Tad Williams - Shadowheart

“I told them it was a matter of grave importance,” he said. “Did I lie?”

She smacked at his head and then rolled over so she could kiss him. “Oh, I wish we could be like this forever, Vansen.”

“My first name is Ferras,” he told her, almost shyly.

“Do you think I don’t know?” She laughed again. “I know everything about you that I could discover. At first because I thought you the worst man ever. Later… well, my feelings changed… or at least became clearer.” She looked at him, her face suddenly earnest. “Would you prefer I call you by your first name?”

“I don’t care which you choose as long as you speak it with that look in your eyes, always,” he said.

She rolled onto her back. “But I can’t, you know. Not in front of others. You know that, don’t you? Please say that you do.”

“I suppose,” he said. “But how can you love someone so much lower than yourself, that you must hide that love from everyone?”

“Foolish Captain Vansen! I could make you a noble in an instant. I will make you a noble—otherwise, you cannot be my lord constable. But even so, the way we feel for each other must stay a close-held secret.”

“There are no secrets in a place like this—the servants and guards know everything, always.” He shook his head. “I can live without marrying you, Briony, although I will die if you marry another… but why must our love stay hidden? Don’t you feel the same for me?” He suddenly felt stricken. “You do, don’t you? Feel the same?”

“Of course, you wonderful, truehearted man—but I have more than my own happiness to think about. If Kendrick or my father had lived, things would be different. Even if Barrick had not changed so greatly ...” She shook her head, her expression darkening like a sky clouding over. “But an ordinary life is not what Fate has given me. I must keep myself aloof, or seem to. I’ll have to pretend no man has won my heart… but that any man might, if he brings a useful alliance to Southmarch. That’s how I’ll make policy. That’s how I’ll keep our country free from the influence of powerful neighbors.”

“Even Syan?” he said suspiciously.

She smiled, but it was a sad one this time. “Even Syan. Especially Syan.”

He crept closer to her. “Let us not talk of Syan any more. Kiss me.”

When they had done that and more for a while, he sat up.

“Don’t go,” she said, her voice growing a little slow and sleepy. “I take back what I said. The ladies can find beds in Merolanna’s chambers. Tell me more of what you saw down in the caverns. I can scarcely believe any of it. Did you truly fight a god?”

“Not me, no. Not even your brother did. The creature was too far beyond any of us.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It is still too close.”

She shook her head. “It’s hard for me even to understand. You say my brother this, my brother that—he fought a hundred men! He swung down on a rope! Some powerful magic must be at work—that is not the brother I knew, who couldn’t even cut his own meat without falling to cursing and knocking his trencher on the floor!”

Vansen smiled, but there was a touch of puzzlement to it. “Magic indeed. It’s as if he aged ten years in a few months. And his arm is healed! He’s changed so much that I hardly recognized him. When the stone-swallowing demons came at us, every last one of us would have died if Barrick and the Qar had not shown up ...”

“The stone what?” She had a strange, troubled look on her face now. “Stone-swallowing… ? I have not heard this tale before. Tell me.”

He pulled her closer. “Your maids and ladies… ?”

“Leave them be a little longer.”

He described the final battle in the Maze in detail now, of how he and the Funderlings gave ground until there was no more ground to give.

“So brave!” she said. “And not just you, dearest Captain Vansen. Chert’s people have astonished me.”

“All of us,” he said. “We did them a disservice for many years, it seems. But even they could do nothing when the Stone Swallowers came. I don’t know what they were truly called—there were three of them. But each one placed a stone in his mouth and… and then began to change ...” He hesitated, feeling her body grow rigid beside him. “Briony?”

“Are you certain they were men?”

He considered. “To be honest, I never saw them before they had already become those… things. ...”

“Tell me again. Tell me what the stones looked like.”

“I don’t know,” he said, laughing a little. “Perin’s Hammer, girl, we were in almost complete darkness… !”

“Tell me all you remember!” There was nothing of the sweet young woman in her voice now.

And Vansen did, marveling to find that all this time he had been kissing not just his beloved, but also a queen.

Steffens Nynor was wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, but his ankles were bare of hose and he was clearly feeling the cold. “Is it truly necessary to do this now, Highness?” he asked.

“I have learned a lesson.” Briony motioned for one of the guards to knock on the tower’s heavy front door. The booming sound echoed and died. She was just about to order him to do it again when a quavering, childish voice from behind the door said, “Who goes there?”

“It is the Princess Regent, to see Queen Anissa,” the guard said.

The door opened enough for the boy to peer out at the visitors, then the door swung wide. “But the queen is sleeping!” he said, as if the people knocking might not have realized that the time was well after midnight. “She is in mourning,” he offered next, but the guards had already pushed past him and he was left talking to Briony, Vansen, and Lord Nynor.

“Of course she is,” Briony told him, not unkindly. “And so am I. Do you see my black dress?”

He scuttled off up the stairs to the queen’s bedchamber as if Briony had frightened him. The guards on duty in the reception hall had dropped to their knees; she waved them to their feet. Several of them looked to their longtime captain as though he might explain why this ordinarily sleepy duty had been interrupted, but Ferras Vansen took his lead from Briony and kept his thoughts to himself.

Anissa and her retinue were long enough coming down that Briony had begun to consider sending the soldiers up to get them when she heard the queen’s voice preceding her down the stairs. “But why? Why should she want to come here in the night this way? It frightens me! ” Now she appeared, accompanied by half a dozen women, one of whom held her little son, Alessandros.

Olin Alessandros, Briony reminded herself. My brother. My father’s child, too.

The sight of Anissa in her nightdress brought back dreadful memories—memories of fire and living shadows, memories of last Winter’s Eve when her entire world had been turned upside down—but Briony did her best to keep her voice even. “I am sorry to bother you at such a time, Anissa, but my sleep was troubled by a thought that you alone can answer.”

Anissa turned to Nynor with a show of confusion, but the aged counselor had no duty here but that of observer. He nodded respectfully to her but made no other sign. “What is it?” she said. “What do you want of me, Briony, that you frighten me so?”

“I want to know how it was that your maid Selia came to you. Do not turn so pale, stepmother. I have recently learned something about the Autarch of Xis and now I need to know this from you. How did your maid come to you?”

“I… I do not know. I do not remember!” Anissa looked around as if one of her maids might help her remember, but none of them would meet her eye. Many of them were themselves from the queen’s home in Devonis and knew themselves to be foreigners in the court, protected only by Anissa’s position, but they seemed curiously unwilling to speak in her defense. “She… was sent to me,” Anissa said at last. “I asked my mother’s chamberlain to send me a good girl, someone to be my bodyservant. That is all. I scarcely knew her! I had no idea she was a witch! But I have told you this already, Briony—why do you tax me with this now, when your father is dead and I am so upset?”