Tad Williams: Shadowplay

Didn’t save me like my master did—fact be, I saved you .” He preened. “Fact. Skurn the Mighty.”

“If you’ll help me take this...if you’ll help me get to Qul-naQar, I’ll make sure you never have to hunt for food the rest of your life. In fact, I’ll bring you fresh kills on a plate, every day.”

“True?” The raven hopped a few times, fluttered up, and settled. “Bargain, then. If you be trustworthy.”

Despite feeling as empty as a forgotten scarecrow, Barrick could still muster a little irritated pride. “I am a prince—the son of a king.”

Skurn made a snorting noise. “Oh, aye, that makes a difference.” He thought, blinking his dark eyes slowly. “But you were my master’s friend. So—partners.”

“Partners. By the gods, who would have thought?” Barrick crawled into the bushes, not caring where he lay his head. “Let me know if anyone comes to kill me, will you?”

He did not wait to hear the raven’s reply, because sleep was already pulling him down into dark places deeper than any mineshaft.

Vansen kept on because there was nothing else he could do, putting one foot in front of the other, trudging forward along the endless pale span through black nothing. There were times that he paused to rest, but he never did it for long, because each time he would begin to worry that he might somehow get himself turned around, that he would confuse the two indistinguishable directions and by accident set off back in the direction he had come. At other times he entertained the amusing notion that instead of a curving span across an abyss, he was walking on the outside of a great ring floating in darkness, that it had no beginning or end, and that he, Ferras Vansen, sentenced for crimes about which he was not quite certain (although he could judge himself guilty of much) would walk it forever, undying, an endless sentence.

But could the gods really be so cruel? And even if they were, why did he still feel tired, as a living man might feel?

And what was it about the gods that pricked at him? Why were they weighing so heavily on his thoughts? Every time he tried to remember how he had come to this place, what had seemed solid fell apart in his grasp, like fog. He could not remember where he had been before this—in fact, he could remember almost nothing that had happened since he threw himself against the guards in the demigod’s underground fortress. He seemed to recall a city, and something about his father, but surely those were dreams, since his father had been dead for years.

But if those had been dreams, then what was this place? Where was he? Who or what had set him on this unending track?

What if he just stepped off this pointless, endless bridge, he wondered, and let himself fall? Could whatever happened —death or an equally pointless, endless plunge—really be so much worse? It was something to keep in reserve, he decided—a door. It might turn out to be the only door that could lead him out of this dreadful emptiness.

Ferras Vansen had no answers, but being able to ask questions at least kept him from going mad.

It was as though he had blinked, but the moment of his eyes being shut had lasted for a year instead of an instant. When he noticed what had happened, everything had changed.

The abyss was gone, the infinite, eternal black faded in some strange way to a much more tangible darkness, that of ordinary shadow. Something that felt like stone still lay beneath his feet, but flat, not curved, and he had the distinct sense of being surrounded by something other than the dreadfully familiar void.

He stopped, surprised and more than a little frightened— after so long, any change was terrifying. He dropped to his knees and sniffed the cold stone, pressed his forehead against it. It felt real. It felt different, which was even more important.

He stood up and to his immense surprise the darkness itself began to recede, or rather the light came and dissolved it: brightness flooded in, the light of actual, homely torches, and he could see walls around him, stone walls that had been decorously carved. He followed the lines of the ceiling up and discovered, to his horror, an immense shape looking back down at him, black and ominous. But it was only a statue, a huge image of Kernios, and although Vansen was startled when he looked down and saw the same statue staring up at him from beneath his feet, he grasped a moment later that he stood on some kind of looking-glass stone, a vast mirror which reflected the pit so intricately carved in the ceiling overhead, as well as great Kernios looking down, or up, from its depths.

Staring up and then down made him dizzy. Vansen almost fell, but caught himself. Where was he? Was this some deep place in the earth beneath the demigod’s mine? He had fallen through the god’s open gateway—was this the heart of the god’s sanctuary? But it seemed too...ordinary, somehow. The carving was beautiful, the statue of Kernios awe-inspiring, but they did not seem otherworldly.

He caught himself when he almost toppled again, forced himself to breathe. He was weary beyond belief. He was alive. The one was proof of the other, and the solid room around him was more proof that he had survived, no matter where he might be. Across from him was a massive doorway. He went to it and tested it. Despite its heaviness, it swung open at a touch.

The room on the other side was full of small figures— waiting for him, Vansen thought at first, but when he saw the startled look on the little men’s faces he knew that was not true. Servants of Kernios, perhaps? But there had also been tiny men like this in Jikuyin’s mines. Vansen held up his hands, wondering if they could speak any language he knew. “Can...you...understand...me?”

“What in the name of the Earth Elders were you doing in the Council Chamber, stranger?” one of the little men asked him, frowning. “You’re not allowed in there.” His eyes grew wide with alarm and he turned and scuttled out the far door. The rest of the little men followed him, looking back fearfully as they fled, as though Vansen were some kind of dangerous beast.

He stared after them and a chill traversed his spine from tailbone to skull and back. Not only was it his tongue the little man had spoken, it had been a perfect Southmarch accent. What was happening? What kind of trick was being played on him?

Vansen stood for a long time letting his heart slow, staring around the wide room and trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but almost afraid to find out. At last the door of the large chamber opened and a group of the little men, this time carrying shovels and picks and other weapons, came cautiously toward him across the shiny stone floor. Vansen lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, but his attention was caught by the stout man who came with them—a normal man, someone Vansen’s own height. There was something oddly familiar about his face... “I know you, sir,” he said as the big man and his child-sized army approached. “You are...gods save me, you are Chaven, the royal family’s physician.”

“So you say,” the man said. He did not look the type to be leading any armed band, even one this size. “But I do not admit it. You are trespassing here, you know. What are you doing in the Funderling’s guildhall?”

“Funderlings? Guildhall?” Vansen could only stare at the man. “What madness is this? Where am I?”

“By all the gods,” Chaven said, and stopped. He put out his arms to hold back the nearest Funderlings, or perhaps to support himself—he looked as though he had been struck a blow. “I know this man, but he was lost in the battle against the Twilight People. Are you not Captain Vansen, sir? Are you not the captain of the royal guard?”