “Some. A bit of moaning and tossing, like having a bad dream.” She threw her shawl over her shoulders. “Must go now. Conary will be furious, but maybe I can sweeten him up by working late. I’m never swiving with that old mackerel again if I can help it.”

  “You are a true friend,” he said.

  “And you’re an idiot, but I think I said that already.” She stepped out into the misty afternoon and pulled the door closed behind her.

  The noise of Elan’s quiet breath did not change much, but somehow he knew that she was awake. He put down the book of sonnets and hurried to the side of the bed. Her eyes were moving, her face slackly puzzled.

  “Where…where am I?” It was scarcely more than a whisper. “Is this some…some waiting-place?” She saw him moving and her eyes turned toward him, but for long moments they could not fix on him. “Who are you?”

  He could only pray that the tanglewife’s potion had not injured her mind. “Matt Tinwright, my lady.”

  For a moment she did not understand, perhaps did not even recognize the name, then her face twisted into anguish. “Oh, Matt. Did you take the poison, too? You sweet boy. You were meant to live.”

  He took a breath, then another. “I…I did not take poison. You did not either, or at least not enough to die. You are alive.”

  She shook her head and her eyes sagged closed again.

  He had told her. She hadn’t heard him. Did that mean he was allowed to run away into the night and never look back? Not that he dared desert her, but the gods knew that almost anything would be preferable to standing before this woman and telling her he’d betrayed her trust…

  “What?” Her eyes opened again, far more alert this time, but wide and frightened like those of a trapped animal. “What did you say?”

  The moment to escape, if there had ever truly been such a moment, was gone. Tinwright wondered if a real man should offer to take real poison to make up for his crime. Perhaps, he reminded himself, but he wasn’t a real man—not that kind, anyway. “I said you’re not dead, my lady. Elan. You’re alive.”

  She tried to lift her head, but could not. Her gaze jumped fearfully from side to side. “What…? Where am I? Oh, no, surely you are lying. You are some demon of the lands before the gate, and this is a test.”

  He was surprised to discover that he felt even lower than he had thought he would. “No, Lady Elan, no. You are alive. I could not bear to see you die.” He dropped to his knees and took her hand, still cold as death. “You are in a safe place. I had confederates.” He shook his head. “I make it too grand. A woman I know, one who has been kind enough to tend you, and to help especially with…with your privacies…” He felt himself blushing and was disgusted. Matt Tinwright, man of the world! But something about this woman reduced him to childish embarrassments. “She and I stole you out of the residence.” He could not quite bear to tell her yet that they had dragged her to this place in a laundry basket.

  Her eyes were now shut again. “Hendon…”

  “He thinks you have run away. He seemed amused, to be honest. He is a bad man, Lady Elan…”

  “Oh, the gods have mercy, he will find me. Matt Tinwright, you are a fool!”

  “So everyone tells me.”

  She tried to rise again, but was far too weak. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

  “No! I…I love you. I couldn’t bear to…to…”

  “Then you are twice a fool. You loved a dead woman. If I could not let myself love you then, how could I now, when you’ve denied me the one release I could hope for?” Tears ran down her cheeks but she did not, or perhaps could not, lift her hands to dry them. Tinwright moved forward with his own kerchief, but as he began dabbing at her face she turned away. “Leave me alone.”

  “But, my lady…!”

  “I hate you, Tinwright. You are a boy, a foolish boy, and in your childishness you have doomed me to horror and misery. Now get out of my sight. Is there no chance the poison might yet kill me?”

  He hung his head. “You have been asleep almost three days. You will regain your strength soon.”

  “Good.” She opened her eyes as if to fix his face one last time in her memory, then squeezed them shut again. “At least then I’ll be able to take my own life and do it properly. All gods curse me for a coward, seeking to do the deed with womanish, weak poisons!”

  “But…”

  “Go! If you do not leave me alone, you craven, I shall scream until someone comes. I think I have the strength for that.”

  He stood on the stairs for a long time, uncertain of where to go, let alone what to do. The rains had begun again, turning the muddy alley into a swamp and the Summer Tower into an unlit beacon on a storm-battered coast.

  Can’t go back, can’t go forward. He hung his head, felt the cold rain dribble down the back of his neck. Zosim, you nasty godling, you have put me in another trap and I’m sure you’re laughing. Why did I ever think you and your heavenly kind might have changed their minds about me?

  “Opal!” Chert shouted, then a fit of coughing snatched what little remained of his breath. He bent over in the doorway, gasping as if he had cut into a bed of dry gypsum. “Opal, get the boy,” he called when he had recovered a little. “We have to hide.” But it was strange she had not come to him already.

  He staggered into the back room. It was empty, with no sign of his wife or Flint. His heart, already put to a cruel test with his dash across the Inner Keep and just beginning to slow, instead started to race once more. Where could she be? There were at least a dozen possible places, but Brother Okros and those soldiers could only be a short way behind him and he did not have time to rush around searching blindly.

  He went out into Wedge Road and began beating on doors, but succeeded only in frightening their neighbor Agate Celadon half to death. She didn’t know where Opal had gone, nor did anyone else. Chert sent a desperate prayer to the Earth Elders as he sprinted toward the guildhall as fast as his weary legs could take him.

  There seemed to be more people around the venerable building than usual, he saw as he hobble
d up the front steps, important and unimportant folk milling about on the landing before the front door. The inner chamber was equally crowded. Several of the men called to him, but when he only demanded to know whether they’d seen Opal or the boy, they shrugged and shook their heads, surprised that he did not want to hear what they had to say.

  Chert almost ran into Chaven in the anteroom of the Council Chamber. The physician caught him, then waited patiently while the exhausted Funderling slowly filled his lungs back up with air.

  “I am longing to hear your news,” Chaven said, “but I have been called with some urgency by some of your friends on the Guild Council. It seems a stranger—one of the big folk as you call us, one of my kind—has stumbled into the Council room. Everyone is quite upset about it.”

  “By the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone, don’t go in there!” Chert reached up and grabbed Chaven’s sleeve as tightly as he could. “That’s what I’ve come…come to tell you about. It must be one of Brother Okros’ soldiers—maybe even Okros himself!”

  “Okros? What are you talking about?” Now Chert had the physician’s full attention.

  “I’ll tell you, but…but if they are already in the guildhall, I fear my news is too late.” Chert slumped to the floor, panting. “I’ll just c–catch my breath, then I ha–have to find Opal.”

  “Tell me first,” Chaven said. “The keepers of this hall told me it is only one man. Perhaps we can take him prisoner before his fellows realize where he has gone.” He stood and waved some of the other Funderlings over, then squatted by Chert once more. “Tell me all.”