(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (28 page)

He looked ahead along the line of their small caravan, almost a score of high-laden mules and half that many horses pulling wagons, all under the hand of his cousin Dannet Beck, who in turn ruled this mercantile venture on behalf of his father, Raemon’s uncle. Dannet had made a few mistakes over the past weeks, Raemon thought—like many untried men, he was quick to take resistance to his authority as a personal slight—but overall he had not done badly, and the mules and wagons were loaded down with miles of the finest dyed wool thread from Settland ready for the factories of the March Kingdoms. And Raemon himself would benefit from this venture, not merely by his own share, which, though tiny, would still bring him more money than he had ever had in his twenty-five years—enough to leave his parents’ house, perhaps and build his own—but through greater responsibilities in the future, and someday perhaps a good-sized share in the family venture.

His improving fortunes aside, though, he mostly felt a breathless impatience to see Derla again and hold her close, to see his children and his own father and mother and to eat bread at his own table. Only a few days, but the wait seemed longer now than it did when the journey had only just begun.

We would go faster if we had not combined with that Settish prince’s daughter and her party.
The girl, scarcely fourteen, with eyes like a frightened fawn, was being sent to marry Rorick Longarren, Earl of Daler’s Troth and a cousin of the Eddon family. From what Beck knew of Rorick, it seemed surprising that he would marry at all, let alone a girl of the remote and mountainous eastern lands, but royalty was royalty, it seemed, and any prince’s daughter no mean prize.

Beck had nothing against the girl, and it was a reassurance even in these fairly peaceful times to have her dozen armored guards riding with the caravan, but she had been frequently ill; at least three times the groups had been forced to stop early for the day because of it, something that had driven homesick Raemon Beck almost to despair.

He looked back at the Settlanders, then ahead at the uneven procession of pack mules. One of the drovers saw him looking and waved, then pointed at the chinks between the trees and the cloudless autumn sky as if to say, “Look how lucky we are!” The first days of their return journey had been bitter with cold rain off the eastern mountains, so this was indeed a kindly change.

He waved back, but in truth he did not much like these forested hills. He remembered them from the outbound trip, how they seemed to loom and lower in the rain, and how they still did even under sunlit skies. Even on a fairly warm day such as this they bore their own thick mists along the summit and in the valleys between the slopes. In fact, a tongue of fog seemed to be stretching its way down along the hillside ahead of them even now, crawling through the trees and across the dark green grass toward the road.

Still, it is faster than going by sea,
he thought.
All that way south, down through the straits and up the eastern coast just to get there—I would have been parted from Derla and the boys for half a year . . . !

Someone shouted up ahead. Raemon Beck was startled to see that the tongue of fog had already covered the road at the front of the caravan. Beyond a score of paces he now could see little except dark tree shadows and the vague outline of men and of beasts of burden. He looked up. The sky had swiftly gone dark, as though the mist crept above the trees as well as below.

A storm . . . ?

The shouting was quite loud now, with a strange edge to it—he heard not just confusion or irritation in the men’s voices, but real fear. The hairs rose on his neck and arms.

An attack? Bandits, taking advantage of the sudden fog?
He looked for the armored men who escorted the prince’s daughter, saw two of them thunder out of the mist and hurtle past him, and realized to his dismay that the fog was behind him now as well. They were all adrift in it like a boat on the ocean.

Even as he squinted into the mist, a shape leaped out and his horse reared in terror. Raemon Beck had only a moment to glimpse what had frightened his mount, but that moment was enough to make his heart stumble and almost stop with fright; it was a thing of tatters and cobwebs that flailed at him—pale, long-armed, and eyeless—with a mouth as ragged as a torn sack.

His horse reared again and then stumbled as its feet touched the earth. Beck had to cling for his life. Men were screaming all around him now—horses, too, dreadful shrieks unlike anything he had ever heard.

Shapes staggered in and out of the mist, men and other things, grappling, struggling. Some of the voices he had first thought were his companions he now could hear were calling or even singing in some unfamiliar language. More of the tattered things came twitching up out of the brush, but they made up only a small share of the bizarre shapes that danced and gibbered through the mist. Some of the attackers seemed only a little more substantial than the fog itself. Men and horses still screamed, but now the terrible sounds began to grow more faint, as though the mist were thickening into something heavy as stone, or as though Raemon himself had fallen into a hole that was now being filled in atop him.

A group of tiny, red-eyed shapes like malevolent bearded children leaped out of the grass and clawed at his stirrups. His horse kicked its way through them and bolted in shrilling panic. Branches lashed Raemon Beck’s face, but then a heavier limb snatched him completely out of the saddle and flung him to the ground, knocking out his breath and his wits in one blow.

 

He woke feeling like a sack of broken eggs. For a heart-clutching moment he saw a face peering down at him from the fog that still swirled all around—a strangely beautiful face, but cold and lifeless as one of the godly statues on a Trigon temple. He held his breath as though he might that way escape the demon’s attention, but it only stared at him. Its skin was pale, its eyes shiny as candleflame behind the thick glass of a temple window. He thought it was male, but truly it was hard to think of it as anything so simple and human. Then it was gone, simply vanished, and the fog swirled down around him and turned the world gray.

Raemon Beck squeezed his eyes shut and gasped for breath, waiting to die. When he had stayed unmoving long enough to become aware of his aching back and ribs, of the pounding of his head and the countless cuts and scratches on his skin, he opened his eyes once more. The fog was gone. He was in the shade of a deep dell, but he could see bits of blue sky above him through the leaves.

He sat up and looked around. The dell was empty.

Beck dragged himself to his feet, wincing but doing his best to remain silent, then crept back along the path of broken branches left by his horse’s flight from the road. There was no sign of the horse. There was no noise from any animals or men. Beck braced himself for the terrible scene he knew he would find.

He reached the road. A horse—not his own, but one of the caravan’s—stood there as if waiting for him. Its sides were heaving but it was otherwise unharmed, cropping grass by the roadside. As he walked toward it the horse startled a bit, then allowed itself to be stroked. After a moment it quieted and returned to grazing.

Other than this one animal, the road was empty. Of the dozens of men and horses and mules, the wool wagons, the armored soldiers, and the prince’s daughter, not to mention whatever army of nightmares had attacked them, no sign remained. Even the fog had vanished.

Terror and disbelief squeezed him like a brutal hand. Raemon Beck felt his stomach convulse, then he brought up the remains of his morning meal. He wiped his mouth and clambered hurriedly into the horse’s saddle, grunting at the pain in his ribs and back. His companions had disappeared so completely there was nowhere he could think of to begin a search, and in any case he did not want to search, did not want to spend another instant in this haunted spot. He only wanted to ride and ride until he reached a place where people lived.

He knew he could never come into these hills again. If that meant he must give up his place in the family venture and his wife and children must join him begging for coppers in the street, there was no help for it.

He kicked his heels against his new mount’s ribs and started east, huddled low against the horse’s neck and weeping.

It was early in the morning and she couldn’t sleep—had not slept all night, despite immense weariness. Briony lay in her bed staring into the darkness, listening to the slumber sounds of Rose and Moina and three other young noblewomen who were staying in the castle on this night before Kendrick’s funeral. How could
any
of them sleep, she wondered. Did they not know that everything was in danger—that the entire kingdom tottered?

If Shaso was the murderer and had acted alone, there could be no comprehensible reason for it, and so how could she trust anyone ever again? If somehow he had been suborned, or if someone else performed this terrible murder and painted him with the blame, then the Eddons had been purposefully struck to the heart by a terrible enemy, and struck as they slept in their own house. How could anyone ever sleep again?

Her heart had begun beating swiftly even before she realized what the new sound was: a quiet knock at the door of her chamber. There were guards outside, she knew. Even that careless fool Ferras Vansen would not leave her unguarded at a time like this. She pulled a cloak over her nightdress—the room and the stone floors were cold—and started toward the door.

But Kendrick had guards,
she remembered, and her skin took a deeper chill.
He would have thought he was safe, too.

“Princess?” The voice was quiet, but she recognized it. Now she was frightened for a completely different reason. She hurried forward, hesitated again for a moment.

“Chaven? It is you? Truly you?”

“It is.”

“We are here, too, Highness.” It was one of the guards. She recognized the gruff voice, although she couldn’t remember the man’s name. “You can open the door.”

Still, such had been the terror of the last days that she had to force herself not to flinch when the door at last swung open. Chaven and the guards stood waiting in the pool of torchlight outside. The physician’s face was serious and haggard with exhaustion, but the terrible look she expected to see was not there.

“Is it my brother?”

“It is, my lady, but do not fear. I come to say that I think his fever has broken. He will not quickly be himself again, but I strongly believe he will live and recover. He was asking for you.”

“Merciful Zoria! Thank all the gods!” Briony fell to her knees and lowered her head in prayer. She should have been delirious with joy, but instead she was suddenly dizzy. This one terrible fear allayed, it was as though the rigor with which she had held herself up now ended in a moment. She tried to stand, but instead swayed and began to collapse. Chaven and one of the guards caught at her arms.

“We will survive,” she whispered.

“Yes, Princess,” he said, “but tonight you will go back to bed.”

“But, Barrick . . . !” The room still spun around her.

“I will tell him that you will come with the first light. He is probably asleep now, anyway.”

“Tell him I love him, Chaven.”

“I will.”

She allowed herself to be helped onto her own bed—for a moment she could not avoid thinking of poor Kendrick in the hands of the death-maids of Kernios at this very moment. But even this horror, or the walls that seemed slowly to revolve, could not keep exhaustion at bay.

“Tell Barrick . . .” she said, “. . . tell Barrick . . .” but that was all she could manage before weariness finally breached the stronghold and conquered her.

11

Bride of the God

I
F QINNITAN HAD THOUGHT the autarch’s throne room would be a more intimate setting than the cavernous Temple of the Hive, she would have been very wrong: the majesty of the Golden One’s entourage was even more overwhelming here, the white-and-black-tiled hall packed with hundreds of soldiers and servants and the representatives of dozens of noble families and of trade and bureaucratic interests, all joined together under the eyes of the watchful, wide-eyed gods painted on the ceiling. The autarch himself sat at the center of it all on the great Falcon Throne, an immense bird’s head covered in topaz feathers, the eyes red jasper; Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III himself was seated beneath the awning made by the upper part of the giant raptor’s gaping golden beak. The autarch was surrounded by his legendary musketeers, the Leopards, and the Leopards were surrounded in turn by an almost equally famous troop of Perikalese mercenaries, the White Hounds. These Hounds were all second or third generation now, their forefathers originally captured by the current autarch’s grandfather in a famous sea battle. Few of them could still speak the language of Perikal, but the master of much of the continent of Xand had more than enough pale-skinned women at his disposal to keep the present generation of Hounds as white as their forebears. They were strange-looking men, these northerners, even to Qinnitan’s frightened, confused gaze, built more like the bears she had seen in pictures than like hounds, hairy and wide-bearded, broad of back and shoulder.