(Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay (63 page)

Ueni’ssoh’s voice surged in triumph.

“O Spiral Shell, lead us to the center!
O Cauldron Lord, give us back our names! Grass Chieftain, open the gate!
Earthlord, open the gate!
Black Earth! Black Earth! Open the gate between Why and Why Not…!”

Something was in the black space of the door now, something invisible but so all-pervasive and life-crushing that Vansen shrieked in terror like a child even as he threw himself at the shaggy guard who held the knife to Barrick’s throat. A shadowy recollection of Donal Murroy’s teachings came to him as if from another person’s life: he grabbed, braced, and snapped the guard’s elbow against its own hinge, so that the creature howled with pain and dropped the queer blade. Vansen snatched it up and whirled to look for Ueni’ssoh, but the gray man seemed lost in some kind of trance, so Vansen lunged at the other guard instead, knocking Prince Barrick free from the creature’s grasp as he did so and sending the shaggy beast skidding face first across the rocky floor. Vansen snatched up a stone from the floor and began pounding on the lock of the prince’s shackles, intent on freeing him, ignoring Barrick’s cries of agony as the boy’s crippled arm was rattled in its socket.

A moment longer,
something whispered in his head. Ferras Vansen’s own thoughts were so tangled and diminished that for a long instant he could not understand who was talking to him, and even when he could, he could not understand it.
Keep fighting a moment longer…!

The lock broke and the prince’s shackles fell away just as the other guard attacked him. It was all Vansen could do to shove Barrick aside, then use the knife to dig at the guard’s stinking, hairy body. Vansen and the guard stood, locked in a helpless clinch, gasping into each other’s faces, each with a free hand gripping the other’s weapon, both weapons shuddering in front of an enemy’s wide, terror-staring eye. Vansen could see the monstrous open gateway past his attacker’s shoulder, the blackness roiling and bubbling with invisible forces that squeezed Vansen’s bones and guts until he thought his heart would stop.

Vansen had a moment to wonder if Gyir really had made a plan, but that everything beyond getting the shackles off had simply failed to happen. Then the second guard hit him in the back, forcing him to let go of the other creature’s killing hand. He swung his weight and ducked to avoid the stabbing blow to his face and he and the two guards became tangled. Locked in a straining, gasping knot, the three of them hobbled a few steps, then stumbled together over the threshold of the god’s door and fell into darkness.

Black.

Frozen.

Nothing.

The apelike guards spun away and vanished into the void as they all plummeted downward; within a heartbeat their wordless screams had faded. His own voice was gone. He could feel his lungs shoving out a scream of absolute terror but he heard no sound except the almost silent whistle of his fall.

Ferras Vansen hurtled down and down. Within moments he was far beyond the point where he could survive the impact, but still he fell. At last his wits flew away in the emptiness and wind.

U
tta stared at her reflection. Even looking in a mirror was an unusual experience, since Zorian sisters were generally given neither opportunity nor encouragement to contemplate their own reflections. “I cannot help it,” she said. “I look like something in a mummer’s play.”

“You do not,” said Merolanna, invisible for a moment in a cloud of powder as her little maid Eilis vigorously applied the brush to Utta’s face. “You look extremely handsome—like a highborn gentleman.”

“I am not supposed to be a gentleman, even in this ridiculous imposture, but an ordinary servant. In fact, though, I am neither of those. I am an old woman, Your Grace. What am I doing got up in such a semblance?”

“You must trust me,” the duchess replied, waving away the last of the powder. The maid began to cough, so Merolanna sent the girl out of the room. “I simply cannot do what must be done,” she said when they were alone in the bedchamber, “since I am bound to be at the blessing ceremony, especially with Duke Caradon coming to Southmarch. The Tollys are swarming, so we Eddons must make a show. I have to go. That is why you must do your part, my dear.”

But I’m not an Eddon.
Utta looked at the duchess with what she hoped was a certain sternness. She thought Merolanna had grown a bit careless about this matter of her lost son, her plans getting stranger and more wild, as though the steps they were contemplating now really were nothing more dangerous than a mum-show. She also clearly felt that Utta had become some kind of foot soldier in the cause, bound to obey all orders.

“I can understand how you feel about the child…” she began.

“No, you can’t, Sister,” said the duchess with unconvincing good cheer. “Only a mother can. So let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

Utta sighed.

When she was finished, with all the unfamiliar ties and buckles done up, Utta took one last look at the dour creature in the glass—an aged, effeminate servant dressed in dun-colored robes and a shapeless hat. It seemed scandalous to be showing so much hose-covered leg, but that was what men did every day. She squinted.

“You know, all the men’s clothes in the world cannot make a woman truly look like one. A man, I mean. Our faces just are not the right shape.” She traced the line of her own too-delicate jaw with her finger.

“That is why we will wrap this close around you,” Merolanna said briskly, winding the tails of the hat around Utta’s chin and neck like a scarf. “It is a cold day—no one will take much notice. Especially not today.”

“But is it wise, this plan?” She felt fairly certain it was not, but was torn between her good sense and her loyalty to Merolanna.

“To be honest with you, Utta, I don’t care.” The duchess clapped her hands together, which brought the little maid back into the chamber. “Help me with my jewels, Eilis, will you?” Merolanna turned toward back toward Utta. “Now you had best be on your way. We have only a few hours left—it is still winter, and dark so early.”

Utta wasn’t certain that hurrying off because the danger would be worse in a few hours made sense, especially when she hadn’t agreed that the plan was warranted in the first place, but she had long since learned that Merolanna could not be opposed with anything less than a wholehearted and extremely patient effort.

“Very well,” she said. “I will meet you afterward as we arranged, then.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Merolanna, remaining statue-still as her maid struggled to close the hasp on a necklace that looked as heavy as a silver harbor chain. “You’re very kind.”

Each time he looked at her Matt Tinwright had to look away after only a few moments. He felt certain that his guilt as well as his longing must shine from his face like the light of the brazier burning on the altar.

Only once had Elan M’Cory looked up to meet his gaze across the vastness of the Trigon Temple, but even from half a hundred paces away he felt the touch of her eyes with so great a force he nearly gasped aloud. Even in the midst of this nominally festive occasion she wore black clothes and a half-veil, as though she were the only person in Southmarch castle who still mourned the death of Gailon Tolly—as she might very well be. Tinwright had never been able to learn what Gailon had been to Elan, whether a secret lover, her hope for a good marriage, or something even harder to understand, but it confirmed him in his belief that nothing was less knowable than a woman’s heart.

Hendon, the dead duke’s youngest brother, stood beside Elan dressed in an elegant outfit of dove gray with black accents, his sleeves so deeply slashed that his arms seemed thicker than his legs. Elan M’Cory might be the most important person in the room for Matt Tinwright, but it was the woman on the other side who was clearly of the most interest to Hendon Tolly: Southmarch’s guardian did not even look at Elan, let alone talk to her, but spent much of the blessing ceremony whispering to Queen Anissa. It was the queen’s first day out in public since the baby had been born. She looked pale but happy, and quite willing to receive the attentions of the current guardian of Southmarch.

The nurse beside her held the infant prince; as Tinwright looked at the tiny, pink face he could not help marveling at what a strange life this child had been born into. Just a few months ago little Olin Alessandros would have been the youngest in a good-sized family, the happy child of a healthy, reigning monarch in time of peace, with nothing ahead to trouble his horizons except the business of being part of the most powerful family in the March Kingdoms. Now he was almost alone in the world, two brothers and a sister gone, his father imprisoned. If Matt Tinwright could have felt sorry for something as unformed as a baby (and Tinwright was beginning to feel he actually could)—well, then young Prince Olin was a good candidate for pity, despite having been born with everything the poet would most have liked to have himself.

Well, almost everything. There was one thing that even having been born royal would not have given him, and at this moment the lack of it burned in Tinwright’s heart so that he could barely stand still. And tonight…the awful thing he must do tonight…!

He looked at Elan’s pale face again but her eyes were cast down. If she could only understand! But she couldn’t, as had been made all too clear. She had invited Death into her heart. She wanted no other suitor.

Hierarch Sisel finished the invocation of Madi Surazem, thanking the goddess for protecting the child and his mother during the birth. Tinwright thought the hierarch looked drawn and unsettled—but then, who did not? The shadow of the Twilight People hung over the castle like a shroud, chilling the hearts of even those who pretended not to feel it. It was having its effect in other ways, too, with fewer ships coming into the harbor and, because of all the refugees from the mainland city and villages, many more mouths to feed even as many of the kingdom’s farms lay deserted and untended. Little as he knew about such things, even Matt Tinwright realized that when spring came and no crops were planted it could mark the beginning of the end for Southmarch.

Hierarch Sisel stood behind a small altar that had been erected just for this ceremony so that the ceremonial fire could be placed atop the large stone altar. The flames billowed behind him as cold air swirled in the high places of the temple. “Who brings this child before the gods?” he asked.

“I do,” said Anissa in a small voice.

Sisel nodded. “Then bring him forward.”

To Tinwright’s surprise, the queen didn’t carry the child to the altar herself, but nodded for the nurse holding the baby to follow her. When they stood before the altar, Sisel threw back the child’s blanket.

“With the living earth of Kernios,” he proclaimed, rubbing the bottoms of the child’s feet with dark dust. “With the strong arm of Perin,”—he lifted the tau cross called the Hammer and held it over the child’s head for a brief moment before setting it down—“and with the singing waters of Erivor, patron of your forefathers, guardian of your family’s house…” He dipped his fingers into a bowl and spattered the child on the top of the head. The baby began to cry. Sisel grimaced ever so slightly, then made the sign of the Three. “In the sight of the Trigon and all the gods of Heaven, and soliciting the wise protection of all their oracles on this, the prophets’ own day, I grant you the name Olin Alessandros Benediktos Eddon. May the blessings of heaven sustain you.” The hierarch looked up. “Who stands for the father?”

“I will, Eminence,” said Hendon Tolly. Anissa gazed at him with grateful pleasure, just as if he had really
been
the child’s father, and in that moment Tinwright felt he saw it all plain: of course Tolly did not want Elan—he had bigger plans. If Olin did not come back his wife and son would need another man in their lives. And who would be better than the handsome young lord who was already the infant prince’s guardian?

Hendon Tolly took the baby from the nurse’s arms and walked slowly around the altar, symbolically introducing young Olin to the household. Any other family, even a rich one, would have performed this ceremony in their own home, and before this day even the Eddons themselves had blessed their new children in the homely confines of the Erivor chapel, not in a vast barn like the Trigon Temple. Tinwright could not help wondering whose idea it had been to perform the blessing here in front of so many people. He had thought they were holding the Carrying ceremony ahead of Duke Caradon’s arrival because to wait a day—to hold it at the beginning of the Kerneia—would be bad luck. Now he decided that Hendon simply did not want his older brother present to steal any of the attention he commanded as guardian of the castle.

The second time around the altar Hendon Tolly lifted the infant above his head. The crowd, which had sat respectfully, now began to clap and cheer, with Durstin Crowel and Tolly’s other closest supporters making the most noise, although Tinwright could see expressions of poorly-hidden disgust on some of the older nobles—those few who had actually attended. He wondered what kind of excuses Avin Brone and the others had made to stay away—even if he were a man of power himself, Tinwright would not want to risk offending Hendon Tolly.

A moment later, as Hierarch Sisel completed the final blessing, Matt Tinwright realized the madness of his own thoughts. He was frightened of refusing an invitation from Tolly to a child blessing, but he was smuggling poison to Tolly’s mistress.

It is like a disease,
he thought as the crowd began to break up, some pushing forward toward Anissa and the high nobility, others hastening out into the cold winds that swirled through Market Square. In all respects it looked like an ordinary, festive occasion, but Tinwright and everyone else knew that just across the bay a dreadful, silent enemy was watching them.
A fever of disordered thinking rules the place, and I have it as badly as anyone here. We are not a city anymore, we are a plague hospital.

To his shock, Hendon Tolly actually noticed him as he tried to slip past.

“Ah, poet.” The guardian of Southmarch fixed him with an amused stare, leaning away from a conversation with Tirnan Havemore. Elan, who stood beside Hendon, did her best not to meet Tinwright’s eye. “You skulk, sir,” Tolly accused him. “Does this mean you will not have your poem ready for us at tomorrow’s feast? Or are you merely fearful of its quality?”

“It will be ready, my lord.” He had been staying up until long past midnight for almost a tennight, burning oil and candles at a prodigious rate (much to the disgust of Puzzle, who had an old man’s love for going to bed just after sundown and for pinching coppers until they squeaked). “I only hope it will please you.”

“Oh, as do I, Tinwright.” Tolly grinned like a fox finding an unguarded bird’s nest. “As do I.”

The master of Southmarch said a few more quiet words to Havemore, then turned to go, tugging Elan M’Cory after him as though she were a dog or a cloak. When she didn’t move quickly enough, Hendon Tolly turned back and grabbed at her shoulder, but wound up pinching the pale flesh of her bosom instead. She winced and let out a little moan.

“When I say step lively,” he told her in a quiet, measured voice, “then you must jump, slut, and quickly. If there are any tricks like that in front of my brother I will make you dance as you have never danced before. Now come.”

Havemore and the others standing nearby did not even appear to have noticed, and for a mad moment Tinwright could almost believe he had imagined it. Elan silently followed Hendon out, a patch of angry scarlet blooming on the white of her breast.

It was strange to step out this way, her lower limbs moving so freely. In truth, Utta felt disturbingly naked—the shape of her own legs was something she usually saw only when she bathed or prepared herself for sleep, not striding down a street with nothing between them and the world but a thin layer of worsted woolen hose.

Sister Utta had done her best not to nag at Princess Briony when the girl had become fixed on wearing boy’s clothing, although in her heart Utta had felt it was the sign of something unbalanced in the child, perhaps a reaction to all the sadness around her. But suddenly she could understand a little of what Briony had meant when she had spoken of “the freedoms men take for granted.” Was it truly the gods themselves who had made women the weaker sex, or was it something as simple as differences of dress and custom?

But they are stronger than us,
Utta thought.
Any woman who has been despoiled or brutalized by a man no taller than she knows that only too well.

Still, strength alone was not enough to make superiority, she reflected, otherwise oxen and growling lions would command empires. Instead, men hobbled oxen so they could not move faster than a walk. Was it true, as Briony had complained, that men hobbled their women as well?

Or do we hobble ourselves? But if so, why would we do such a thing?

Of course, women would not be the first or only slaves to aid their captors.

Listen to me—slaves! Captors! It is these times in which we live—they turn everything downside up and make us question all. But meanwhile, I am not watching what I am doing and will probably walk myself into the lagoon and drown!