Tad Williams - Shadowrise

Qinnitan had known for a few days that Vo was taking his physick every night as well as in the morning: he became more and more agitated as the afternoons wore away until he quieted himself with the potion a short time after dark. She did not understand exactly what this meant but she was grateful for the slackening of his attention, which allowed her time to think and saw through her rope with an iron rail.

For some time all she could see on the coast sliding past had been stony headlands, cruel cliffs with waves beating at them like beggars pounding on a bolted door. But today, as Vo paced the deck and old Vilas plied the tiller, his sons sitting at his feet like stones, the fishing boat slid past a last bulwark of hills. The rocky front suddenly dropped away to reveal a great, flat expanse of wet sand dotted here and there with massive round stones like the dropped toys of giant children. Beyond this wet tidal flat the land rose into grassy hills spotted with groves of white-barked trees; beyond lay a forest lay spread like a dark green blanket on the knees of distant hills.

Tonight, she decided: if it was ever to happen, it must be tonight. Soon the coastline might be all rocky cliffs again as it had been for days, stones against which even a good swimmer would be crushed and drowned. It had to be tonight.

It wasn’t hard to stay awake, but it was very hard to remain still. She forced herself to keep her eyes closed as much as she could, fighting the urge to make certain that the moon she had just looked at a few moments before was still as bright.

Vo was mumbling to himself, a good sign. When she had last dared to look at him he had been scratching his arms and neck with his fingernails as he paced, and rubbing his belly as though it pained him.

“… Waking up,” he said, then let loose a string of curses in gutter Xixian that would have made the Qinnitan of a year earlier blush and grow dizzy. “Tricked!” he growled. “Not asleep at all. Both of them! They knew! Did it to me!”

He stopped pacing at last and Qinnitan lay as still as she could, doing her best not to breathe. She risked opening her eye just a slit. Vo had his back to her and was licking the needle that he used to take his potion. To her surprise, he dipped into the bottle again, then lifted the needle to his mouth.

Licking the needle three times in a day! Was that good for her or bad? She thought for a moment and decided it could only be good. She found it even more difficult to wait now, but the gods were kind to her: after only a short while, Vo sagged down to sit on the deck.

Through half-shut eyes she watched until the moon had dropped behind the mainsail. Then, after taking a long breath and letting it out slowly, Qinnitan rolled over, snapped the last threads of rope, and crawled toward the shadowed figure leaning against the mast.

“Akar,” she whispered, using the Xixian word for master. “Akar Vo, can you hear me?” She reached out and gave him a carefully measured shake. His head lolled. His mouth opened a little as though he might say something, which made her start back in alarm, but his eyes remained shut and no sound came.

She gave him another gentle shake and as she did she let her hand slide into his cloak. She searched until she found his purse and drew it out. It was heavier than she’d expected, made of heavily oiled leather. She shoved the bits of hard bread she had saved into it, then froze in terror for a moment as her captor stirred and mumbled. When he had once more gone still, she quickly tied the purse to the piece of cord she wore as a belt over her tattered, threadbare servant’s dress from Hierosol. Her heart was beating very fast. Did she really dare to do this?

Of course she did. She could do nothing else. Now that Pigeon was gone she owed her life to no one. If she died trying to escape—well, that still would be better than what awaited her when she was given back to the autarch, of that Qinnitan had no doubt.

She reached into Vo’s cloak again and found the bottle, pinching it carefully between finger and thumb to draw it out. For a moment she hesitated. If she drank it herself, all her problems would be over—at least all problems that troubled the living. The darkness inside the small glass container called to her, a sleep from which she would never have to awake—so tempting… ! But the memory of the young man named Barrick, her dream-friend, tugged at her. Had he really turned his back on her? Or had something happened to him—did he need her help? If she ended her life she would never know.

Decided, Qinnitan pulled out the glass stopper, sent up a prayer to the golden bees of Nushash that she had tended for so long, then upended the bottle over Vo’s mouth.

She was almost undone by the thickness of the physic, which did not splash out like water but rather oozed like pomegranate syrup: it had barely begun to drip when he started to struggle. Still, she managed to pour at least a small spoonful into the back of his throat before he came awake and broke free from her, coughing and sputtering. He knocked the bottle from her hands and it skittered down the deck, but Qinnitan did not care. She must have given him dozens of times his normal portion—surely that would be enough to kill him.

She did not wait to find out, of course. Vilas and his dull, cruel sons were on the boat, the older of the two boys minding the tiller while the other two slept. In a moment even that dullard would notice the struggle. She dashed to the low rail and threw herself over it on the landward side. When the first shock of the cold water had passed, she rose to the surface and began to swim as best she could toward the dark, distant shore. When she had gone a little way she turned to look back toward the boat. She saw something dark go over the side and make a pale splash in the moon-lit water. Her heart flopped in her chest. Was Vo coming after her? Could it be that even a mouthful of poison hadn’t killed him?

Perhaps he stumbled and fell over the side, she told herself as she quickly started splashing toward the shore again. Maybe he’s already drowned.

Only a long stone’s throw from the fishing boat Qinnitan was already cold and exhausted—at times it even seemed the water was pushing her away from the shore, as though Efiyal, the wicked old god of the ocean, was doing his best to defeat her.

I won’t… she thought, although she wasn’t quite sure what she was resisting and she was finding it hard to think. Death? The gods? Daikonas Vo? I won’t!

She fought on, struggling and thrashing so that she knew they must be able to see her from the boat, but the boat did not come after her. Did that mean Vo was dead? Or that they felt sure she was beyond rescue?

It didn’t matter. She could do nothing but what she was doing.

Water stung her eyes and threatened to fill her mouth. The moon hung above her like a giant eye, rippling as her head sunk beneath the water each time and then rose again. Her legs were like stone, dragging her down no matter how hard she kicked them against the grip of the ocean. And now the weariness seeping through her, which only a short while earlier had burned in her veins and lungs like fire, had begun to turn into something else—a killing cold that spread inch by inch until at last she could no longer feel her limbs, did not know up or down, living or drowning, whether it was the moon itself that hung above her or its reflection in the mirroring deeps…

Qinnitan’s feet touched sand and smooth rocks, then lost them again. A few more jerking lunges and the shore was beneath her again, this time for good. Her feet touched the bottom and the water was only at her neck… then her breasts… then her waist.

When she could no longer feel the water Qinnitan dropped onto the wet stones of the beach and followed the moon up into darkness.