Tad Williams - Shadowheart

He stood for a long time gazing back across the hills. The gleam in the distance was the tilted windvane on top of Wolfstooth Spire’s shattered roof; the rest of the castle was invisible below the intervening hills. It was strange to be looking back on his old home. The last time he had stood in such a place he had wondered whether he would ever see it again, and this time was no different.

As he stared, he felt something strange happening all around him, a sudden warmth and a feeling of the air being pulled in many directions at once. Then something snapped like a large branch breaking and the space immediately in front of Barrick’s face was full of flapping blackness. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed the dark shape. It was feathery and fat and smelled like carrion.

“Don’t hurt us!” it croaked. “Us be a bird of artfullest power—a wishing raven! Spare us and us’ll grant you all manner of wishery, that you’ll see!”

Barrick stared in astonishment. “Skurn? Is that you?”

The bird slowed its thrashing, turning its desperately shiny black eye on him. “Mought be. Then again, it equal-like moughtn’t.”

“Don’t you remember me?”

“Well, doubtless that you look like the Barrick lad I helped so many times. But us has seen many a few others nearly as much like him since us first went through that darksome gate out of Sleep ...”

“Where have you been, Skurn? You never reached Qul-na-Qar—I didn’t see you after we escaped from the city of Sleep! And I never saw Raemon Beck again.”

“Us hasn’t seen that one either, though in our travels, us has seen a few creatures that were Beck-ish. Thanks mightily for telling where you’ve been—but not much help when us needed it, was it?” The bird fluttered up out of Barrick’s open hand and onto a branch just a little overhead. “Been flapping in and out of some dreadful places since then. Some nice ones, too, to say fair, but still strange as down on a toad.” He preened himself a bit. “Rather grand, our adventures have doubtless been, you and us. No doubt some fairy bard will want to make a tune of it all, with clever words to show how dangerous our fates narrowly was.”

Barrick almost smiled, but was not going to be so easily lulled. “You talk more than you ever did, bird.”

“It goes to show the gods live and the world be still full of miracles, as our mam used to say when us were scarce out the egg.”

“And I suppose you’ll want to go with me.”

“Nay, don’t think thyself so grand!” The bird looked up as if in search of some even higher perch more suitable to his stature. “Any bargain us made is long past. No need for us to follow all draggity-tail and call anyone master.”

“Who said anything about calling someone master?” Barrick turned and called to Kaske and Sunset Pearl that it was time to gather up their people and return to the road. “I just thought you might like to keep company with me for a while. I’m more or less the king of the fairies now. Did you know?”

“King of the fairies?” Skurn hopped down the branch and looked him up and down carefully. “Them Qar must have lost a lot of their important folk somewhere.” The bird made a harsh spitting noise. “Must be scraping the barrel now, us means.”

My love?

So soon? I hoped you would sleep until tomorrow.

It is a beautiful night. I can feel it even if I can’t see it. Is that horrible bird asleep?

Barrick looked down at Skurn bouncing on the front of the saddle. The raven’s head was settled deep in his fluffed up collar of black-and-white-spotted feathers. Yes. He’s actually not as bad as he seems.

He couldn’t be.

Don’t be cruel. He helped me many times. Saved my life at least once.

I’m sorry. In Xis they were birds of ill-omen. I will try to be kinder. My Fireflower mothers are scolding me, too. They say his kind are Whitefire’s messengers… Oh, Barrick, there is so much to know!

Look, he said. The Twilight Lands. I can see them in the distance… and I can see the stars, too!

What do you mean?

The Mantle. The cloud of separation and protection that hung over this place so long. It’s gone. Nothing left now but wisps like fog. He sighed, dazzled by the painful brightness of the stars in the night sky. Ah, if you could only see this land of ours!

I hear its beauty in your thoughts.

She went quiet then, but it was a companionable silence, both of them close despite their terrible separation.

My love? he asked sometime later. Qinnitan, my heart, are you still awake?

She stirred. I drifted.

I drifted with you.

I miss the House of the People, she said, though I have never seen it with my own eyes. Is it as beautiful as my memories?

It’s a very old place. It has every kind of beauty. But there is more to it than that.

Of course, she said, then a moment later: Barrick, I can feel the moon. Is it bright?

It is.

It makes me stronger just feeling it. By the Hive, I think I can hear it, too… I feel as if I can hear everything!

He took a deep breath, in part to ease the rush of feeling. Even his thoughts were muddled, stumbling. You do too… ? I thought I would be… I thought I would never…

I know , she told him, and for just a moment he could feel her as if she were beside him, as if they again held each other in the dark dreamland. Talk to me, Barrick. It was close, as intimate as a whisper. Tell me everything. I know everything the Fireflower knows, but the Fireflower knows scarcely anything about you. At least scarcely anything of the sort of things a lover wants to know.

I will, he said. And the first thing you must know about me is that I am not an ordinary person…

He could feel her amusement. Of course you aren’t! As you told that foul bird, you are a mortal who became monarch of the fairies… !

No, that isn’t it. I was about to say that I am a twin.…

The morning sun had pulled itself up above the eastern horizon, and the sky was brightening. Despite the paucity of clouds, a low rumble filled the air, beginning so low that it disturbed only a few slumbering creatures deep in the earth, but then rising until it made the slender branches of the birch trees quiver. Birds burst squawking from their upper reaches and a deer sprinted across the Coast Road.

The rumble grew until it sounded much like thunder, then the air seized, roiled, and cracked like a drover’s whip. Something fell out of the nothingness onto brown Southmarch earth still wet with dew.

For long moments Raemon Beck, merchant’s son, husband, and father, only lay facedown in the middle of the road, frightened by yet another forced, lightning-flash journey from one nowhere to another. At last, when the rumble of his arrival had subsided, he worked up the courage to lift his head. A moment later, he clambered up onto his feet, staring in astonishment to the southeast. There, across a short distance of green bay, stood the familiar towers of Southmarch Castle—some a little the worse for wear, scarred by fire and cannonballs, but unquestionably and recognizably the four cardinal towers and the even taller black-and-white prominence of Wolfstooth Spire.

Beck stared. He touched his own face as if unable to believe both he and Southmarch could exist at the same moment in the same place, then let out a whoop of delight and began a clumsy dance in the middle of the Coast Road. Two more deer, a doe and a fawn, sprang from the underbrush and bounded away into the depths of the woods, terrified by the disheveled man’s capering.