Tad Williams: Shadowplay

“He will sleep where he is, I think,” said Ena quietly, perhaps to spare Shaso the shame of being talked about like a child. “He should be comfortable enough.”

“When this is over and the Tollys are rotting on the gibbet, the Eddons will not forget their friends.” The Skimmer girl showed no emotion at this, so Briony tried to make herself clear. “You and your father will be rewarded.”

Now Ena definitely did smile, even looked as though she might be stifling laughter, which confounded Briony utterly, but she only said, “Thank you, Highness. It is my honor to do what I can.”

Puzzled, but too weary to think about it, Briony felt her way to the nearest bedchamber, turned over the dusty bedcover, then stretched out. It was only as sleep dragged her down that she remembered this room had been the one that Kendrick had used.

Come back, then, she told her dead brother, dizzy with exhaustion. Come back and haunt me, dear, dear Kendrick—I miss you so...!

But the sleep into which she fell, tumbling slowly downward like a feather in a well, was impenetrably dark, empty of both dreams and ghosts.

The island was surrounded by fog, but dawn still brought enough light to make the lodge on M’Helan’s Rock a familiar place once more—light that slipped in through the high windows and filled the great hall with a blue-gray glow as soft as the sheen on a pearl and made the statues of the holy onirai in their wall-niches look as if they were stirring into life. Even the kitchen again seemed to be the homely place Briony remembered. Things that she had been too exhausted to notice the night before, the tang of the air, the lonely cries of shearwaters and gulls, the heavy furniture scuffed by generations of Eddon children creating imaginary riding-caravans or fortresses, now made her insides twist with sorrow and longing.

Gone. Every one of them. Barrick, Father, Kendrick. She felt her eyes brim with tears and wiped them angrily. But Barrick and Father are alive—they must be. Don’t be a stupid girl. Not gone, just...somewhere else.

Crouched in the heather at the front of the lodge, she stared long and hard back at the castle. A few torches seemed to be moving on the bay at the base of the castle walls— search boats checking the inlets and caves along the shore of Midlan’s Mount—but none of them seemed to have ventured any farther from Southmarch. Briony felt a gleam of hope. If she herself had forgotten the summer house, there was a chance the Tollys wouldn’t remember until she and Shaso were long gone.

Back in the kitchen she dutifully ate her fish soup, enlivened this time by wild rosemary which Ena had found thriving in the masterless, overgrown garden. Briony could not be certain when she would eat again, and she reminded herself that even fish soup was noble if it would give her the strength to survive so that one day she could drive something sharp through Hendon Tolly’s heart.

Shaso was eating too, if not much more skillfully or swiftly than the night before. Still, his ashen pallor had improved a little and his breathing did not hiss like a fireplace bellows. But most important of all, though his eyes still lay sunken in dark-ringed flesh (which Briony thought gave him the look of an oniron like Iaris or Zakkas the Ragged or some other sun-corched, wilderness-maddened prophet from The Book of the Trigon ), his gaze was bright and intent again— that of the Shaso she knew.

“We can go nowhere today.” He took one last swallow before lowering the empty bowl. “We cannot risk it.” “But surely the fog will hide us...?”

His look had much of the old Shaso in it, equal parts irritation at being disputed and disappointment that she had not thought things through completely. “Perhaps here, upon the bay, Princess. But what about when we make land in the late afternoon, with the mist burned away? Even if we are not seen by enemies, do you think the local fishermen there would be likely to forget the unusual pair they saw landing?” He shook his head. “We are exiles, Highness. Everything that has gone before will mean nothing if you give yourself away to your enemies. If you are captured, Hendon Tolly will not put you on trial or lock you away in the stronghold to be a rallying flag for those loyal to the Eddons. No, he will kill you and no one will ever see your body. He will not mind a few rumors of you among the people as long as he knows that you are safely dead.”

Briony thought of Hendon’s grinning face and her hands twitched. “We should have stripped his family of their titles and lands long ago. We should have executed the whole traitorous lot.”

“When? When did they reveal their treachery before it was too late? And Gailon, although I did not like him, was apparently an honorable servant of your family’s crown—if Hendon has told the truth in this one thing, at least. As for Caradon, we also know only what Hendon says of him, so his wickedness is as much in question as Gailon’s goodness. The world is strange, Briony, and it will only become stranger in the days ahead.”

She looked at his leathery, stern face and was filled with shame that she had been such a fool, to have taken so little care with the most precious of her family’s possessions. What must he think, her old teacher? What must he think of her and her twin, who had all but given away the Eddons’ throne?

As if he understood her thoughts, Shaso shook his head. “What happened in the past remains in the past. What is before us— that is everything. Will you put your trust in me? Will you do just as I say, and only what I say?”

Despite all her mistakes and self-disgust, she could not help bristling. “I am not a fool, Shaso. I am not a child any longer.”

For a moment his expression softened. “No. You are a fine young woman, Briony Eddon, and you have a good heart. But this is not the time for good hearts. This is the hour for suspicion and treachery and murder, and I have much experience of all those things. I ask you to put your trust in me.”

“Of course I trust you—what do you mean?”

“That you will do nothing without asking me. We are exiles, with a price on our heads. As I said, all that came before— your crown, your family’s history—will mean nothing if we are captured. You must swear not to act without my permission, no matter how small or unimportant the act seems. Remember, I kept my oath to your brother Kendrick even when it might have cost my life.” He stopped and took a deep breath, coughed a little. “It still might. So I want you to swear the same to me.” He fixed her with his dark eyes. This time it was not the imperious stare of old, the teacher’s stare—there was actually something pleading in it.

“You shame me when you remind me what you did for my family, Shaso. And you don’t take credit for your own stubbornness. But yes, I hear you, and yes, I understand. I’ll listen to what you say. I’ll do what you think is best.”

“Always? No matter how you may doubt me? No matter how angry I make you by not explaining my every thought?”

A quiet hiss startled Briony, until she realized it was the girl Ena, laughing quietly as she scrubbed out the soup pot. It was humiliating, but it would be more shameful still to continue arguing like a child. “Very well. I swear on the green blood of Erivor, my family’s patron. Is that good enough?”

“You should be careful when you make oaths on Egye-var, Highness,” said Ena cheerfully, “especially here in the middle of the waters. He hears.”

“What are you talking about? If I swear to Erivor, I mean it.” She turned to Shaso. “Are you satisfied now?”

He smiled, but it was only a grim flash of teeth, an old predator’s reflex. “I will not be satisfied with anything until Hendon Tolly is dead and whoever arranged Kendrick’s death has joined him. But I accept your promise.” He winced as he straightened his legs. Briony looked away: even though the Skimmer girl had bandaged the worst sores from the shackles, he was still covered with ugly scrapes and bruises and his limbs were disturbingly thin. “Now, tell me what has happened—everything you can remember. Little news was brought to me in my cell, and I could make small sense out of what you told me last night.”