Tad Williams: Shadowplay

Shaso nodded slowly. “It will take all the night, and perhaps some of the morning.”

Ena laughed. “If Pyarin Ky’vos sends even a small, kind wind, I will have you on shore before dawn.”

“And then where?” Briony knew better than to doubt this strong-armed girl, at least about rowing a boat. “Should we not consider Blueshore? I know Tyne’s wife well. She would shelter us, I’m certain—she’s a good woman, if overly fond of clothes and chatter. Surely that would be safer than Marrinswalk, where...”

Shaso growled, a deep, warning sound that might have issued from a cave. “Did you or did you not promise to do as I say?”

“Yes, I promised, but...”

“Then we go to Marrinswalk. I have my reasons, Highness. None of the nobility can shield you. If we force the Tollys’ hand, Duke Caradon will bring the Summerfield troops to Blueshore and throw down Aldritch Stead—they will never be able to hold off the Tollys with Tyne and all his men gone to this battle you tell me of. They will announce you were a false claimant—some serving girl I forced to play the part of the missing princess regent—and that the real Briony is already long dead. Do you see?”

“I suppose...”

“Do not suppose. At this moment, strength is all and the Tollys hold the whip hand. You must do what I ask and not waste time arguing. We may soon find ourselves in straits where hesitation or childish stubbornness will kill us.”

“So. Marrinswalk, then.” Briony stood, struggling to hold down her anger. Calm, she told herself. You made a promise—besides, remember the foolishness with Hendon. You cannot afford your temper right now. You are the last of the Eddons. Suddenly frightened, she corrected herself. The last of the Eddons in Southmarch. But of course, even that wasn’t true—there were no true Eddons left in Southmarch anymore, only Anissa and her baby, if the child had survived his first, terrible night.

“I will attend to the sea god’s shrine,” she said, speaking as carefully as she could, putting on the mask of queenly distance she had supposed left behind with the rest of the life that had been stolen from her. “Help Lord dan-Heza down to the boat, Ena. I will meet you there.”

She walked out of the kitchen without looking back.

Despite the rain hissing down all around, spattering on the mossy rocks and drizzling from the branches of the trees that leaned over them like disapproving old men, the boy made no effort to cover himself. As raindrops bounced from his forehead and ran down his face, he barely blinked. Watching him made Ferras Vansen feel more lonely than ever.

What am I doing here? No power of the gods or earth should have been able to lure me back to this mad place.

But shame and desire, commingled in a most devastating way, had clearly been more powerful than any gods, because here he was behind the Shadowline again, lost in an unholy forest of crescent-leaved trees and vines sagging with heavy, dripping black blossoms, terrified that if he did lose the boy he would bring even more pain to the Eddons —and more important, to Barrick’s sister, Princess Briony.

Hidden lightning glowed above them and thunder rumbled as the cold torrent grew stronger. Vansen scowled. This storm was too much, he decided: even if it meant another pitched battle with the unresponsive prince, they dared not go any farther today. If they were not struck by lightning or a deathly fever, their horses would surely stumble blindly off a crag and they would die that way—even Barrick’s strange, dark fairy-horse was showing signs of distress, and Vansen’s own mount was within moments of balking completely. No sane person would travel unknown roads in weather like this.

Of course, just now, Barrick Eddon was clearly far from sane; the prince showed no inclination even to slow down, and was almost out of sight.

“Highness!” Vansen called above the hiss of rain. “If we ride farther we’ll kill the horses, and we won’t survive without them.” Time was confusing behind the Shadowline, but it seemed they had been riding through this endless gloaming for at least a day. After a terrible battle and a sleepless night spent hiding in the rocks at the edge of the battlefield, Ferras Vansen was already so exhausted he feared he would lose his balance and fall out of his saddle. How could the prince be any less weary?

“Please, Highness! I do not know where you are going but we will not reach it safely in this weather. Let us make some shelter and rest and wait for the storm to pass.”

To his surprise, Barrick suddenly reined up and sat waiting in the harsh drizzle. The young man did not even resist when Vansen caught up and half yanked him, half helped him out of his saddle, then he sat quietly on a rock like an obedient child while the guard captain did his best, spluttering and cursing, to shape wet branches into some kind of shelter. It was as though only part of the prince were truly present, as though he were living deep inside his own body like an ailing man in a huge house. Barrick Eddon did not look up even when Vansen accidentally scratched his cheek with a pine bough, nor respond to the guardsman’s apologies with anything more than a slow eyeblink.

During his life at the castle Vansen had often thought that the nobility lived in a different world than he and his kind, but never had it seemed more true than this moment.

What kind of lackwit are you? Vansen’s tiny fire, only partly protected by the overhanging rock against which he’d set it, hissed and struggled against the horizontal rain. An animal —he prayed it was an animal—howled in the distance, a stuttering screech that made Vansen’s hair stand and prickle. Trigon guard us, will you truly give up your own life for a boy who scarcely knows you’re here?

But he wasn’t doing it for Barrick, not really. He’d nothing against the youth, but it was the boy’s sister that Vansen feared, whose grief if her twin were lost would break Ferras Vansen’s own heart beyond repair. He had sworn to her he would treat Barrick as though he were his own family—an oath that was foolish in so many ways as to beggar the imagination.

He watched the prince eating one of their last pieces of jerked meat, chewing and staring as absently as a cow in a meadow. Barrick was not merely distracted, he seemed lost in a way Vansen couldn’t quite understand. The boy could hear what Vansen said at least some of the time or he would not have stopped here, and he occasionally looked his companion in the eye as though actually seeing him. A few times he had even spoken, although saying nothing much that Vansen could understand, mostly what the guardsman had begun to think of as elf-talk, the same sort of babble Collum Dyer had spouted when the shadowlands had swallowed his sense. But even at his best moments, the prince was not completely there. It was as though Barrick Eddon were dying—but in the slowest, most peaceful way possible.

With a shudder, Vansen remembered something told to him by one of his Southmarch guardsmen—Geral Kelty, who had been lost in these same lands on Vansen’s last, terrifying visit, vanished along with the merchant Raemon Beck and the others. Kelty had grown up a fisherman’s son on Landsend, and when he was still a boy, he and his father and younger brother had been caught in a sudden violent squall where the bay met the ocean. Their boat tipped over, then was pushed under by a wave and sank with horrifying swiftness, taking their father with it. Kelty and his younger brother had clung to each other, swimming slowly toward the land for a long time, fighting wind and high waves.