Shadowheart Part 2

The dead lands. The Valley of the Ancestors. The fear was growing so thick he could scarcely breathe. The fear was growing so thick he could scarcely breathe. What has happened to my life? What has happened to my life?

"Quiet now." Saqri's voice was music in a haunting minor key. "We are close. We must not frighten them."

"They're frightened?" frightened?"

"Only of life. Of too much care. Of the pull and grasp of memory." He could feel deep sadness in her words. "But I must bring all that and more to my brother."

Things moved around him now in the inconstant darkness, forms with some kind of independent existence from the gra.s.s and the hills. He could not see them, exactly, could only sense them as a man can feel when someone stands close behind him. These new forms seemed distant, almost empty, little more than wind and the impression of existence.

"These are the long dead, or perhaps the impressions those left behind when they moved on to other places." Saqri's voice seemed distant, her light scarcely more visible than the empty shapes around him. "Do not fear them-they hold no harm for you."

But he did fear them, not because they menaced him, but because they did not even seem to notice him or anything else. Were they simply shadows left behind, as Saqri said, or were they sunk so deep in death that they could not even be understood anymore by the living? It terrified him to imagine becoming such a thing some day.

"There." Saqri had moved a little closer, her swan-form faint as foxfire. "I see them-they are in the glade."

She led him into a murk of shadows that stood like trees. They were silvered ever so faintly by radiance from above, though no source was visible, as though the moon had let some of its light fall like dew before disappearing from the sky.

He saw them, then-a cl.u.s.ter of smeared, dully gleaming shapes that wavered as if seen through deep water or ancient gla.s.s. They were deer, or at least each bore a shining filigree upon his brow that might have been antlers. They moved restlessly as Barrick approached, but did not run.

"Do not go closer," Saqri told him. "They can smell the life on you. They may not remember it but they know it is foreign to this place."

Now he could see something brighter in the wavering light-eyes. The deer-shapes were watching him. "What do we do?"

"You? Nothing . . . yet. This first task is set only for me." And he felt her voice stretch out as her wings had, gently enfolding the herd before them with her words. "Listen to me, all you lords of winds and thought. I seek the one who in life was Ynnir, my brother. I am Saqri, the last daughter of the First Flower."

Barrick heard a voice, or felt it sighing like the wind in a tangle of branches. "What do you want? You do not belong here. Do the black h.e.l.lebores still bloom in the Dawnflower's garden, or has the Defeat finally come?" "What do you want? You do not belong here. Do the black h.e.l.lebores still bloom in the Dawnflower's garden, or has the Defeat finally come?"

"It has not come yet, but it may be upon us with the next breath, my fathers. I have no time to waste, even in this timeless place. Send me Ynnir."

"The youngest of us . . . comes ..." The voice was fading even as it spoke. The voice was fading even as it spoke.

And then another shape appeared before them, closer and clearer than the others, a great stag whose gleam was far more vibrant than those of its older brethren. A lavender glow hung between its spreading antlers, the warmest thing in all of that cold, dark valley.

"Saqri?" it said after a long silence. it said after a long silence. "Beloved? How have you come here?" "Beloved? How have you come here?"

"By roads I should not have traveled, and on which I may not find my way back, even if you help us." Her voice was as calm as ever, but some tight-drawn note in it told Barrick that this was not a happy meeting. "If there is to be any chance at all we must be swift. Come back with us, Brother. Your manchild is overwhelmed by what you have given him-his blood boils with it. Come back and help him to live with the terrible gift of the Fireflower."

The great stag lowered its head. "I cannot, Sister. Every moment it is harder to think as you think. Every moment the current pulls me farther into the river of forgetfulness. Soon the only part of me that will still touch the world will be that part which is of the Fireflower."

"But you must . . . !"

"You do not understand. You do not understand . . . what it would cost me."

Saqri was silent for a long moment. "Even to save the manchild, you will not come? You would abandon your own last and greatest gamble?"

The great stag raised his head. His eyes for a moment took on the same lavender gleam as the light that shimmered above his brow. "Very well, my sister . . . my most beloved enemy. The victory is yours. Every instant I stay in the between-lands, the House of Forever draws away from me . . . but I will do my best." The beast lowered its pale head like a prisoner awaiting the headsman's ax. "I will give what I have. I hope that it is enough."

2.

A Letter from Erasmias Jino.

"It is agreed by all men that the holy Orphan was born of lowly sheep herders in the hills of Krace during the reign of the Tyrant Osias."

-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

BRIONY THOUGHT THAT TRAVELING with even a small army-and Eneas kept reminding her that his Temple Dogs made an extremely extremely small army, scarcely even a battalion-was like living in a movable city, one that had to be taken down every morning and set up again the next evening. Even with a group of men as hardy as the prince's troops, swift riders who needed little in this spring weather beyond bedrolls and some source of water, they still could travel each day only as far as caution permitted. Few people were on the roads in this strange year, and those who were often had traveled no farther than from one walled town to the next, so information about what lay beyond the Southmarch border was scarce. small army, scarcely even a battalion-was like living in a movable city, one that had to be taken down every morning and set up again the next evening. Even with a group of men as hardy as the prince's troops, swift riders who needed little in this spring weather beyond bedrolls and some source of water, they still could travel each day only as far as caution permitted. Few people were on the roads in this strange year, and those who were often had traveled no farther than from one walled town to the next, so information about what lay beyond the Southmarch border was scarce.

Every day took them farther north, winding up King Karal's Road (named after one of Eneas' most famous ancestors) out of Syan and through the lands that lay between it and the March Kingdoms, mostly tiny princ.i.p.alities who offered token allegiance to the throne in Tessis or the throne in Southmarch, but which only existed because the long era of peace had allowed them to keep their soldiers at home. Now that the north was in chaos they were less happy and less hospitable than they had been in the past.

They had discovered one such county seat near Tyosbridge. The land's master, Viscount Kymon, had refused to let Prince Eneas and his men inside the walls, although it would have brought a great deal of money into the pockets of the town merchants. Eneas and his dozen or so officers (with Briony among them) had been invited to spend the night at the viscount's hall but Eneas had refused, furious at the implication that his men could not be trusted-or worse, that he himself could not be trusted. They had spent the night instead camped outside with the men, something Briony admired greatly as a gesture. Still, a part of her could not help regretting the lost chance at a night on a decent bed. Between sleeping on the ground with the players and the same now with the Syannese soldiers, she had largely forgotten how it felt to sleep on the soft beds of Broadhall Palace, although she remembered very clearly that she had liked it.

The next day Eneas marched his men back onto the Royal Highway. He scarcely glanced up at the viscount's walled stronghold on the hill, but more than a few of the soldiers gave it a wistful look as it disappeared behind them.

"It's just as well," Eneas told Briony and his chief lieutenant, a serious young knight named Miron, Lord Helkis, who treated the prince with the respect normally given to a father, though Eneas was only a few years older. "They would only lose their edge in a city, anyway. Cities are terrible places-full of idlers and thieves and wicked women."

"Truly?" Briony asked. "That seems a strange thing to say. Don't your father and the rest of your family live in Tessis, the grandest city in Eion? Don't you live there yourself?"

Eneas made a sour face. "That is not the same, my lady. I live there because I must, and only when I must, but I prefer to live in camp-or in my hall in the mountains." His handsome face was serious-a little too serious, Briony thought. "Yes, that is a place you must see, Briony. From the upstairs windows you can see all the way down the valley-not a person in sight but a few shepherds and their flocks in the high meadows."

"It sounds . . . very pretty. And I'm sure the shepherds like it, too. But is there nothing good to be said about cities-or the royal court?"

He looked at her a little mistrustfully, as though she might be trying to trick him. "You saw what a court is like. You heard them whispering about you. You saw what they did to you, because you are from a quieter, smaller place and not used to their ways."

Briony raised her eyebrow. Her problem in Tessis had been that she had enemies, one of them the king's mistress, not necessarily that she was an innocent country girl who did not understand how to protect herself. As if no one had ever tried to kill her until she got to Syan! She wondered if that was part of what Eneas liked about her-that he thought of her as little more than a peasant girl, although one who had a stubborn, forward streak.

"In any case, Highness," she replied, "some of us like thing things that can be found in cities, and even at court-dancing and music, theater, markets full of things from other places ..." Just talking about it reminded her of the delight she had felt as a young girl when her father showed her some of the more exotic items to be found in Market Square, the stuffed lizard from Talleno that looked like a tiny dragon, the huge skull of a strange, horned animal from somewhere beyond the Xandian desert, even the chest of spices from that continent's wet, hot jungles, not a one of them familiar except good Marashi pepper, which always made her nose wrinkle. She could still remember the anxious merchant, a little Kracian who had bounced up and down on his heels in front of the king, smiling and spreading his hands as if to say, "All this is mine!" Her father had bought the stuffed lizard, which had sat in her room for years until one of the dogs finally chewed it up.

Eneas was not thinking of the same kind of pleasant memories, to judge by the look on his face. "Cities! I despise them. I beg your pardon, Princess, but you cannot guess the kind of trouble they make for a ruler. The ideas that ordinary people get into their heads when they live in a city! All day long they see their neighbors wearing garments too fancy for their station, or they see n.o.bles acting no better than the peasants themselves, until n.o.body knows where he belongs or what he is supposed to do. And theaters! Briony, I know you have a sentimental attachment to those players with whom you traveled, but you must know that most theaters are little better than . . . forgive my rough speech, I beg you, but it must be said . . . little better than brothels when it comes to the morals of the players. They parade in front of drunken men-some of the players dressed as women!-and frequently hire themselves out like common prost.i.tutes. Again, I beg your pardon, but the truth must be told."

Briony tried not to smile. It was true that many of the players were a little loose in their morals-the treacherous Feival Ulosian, for one, had kept a string of wealthy admirers up and down the north of Eion-but she just couldn't see it with the same indignation Eneas felt. If the prince's beloved shepherds were so much better behaved, it could only be for lack of human companionship out there on the windy hillsides. Then again, they couldn't be as chaste as all that-little shepherds had to come from somewhere, didn't they . . . ?

"And why shouldn't ordinary people come together at a market or festival?" she said out loud. "Why would the G.o.ds have given us festivals if we were not supposed to enjoy them?"

Eneas shook his head. "That's just it. They didn't mean for such heedlessness to accompany their celebrations-they couldn't have! If you had stayed in Tessis longer you would have seen the Great Zosimia, and then you would know the truth. People dancing naked in the streets! Common folk mocking the n.o.bles-and the drunkenness and fornication! Again I beg your pardon, Princess Briony, but it is heartbreaking to see the lawlessness that has become ordinary in the cities. And not just on Great Zosimia but on Gestrimadi, Orphan's Day, even Kerneia-you need but name it, and you will find another day when the common folk turn their backs on honest toil and think of nothing but wine and dancing!"

As grateful as she was to him, Briony was beginning to think that Eneas was in some ways a bit of an old stick. "But the n.o.bles celebrate all these festival days and more besides. Why shouldn't the common people have the same privilege? They have the same G.o.ds."

Eneas frowned at her jest. "Of course they do. But it is the duty of the n.o.bles to provide an example. The lower cla.s.ses are like children-they cannot be allowed to do everything their elders are allowed to do. Would you permit a child to stay up all hours, drinking unwatered wine? Would you let a child go to the theater and see a man dressed up as woman kiss another man?"

Briony wasn't sure what she thought. She had heard sentiments like the prince's many times and had generally found herself agreeing-after all, if the common people could truly govern themselves then the G.o.ds would not have made kings and queens and priests and judges, would they? But this last year had made her look at things differently. Finn Teodoros, for instance, was one of the wisest people she'd ever met, and yet he was the son of a bricklayer. Nevin Hewney's father had been a cobbler but Hewney was still acknowledged to be a great playwright, better than dozens of writers from more n.o.ble backgrounds. And even the people she had met on the road while she was traveling in disguise had seemed little different than the n.o.bles of the Southmarch or Tessian court except in richness of clothing and sophistication of manners. Certainly her own brother Barrick always said that the lords and ladies of Southmarch were only perfumed peasants-wouldn't the opposite be just as true, then, that the peasants themselves were only unbathed n.o.bles . . . ?

"You have gone silent, my lady," said Eneas with a worried look on his fine face. "I have been too free with talk of rough matters."

"No," she said. "No, not at all, Prince Eneas. I am just thinking about the things you've said."

As they rode into the southeastern corner of Silverside, Briony discovered she could barely recognize her own country, her father's and grandfather's kingdom. There was little evidence out here of the siege of Southmarch, or in fact any trace of the fairy army at all-the Qar had pa.s.sed far to the east when they marched down from beyond the Shadowline-but even in this relatively undisturbed spot, it felt as though Briony and the Syannese had arrived in the middle of an icy winter instead of a fairly mild spring. Fields lay fallow, and those that had been planted were barely half-seeded, as though there had not been enough people to do the work. In other places entire villages lay deserted, cl.u.s.ters of empty cottages like the nests of birds after fledgling season.

"The not knowing, that's what it is." The weary innkeeper was closing up his roadside hostel in the Argas River Valley and was only too happy to sell most of what he had left to the prince's moving town. "First we were feared the Twilight People were coming this way-people said the fairies were burning all the towns north of the Syannese border. They never came, but people came through from the east, running away-people whose towns were were burned up, and they had terrible tales to tell. That scared away lots of our local folk, right there. After a while, though, hardly anybody using the road did for most of the rest of us. There are still people in these parts, especially the ones up in the hills, or the towns with high walls, but the villages along the road are all but empty." He shook his head, a man suddenly aged by fear and uncertainty. "And just like that, it all goes. You think it will never change but that's a lie. Things can change in a day." burned up, and they had terrible tales to tell. That scared away lots of our local folk, right there. After a while, though, hardly anybody using the road did for most of the rest of us. There are still people in these parts, especially the ones up in the hills, or the towns with high walls, but the villages along the road are all but empty." He shook his head, a man suddenly aged by fear and uncertainty. "And just like that, it all goes. You think it will never change but that's a lie. Things can change in a day."

In an hour, thought Briony. thought Briony. In a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. She was saddened by the innkeeper's confused, frustrated face, and saddened even more to know it would be a long time if ever before she could give these people any real help. She was saddened by the innkeeper's confused, frustrated face, and saddened even more to know it would be a long time if ever before she could give these people any real help.

But here is something that the n.o.bility can offer, she thought. she thought. In bad times, a king or a queen can be a rock for the waters to crash against, so those less strong are not washed away. In bad times, a king or a queen can be a rock for the waters to crash against, so those less strong are not washed away.

I will be such a rock. Only give me a chance, sweet Zoria, and I will be a rock for my people.

Qinnitan had only been awake a few confused moments when a glimpse of something manlike crawling on the beach drove her up the hills and into the forest. The thick morning fog hid the thing's full shape, but the look of it frightened her badly: either it was Vo, crippled by the poison, or something demonic, an affir affir out of old nursery tales lurching crablike along the gray northern sands. Qinnitan had no urge to find out which. out of old nursery tales lurching crablike along the gray northern sands. Qinnitan had no urge to find out which.

She made her way up the hillside, trying to stay on gra.s.s to protect her feet but often having to clamber through the thick, scratchy shrubs that covered the slope like blotches on the face of a beggar. After a sizable part of an hour had pa.s.sed, and she had put the beach far behind her, Qinnitan began to feel the sharp jab of hunger, a pain she welcomed because it came from a problem she might be able to do something about. The larger matter seemed hopeless: she was lost in an unfamiliar land, and even if she had truly escaped her captor and what she had seen on the beach had been only the last wisps of a dream, Qinnitan knew that there was little chance she would survive in the wilds for a tennight without help.

She stopped to rest near the top of the hill, in the middle of a stand of trees with slender white trunks shaded by delicate leaves. Each stand grew a decorous distance from its fellows so that the hilltop glen seemed a gathering of stout Zoaz-priests saluting the dawn. At first she was merely impressed by the number of trees and the profusion of light-shot greenery, so different from the shaded gardens of the Seclusion, but after climbing higher, she reached a place where the trees began to thin and Qinnitan saw the full extent of the woods and the white-capped mountains beyond. She fell to her knees.

It was one thing to see the forests of the Eion coastline from the rail of a ship, their unending dull green spread along the coast like a rumpled blanket, but quite another to be in in one and to think about crossing it. Qinnitan was a child of the desert, of streets where, despite the autarch's thousand sweepers, the sand still blew, and of gardens where water was abundant precisely because it was expensive and rare. Here, Nature squandered its blessings without discrimination, as if to say, "The way you and your people live is small and sad. See here, how for my own amus.e.m.e.nt I shower my riches on mere beasts and savages!" one and to think about crossing it. Qinnitan was a child of the desert, of streets where, despite the autarch's thousand sweepers, the sand still blew, and of gardens where water was abundant precisely because it was expensive and rare. Here, Nature squandered its blessings without discrimination, as if to say, "The way you and your people live is small and sad. See here, how for my own amus.e.m.e.nt I shower my riches on mere beasts and savages!"

For a long time she could only kneel, shivering, overwhelmed by the frightful vastness and strangeness of this alien world.

She did not find food that day or the next. She tried chewing on the gra.s.s that sprouted between the trees; it was bitter and did not ease the gnawing ache in her stomach, but at least it did not poison her. She heard birds, saw squirrels leaping through the upper branches, and once even saw a deer poised on a rise before her as if hoping to be noticed, but Qinnitan knew nothing of hunting or trapping. Neither had she seen a single residence or any sign of human habitation. While she was a prisoner her only thought had been to get off the boat, to free herself from Daikonas Vo so he could not give her to Sulepis, since she had decided long ago that it would be better to die than to fall into the autarch's hands again. But now that she was free and still alive, she wanted to stay stay alive but did not know how to do it. alive but did not know how to do it.

What was this place that Vo had called Brenland? She could not understand how such a place could even exist, endless forest crisscrossed with fern-lined streams, green hills that looked out over more green hills, silent but for the rasping calls of hawks. If such a place existed in Xis, people would come by the thousands to enjoy this abundance of greenery and shade-it would be a byword for luxury, comfort, and beauty! But this wilderness was empty of people, lonely as the cries of its winged hunters.

Qinnitan knew from something Vo had said that Brenland stood east and south of the place they had been headed, which meant there must be some kind of settlements to the west of her, perhaps even cities. She tried to use the sun as a guide but had trouble finding it sometimes, and when she found it again she often seemed to have lost as much ground as she had earlier gained. She could drink almost whenever she wanted from clean, cold pools, which did much to keep her from despair, but her hunger was growing every hour. When the discomfort became too much, or when her legs would not carry her any farther, she piled leafy branches on herself and did her best to sleep.

Once or twice, when she had reached a high place out from beneath the trees she thought she saw a dark shape behind her, following her trail. If it was not the murderer Vo, it was likely nothing much better, a bear or wolf or forest demon. Each time she saw something that might be that shape slipping along behind her like a lost shadow, her heart felt cold, but each time she hurried on, determined that whatever else might happen, she would never be a prisoner again.

Two days pa.s.sed, then three, then four. Each night it grew harder to ignore the griping pain in her stomach long enough to get to sleep, and harder to get up and go forward in the morning when yet another night had brought her no dreams of Barrick Eddon. For all she knew Barrick was dead now, or worse. When she most needed him, he had left her alone.

In the Seclusion, Qinnitan had fallen in love with one of Baz'u Jev's poems, called "Lost Upon the Mountain," and as the hours and days of Qinnitan's ordeal pa.s.sed, she recited it to herself over and over again like a magic spell, though it merely gave words to her sadness and added to her growing certainty that she would die here in this unknown waste.

"Morning has gone.

Midday has gone.

The shadows are in the folds of the deep valleys And I have lost my path.

"The wind is trying to tell me something But I cannot understand the words How does the sun Find his way back through the darkness?

"Somewhere I hear the call of a mountain goat.

Somewhere I hear the shepherd's cry.

But though I turn and turn I cannot find the direction home.

How does the moon find his house in blinding day?

"And yet all come home All come home again All come home and find the fires Lit for their homecoming.

And wine waiting in the cup.

"I ask you who find me Only to remember, please remember, That once I had breath, and on that breath Was this song."

Keeping something familiar and sweet in her mind when the strangeness was crowding in brought her only a small amount of relief, but in this wild, empty country, that felt like a great deal to be grateful for.

Despite her year of leisured luxury in the Seclusion, Qinnitan had become considerably tougher long before she staggered out of the water and onto the sh.o.r.e of this strange place. She had worked hard in Hierosol, harder even than when she had been an acolyte in the Hive, and Vo had kept her since in painful and uncomfortable conditions, feeding her only enough to keep her middling healthy; she had also slipped part of her own food to the boy Pigeon while they were still together. So Qinnitan was no hothouse flower, no orchid in the autarch's greenhouse, like the woman Baz'u Jev described in one poem, "A fragrance of ineffable sweetness, but the first brisk wind will carry it away, never to be tasted again ..." "A fragrance of ineffable sweetness, but the first brisk wind will carry it away, never to be tasted again ..." But now she was coming to the end of her strength. The fifth day-she thought it was the fifth, but she was no longer certain-and then the likely sixth pa.s.sed in a smear of dappled forest light, of needles and leaves sliding wetly underfoot, of first one stream to cross and then another, like shining stripes on the back of some giant beast . . . But now she was coming to the end of her strength. The fifth day-she thought it was the fifth, but she was no longer certain-and then the likely sixth pa.s.sed in a smear of dappled forest light, of needles and leaves sliding wetly underfoot, of first one stream to cross and then another, like shining stripes on the back of some giant beast . . .

Qinnitan fell down at last and could not get up. The shadows of the late afternoon had turned the forest into a single dark place, a great tomb filled with columns to hold the crushing weight of the world and the sky. Her head seemed full of voices, chanting wordlessly, but she thought perhaps it was only the shadows of the trees falling on her, heavy as drumbeats.

She tried to remember the prayers the Hive Sisters had taught her but she doubted Nushash could even hear her in this place so far from the sun and the red desert: a few words came to her, fragile as sand-sculptures, then quickly fell apart again.

Please, she prayed, she prayed, please do not let me die alone. please do not let me die alone. The noise in her head grew deeper, greater, like the rush of a tremendous wind. The noise in her head grew deeper, greater, like the rush of a tremendous wind. Please help me find a way to Barrick . . . to the red-haired boy who was kind to me. Oh, G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, please help me! I am so deep in the forest that I can't think anymore! Please help me! Where am I? Where is he? Please help us . . . ! Please help me find a way to Barrick . . . to the red-haired boy who was kind to me. Oh, G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, please help me! I am so deep in the forest that I can't think anymore! Please help me! Where am I? Where is he? Please help us . . . !

For long moments after Qinnitan awoke, she did not even realize that rain was falling on her, though she was shivering hard. Then, before she could do more than rise to a crouch, a nightmare shape lurched out from between two trees and into the clearing before her. He was bent double and walked with a shambling, crablike gait. His hair sprang wildly over his head and he had the beginnings of a s.h.a.ggy beard to match, but what sent a cold knife of fear deep into her gut was the mask of blood that all but covered his dirt-smeared face-blood from dozens of cuts, blood that had streamed in gouts from his nose and dried there, blood at the corners of his mouth and smeared in his whiskers. And when he opened his mouth to grin at her, there was even blood between his teeth.

"Ah, yes," said Daikonas Vo as calmly as if they had met in the marketplace. "Here you are."

The messenger from Syan had the look of a man who had nearly killed several horses reaching them; his cloak and breeches were more travel stains than cloth.

"Forgive me, your Royal Highness," he said, kneeling before Eneas. "I have left an exhausted mount in every post between here and Tessis but his lordship the marquis wanted you to have this as quickly as was possible."

Eneas reached out for the oilskin pouch, pulled out the letter, and looked briefly but closely at the seal. "My quartermaster will see you are given a meal and a place to sleep," he told the young courier. Standing there, Eneas opened the folded letter to read it while Briony waited as politely as she could. She guessed the marquis must be Erasmias Jino, a man Prince Eneas trusted despite his profession as spymaster. Briony herself had not particularly liked Jino to begin with, but unlike most of the folk in King Enander's court, he seemed to have done more good for her than bad.

"You should read this too," he said when he had finished. His face was grim; Briony felt her throat tighten.

"My father . . . is he . . . is there anything . . . ?"

"Nothing to say he is not well," Eneas quickly a.s.sured her. "Your pardon, my lady-I did not mean to frighten you. There is no direct mention of your father at all. But I do not like the other things Jino has to tell me."