Tad Williams - Shadowmarch

Opal sat up. “A child! I told you.” She looked at the boy for a moment. “One of the big folk, poor thing.”

“Poor thing, indeed!” Chert gently touched the scraped places on his neck and cheeks. “The little beast tried to murder me.”

“Oh, be still You startled him, that’s all.” She held out her hand toward the boy. “Come here—I won’t hurt you What’s your name, child?” When the boy did not reply, she fumbled in the wide pockets of her dress and withdrew a heel of brown bread. “Are you hungry?”

From the fierce glint in his eye, the boy was clearly very interested, but he still did not move toward her. Opal leaned forward and set the bread on the grass. He looked at it and her, then snatched the bread up, sniffed it, and crammed it into his mouth, scarcely bothering to chew before swallowing. Finished, the boy looked at Opal with fierce expectancy. She laughed in a worried way and felt in her pocket until she located a few pieces of dried fruit, which she also set on the grass. They disappeared even faster than the bread.

“What’s your name?” she asked the boy. “Where are you from?”

Searching his teeth with his tongue for any fragments of food that might have escaped him, he only looked at her. “Dumb, it seems,” said Chert. “Or at least he doesn’t speak our…”

“Where is this?” the boy asked.

“Where… what do you mean?” said Chert, startled.

“Where is this… ?” The boy swept his arm in a circle, taking in the trees, the grassy hillside, the fogbound forest. “This… place. Where are we?” He sounded older than his age somehow, but younger, too, as though speaking were a new thing to him.

“We are on the edge of Southmarch—called Shadowmarch by some, because of this Shadowline.” Chert gestured toward the misty boundary, then swung himself around to point in the opposite direction. “The castle is over there.”

“Shadow… line?” The boy squinted. “Castle?”

“He needs more food.” Opal’s words had the sound of an inarguable decision rendered. “And sleep You can see he’s nearly falling over.”

“Which means what?” But Chert already saw the shape of it and did not like it much at all. “Which means we take him home, of course.” Opal stood, brushing the loose grass from her dress. “We feed him.” “But… but he must belong to someone! To one of the big-folk families!”

“And they tied him in a sack and left him here?” Opal laughed scornfully. “Then they are likely not pining for his return.”

“But he came… he came from…” Chert looked at the boy, who was sucking his fingers and examining the landscape. He lowered his voice. “He came from the other side.”

“He’s here now,” Opal said. “Look at him. Do you really think he’s some unnatural thing? He’s a little boy who wandered into the twihght and was tossed out again. Surely we, of all people, should know better than to believe everything that has to do with the Shadowline is wicked. Does this mean you plan to throw back the gems you’ve found here, too? No, he probably comes from some other place along the boundary—somewhere leagues and leagues away! Should we leave him here to starve?” She patted her thigh, then beckoned.”Come along with us, child. We’ll take you home and feed you properly.”

Before Chert could make further objection Opal set off, stumping back along the hillside toward the distant castle, the hem of her old dress trailing in the wet grass. The boy paused only to glance at Chert—a look the little man first thought was threatening, then decided might be as much fear as bravado—before following after her.

“No good will come of it,” Chert said, but quietly, already resigned through long expenece to whatever complex doom the gods had planned for him In any case, better some angry gods than an angry Opal. He didn’t have to share a small house with the gods, who had their own vast and hidden places. He sighed and fell into step behind his wife and the boy.

The wyvern had been brought to bay in another copse of trees, a dense circle of rowans carpeted with bracken. Even through the milling ring of hounds, wild with excitement but still cautious enough to keep their distance, perhaps put off by the unusual smell or strange slithering movements of their quarry, Briony could see the length of the thing as it moved restlessly from one side of the copse to the other, its bright scales glimmering in the shadows like a brushfire.

“Cowardly beasts, dogs,” said Barrick. “They are fifty to one but still hold back.”

“They are not cowards!” Briony resisted the urge to push him off his horse. He was looking even more drawn and pale, and had tucked his left arm inside his cloak as though to protect it from chill, though the afternoon air was still sun-warmed. “The scent is strange to them!”

Barrick frowned. “There are too many things coming across the Shadowline these days. Just back in the spring there were those birds with the iron beaks that killed a shepherd at Landsend. And the dead giant in Daler’s Troth…”

The thing in the copse reared up, hissing loudly. The hounds started away, whining and yipping, and several of the beaters shouted in terror and scuttled back from the ring of trees. Briony could still see only a little of the beast as it slipped in and out through the gray rowan trunks and the tangled undergrowth. It seemed to have a head narrow as a sea horse’s, and as it hissed again she glimpsed a mouth full of spiny teeth.

It almost seems frightened, she thought, but that did not make sense. It was a monster, an unnatural thing there could be nothing in its dark mind but malevolence.

“Enough!” cried Kendrick, who was holding his frightened horse steady near the edge of the copse. “Bring me my spear!”

His squire ran to him, face wan with dread, looking determinedly at anything except the hissing shape only a few paces away. The young man, one of Tyne Aldritch’s sons, was in such terrified haste to hand over the spear and escape that he almost let the long, gold-chased shaft with its crosshaft and its heavy iron head fall to the ground as the prince reached for it Kendrick caught it, then kicked out at the retreating youth in irritation.

Others of the hunting party were calling for spears as well With the kill so close, the two dozen immaculately coiffed and dressed noblewomen who had accompanied the hunt, most riding decorously on sidesaddles, a few even carried in litters—their awkward progress had slowed everyone else quite a bit, to Briony’s disgust—took the opportunity to withdraw to a nearby hillock where they could watch the end from a safe distance Briony saw that Rose and Moina, her two principal ladies-in-waiting, had spread a blanket for her between them on the hillside and were looking at her expectantly. Rose Trelling was one of Lord Constable Brone’s nieces, Moina Hartsbrook the daughter of a Helmingsea nobleman. Both were good-hearted girls, which made them Briony s favorites out of what she thought of as a mediocre stable of court women, but she sometimes found them just as silly and hidebound as their older relatives, scandalized by the slightest variation from formal etiquette or tradition. Old Puzzle the jester was sitting with them, restringing his lute, biding his time until he could see what food the ladies might have in their hamper.

The idea of withdrawing to the safety of the hill and watching the rest of the hunt while her ladies-in-waiting gossiped about people’s jewelry and clothes was too painful. Briony scowled and waved at one of the beaters as he staggered past with several of the heavy spears in his arms. “Give me one of those.”

“What are you doing?” Barrick himself could not easily handle the long spears with only one arm, and had not bothered to call for one. “You can’t go near that creature Kendrick won’t let you.”