Skurn
Here is truth! The light was Tso, and Zha was the wife he created out of
the nothingness. She fled him but he followed. She hid, but he discovered.
She protested, but he persuaded. At last she surrendered, and at their
lovemaking the heavens roared with the first winds.
— from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
GUARD CAPTAIN FERRAS VANSEN woke to the sickly glow of the shadowlands, unchanged since he had fallen asleep. His cloak was no longer covering his face and rain spattered him. He groaned and rolled over, scrabbling for the hem of the heavy woolen gar¬ment, but it was trapped between him and the dampening ground and he had to sit up, groaning even louder, to free it.
He was just about to roll back into sleep when he saw a hint of move¬ment at the corner of his gaze. He held his breath and turned his head as slowly as he could, but saw nothing except the long, wet grass and the fa¬miliar lump of Barrick's sleeping form. Beyond lay the terrifying creature called Gyir, but the warrior-fairy also seemed to be asleep.
Vansen let out what he hoped sounded like the honest snort of some¬one whose slumber had been briefly but inconsequentially disturbed, then lay silently, praying that his heart was not really beating as loudly as it seemed to be. He knew he had seen something more than the simple bouncing of rain-bent grass.
Movement resumed beside the soggy remnants of last night's fire, a
rounded shape bobbing along slowly only a few paces from the sleeping prince.
Vansen flung his cloak at it and dived after; the thing let out a muffled squawk and tried to escape, but it seemed to be tangled. Vansen scrambled across the wet ground on elbows and knees and managed to catch it before it disappeared into the darkness again. As he held it wrapped in the damp wool, he found it smaller than he had feared and surprisingly light, loose as a bundle of sticks and cloth in his hands: even with a poor grip on it, his strength seemed more than equal to the task of holding it. The captive crea¬ture let out a terrified, whistling shriek that sounded almost like a child's cry. He could feel by its struggles that it was a large bird of some kind, with wings that must stretch nearly as wide as a man's arms.
As he tried to protect his face from the darting beak something else rushed toward him, startling him so that he did not even fight when the bird was ripped out of his hands. By the time Vansen could turn his head, the shadow-man Gyir had a squat knife with scalloped edges pressed lengthwise against the creature's throat as the bird thrashed and made odd, almost human noises of fear. It was a raven, Ferras Vansen could see now, mostly black, with a few patches of white random as spatters of paint, but Vansen paid it little attention. He was terrified and astonished at the sud¬den appearance of Gyir's knife, and shamed by his own incompetence.
Great Perin, has he had that all along? He could have murdered us at any time! How did I miss it?
But he could not ignore the bird after all, because it had begun to talk.
"Don't kill us, Masters!" The voice rasped and whistled, but the words were clear. "Us'll never do wrong at you again! Us were only so hungry!"
"You can speak," said Vansen, reduced to the obvious.
The raven turned one bright yellow eye toward him, beak opening and shutting as it tried to get its breath. "Aye. And most sweetly, too, given chance, Masters!"
Prince Barrick sat up, tousle-haired and puffy-eyed, looking at least for this moment more like an ordinary sleepy young man and less like the maddening enigma he had been. "Why precisely are you two pummeling a bird?" He squinted. "It's rather spotty. Might it be good to eat?"
"No, Master!" the raven said, struggling uselessly. Patches of gray skin showed where it had lost feathers, making it seem even more pathetic. "Foul and tasteless, I am! Pizen!"
Gyir changed position to steady the squirming bird, poised to kill it.
"No!" Vansen said."Let it be."
"But why?" asked the prince. "Gyir says it's old and going to die soon, anyway. And it was thieving from us."
"It speaks our tongue!"
"So do many other thieves." The prince seemed more amused than any¬thing else.
"Aye," the bird panted, "speech it good and well, thy sunlander tongue. Learned it by Northmarch when I lived close by your folk there."
"Northmarch?" It was a name Vansen had barely heard in years, a haunted name. "How could that be? Men have not lived at Northmarch for two centuries, since the shadows rolled over it."
"Oh, aye, us were young then." The raven still struggled helplessly in Gyir's grasp. "Us had shiny pins and joints all supple, and us's knucklers were firm."
Vansen turned to Gyir, forgetting for a moment that it was harder to communicate with him than with the raven. "Two centuries old? Is that possible?"
The fairy came the closest to a human gesture Vansen had yet seen, a kind of slithery shrug. The meaning was clear: it was possible, but why should it matter?
"Yes, it matters." Vansen knew he was replying to words not spoken and perhaps not even intended, but at this moment he did not care: in the land of the mad, a land of talking animals and faceless fairies, madness was the only sane creed. "He talks like my mother's father, although that means nothing to you. I have not heard speech like that since I was a child." Vansen realized that he ached for conversation-ordinary talk, not the el¬liptical mysteries of spellbound Prince Barrick, each answer bringing only more questions. In fact, he realized, he was so lonely that he would accept comradeship even from a bird.
But it wouldn't do to make that clear just yet-even a bird could be sus¬pect in these treacherous, magical lands. "So why shouldn't we kill you?" Vansen asked the struggling raven. "What were you doing in our camp, poking around? Tell, or I will let him slit your throat."
"Nay!" It was half shriek, half croak, a despairing sound that made Vansen almost feel ashamed of himself. "Mean no harm, us! Just hungry!"
"Gyir says he smells of those creatures," Barrick offered, "-the ones who attacked him and killed his horse. 'Followers, they're called."
"Not us, Masters!" The raven struggled, but despite its size, it was help less as a sparrow in the fairy-warrior's hands. "Was just following the
Followers, like. Can't fly much now, us-pins be all a-draggled." It carefully eased one of its wings free, and this time Gyir allowed it. More than a lew shiny black feathers were certainly missing. "Went to eat summat a few sea¬sons gone by, but that summat be'nt quite dead yet," the raven explained, bobbing its head. "Tore us upwise and downwise."
"And the smell of those… Followers?"
"Us can't stay high or fly long like us did oncet. Have to follow close, go from branch to branch, like. Followers have a powerful stink." It ruffled its parti-colored feathers with its beak. "Can't smell it, usself. Poor Skurn is old now-so old!"
"Skurn? Is that what you're called?"
"Aye, or was. Us were handsome then, when that were our name." He poked his beak toward Gyir. "His folk drove all the sunlanders out from Northmarch. Life were good then, for a little while, in the fighting-dead 'uns every which side! But then sunlanders were gone and poor Skurn was leaved behind to shift as us could when twilight come down." The beak opened to let out a mournful sigh, but the shiny eyes looked to Vansen with calculating hope, like a child searching for the first light of forgiveness.
He had no stomach to kill the thing."Let the bird go," he said. Nothing hap¬pened. Gyir was not looking at him but at Barrick. "Please, Highness. Let it go."
Barrick frowned, then sighed. "I suppose." He waved his hand at Gyir, still showing a remnant of the royal manner even here beneath the drip¬ping trees. "Let it go free."
As soon as the blade was withdrawn the bird rolled to its feet and took a few hopping steps, quite nimble for all its professed age. It flapped its wings as though surprised and pleased to find it still had them. "Oh, thank you, Masters, thank you! Skurn will serve you, do everything you ask us, find all best hiding places, rotting dead 'uns, birds' nests, even where the fish go scumbling down in the muddy bottom! And eat so little, us? Never will you know us is even here."
"What is he talking about?" Vansen said crossly. He had expected it to bolt for the undergrowth or fly away, but the bird had distracted him and he had forgotten to watch where Gyir hid the knife; now the Twilight man's hand was empty again.
"You saved him, Captain." Amusement rippled coldly across Barrick's face. Suddenly he seemed a boy no longer, but more like an old man- ageless. "The raven's yours. It seems you'll finally taste the pleasures of being lord and master."
"Lord and master," said the raven, beginning to clean the mud from his malted feathers with his long black beak. He bobbed his head eagerly. "Yes, you tolk are Masters of Skurn, now. Us will do you only good."
The forest track they followed seemed to have once been a road: only flimsy saplings and undergrowth grew on it, while the larger trees-most with sharp, silvery-black leaves that made Vansen think of them as "dag¬ger trees"-formed a bower overhead, so that the horses paced almost as easily as they might have on the Settland Road or some other thorough¬fare in mortal lands. If the going was easier, though, it was not a peaceful ride; Vansen had begun to wonder whether saving the wheezing raven might not have been his second-worst decision of recent days, exceeded only by the choice to follow Barrick across the Shadowline. Reprieved from death, Skurn could not stop talking, and although occasionally he said something interesting or even useful, Vansen was beginning to feel things would have been better if he had let Gyir the Storm Lantern spit the creature.
"… The other ones, Followers and whatnot, are pure wild these days." Skurn bobbed his head, moving continuously from one side to the other off the base of the horse's neck like a cat trying to find the warmest place to sleep. It was a mark of how the last days had hardened Vansen's mount that it paid little attention to the creeping thing between its shoulders, only whinnying from time to time when the indignity became too much. "Scarce speak any language, and of course no sunlander tongue, unlikes us-self. There, Master, don't ever eat that 'un, nor touch it. Will turn your in-sides to glass. And that other, yes, th'un with yellow berries. No, not pizen, but makes a fine stew with coney or water rat. Us'd have a lovely bit of that now, jump atter chance, us would. Knows you that soon you be crossing into Jack Chain's land? You'll turn, o'course. Foul, his lot. No love for the High Ones and wouldn't lift a hand but for their own stummicks or to shed some blood. They like blood, Jack's lot. Oh, there's a bit of the old wall. Look up high. A fine place for eggs…"
The nonstop chatter had begun to blend into one continuous rattle, like someone snoring across the room, but the bulwark of ruined stone caught Vansen's attention. It rose from a thicket of thorns, its top looming far above his head, and was sheathed in vines that flowered a dull blood red, the thick, heart-shaped leaves bouncing with the weight of raindrops.
"What did you say this was?"
"This old wall, Master? Us didn't, although us is pleased to name it if that be your wish. A place called Ealingsbarrow oncet in thy speech, if our re-membering be not too full of holes-a town of your folk."
Vansen reined up. The crumbling golden stones looked as though they had been abandoned far more than two centuries ago: even the best-preserved sections were as pitted and porous as honeycomb. In many places trees had grown right through the substance of the wall and their roots were pulling out even more stones, like young cuckoos ousting other birdlings from a nest. The forest and the incessant damp were taking the wall apart as efficiently as a gang of workmen, tumbling the huge stones back to earth and wearing them away as though they were nothing more than wet sand, steadily removing this last trace that mortal men had once lived here.
"Why have we stopped?" asked Barrick. The prince had ridden beside Gyir all morning, and Vansen could not escape the idea that the two of them were 'conversing wordlessly, that the faceless man was instructing the prince just as Vansen had once been instructed by his old captain Donal Murroy
"To look at this wall, Highness. The bird says it is part of a town named Ealingsbarrow. Northmarch must be only half a day's ride away or so." Vansen shook his head, still amazed. The old, cursed name of Northmarch reminded him that what had happened there and here in Ealingsbarrow might soon happen to all the mortal cities of the north-to Southmarch it¬self. "It is hard to believe, isn't it?"
Barrick only shrugged. "They did not belong here. No mortals did, building without permission. It is no wonder it came to this."
Vansen could only stare as the prince turned and rode forward again. Gyir, riding behind him, looked back a few moments longer, his featureless face as inscrutable as ever.
"Burned blue in the night for six nights when it fell, this place," said Skurn. "Like old star had fallen down into the forest. The keeper of the War-Stone gave it to the Whispering Mothers, you see."
Vansen was shivering as they left the last wall of Ealingsbarrow behind them. He did not know what the raven meant and he was fairly certain he was better off that way.
The rain began to abate in what Vansen estimated was the late after¬noon, although as always he got no glimpse of sun or moon in the murky sky to confirm a guess about time. He had fed the hungry raven out of the last of his own stores, and had nibbled in a desultory way himself on some
stale bread and a finger's width of dried meat, but hee was feeling the grip of hunger in a way he hadn't before. Since the prince seemed to have be-come a little less strange and distracted, and since a full day had passed with¬out any sign of the monstrous, faceless Twilight man Gyir trying to kill them all, Vansen's fearfulness had abated a little, but the respite only served to make him more aware of his other problems. The possibility of starving was one of them, although not the biggest.
/ am completely ruled by something I cannot change or understand, he thought. Worse even than if these fairy-folk had made me a prisoner. At least then I would expect to be helpless. But this-this is worse by far! Home is behind us, there is no reason to go on into this place of madness, and yet on we go, and it seems I can do nothing to stop it.
"We cannot follow this road any farther, Master," said Skurn suddenly. His beak tugged at Vansen's sleeve. "Cannot, Master."
"What? Why?"
"The Northmarch Road, this is, and now I smell Northmarch too close. I told you we were coming near Jack Chain's land." The bird's eyes were blinking rapidly. He fidgeted on the horse's neck, almost comically fright¬ened. "The bad is all on it, these days."
Northmarch Road! Of course, Vansen thought, no wonder they had found this so much easier a track than others they had followed. He could see nothing beneath his feet but undergrowth and grass and dead leaves, but still the hairs on the back of his neck stirred. Knowing the road was be¬neath him and had been for hours was like discovering he had been stand¬ing on a grave. Still, a part of him was loath to give up such ease of travel. "It has a fearful name, but surely it has been empty now for ages."
"You don't understand, good Master." Skurn flapped his wings in dis¬quiet. "These lands be not empty. They be Jack Chain's and you will lose your life at least an' he catches you."
Vansen relayed the raven's words to Barrick. The prince paused for a moment, as though listening to something that silent Gyir might be telling him, then at last slowly nodded his head.
"We will make camp. There is much to decide."
Only days ago, in an ordinary world where the sun came up and the snn went down, Barrick Eddon knew he would have looked on the fairy Gyir
as something hideously alien, but somehow he had come to know Gyir the Storm Lantern as well as he knew any other person, even those of his own family.
Except for Briony, of course-Briony, his other half… Barrick did his best to push the thought of her away. If he was to survive he must harden himself, he had decided, cast even the most precious of those beads of memory behind him. He couldn't let himself be weak as other men were weak-like Vansen the guard captain, still living in the old ways and as out of place here (or anywhere in the new world that was coming) as a bear sitting at a table with a bowl and spoon. Barrick knew that Vansen had saved the disgusting, corpse-eating raven mostly because it spoke his mor¬tal speech, as if being able to mumble that outdated tongue was anything other than a mark of irrelevance.
The bird Skurn had many vile habits, and seemed to reveal a new one every few moments. Only an hour had passed since they had made camp and already the creature had defiled it, not even leaving the vicinity to defecate but instead simply pausing beside the campfire and discharging a spatter as wet and foul-smelling as the goose turds that had made it such a hazard to walk beside the pond in the royal residence back home. Now the disgusting old bird was crouched only a few steps from Barrick, noisily finishing off a baby rat he had found in a nest in the wet undergrowth, the tail danging from his mouth as he chewed the hindquarters. A moment later the whole of it, tail following to the very end, slid down his throat and disappeared.
Skurn belched. Barrick scowled.
Do not waste your fires on anger, Gyir told him. Especially on one such as that. You will have need of every spark, cousin. The words were simply there, as though whispered inside his skull. There was no sound, no quirks of speech as with regular talk, but the words had a shape and a feeling that Barrick could tell, even without comparison, made them Gyir's and no one else's.
Cousin? Why do you call me that?
Because we share something.
What? What could we share?
The love of our lady, and loyalty to her. She saved you as she saved me. Saved me from… And then the fairy's words trailed off, or changed, so that they felt like words no longer, but rather a sensation of cracking thunder and a rain as heavy and terrifying as a flight of arrows.
"Highness," said Vansen suddenly, his speaking voice as harsh as a frog's
croak after the taut musicality of Gyir's soundless words."I think we need to listen to what the bird says…"
"listen!" snarled Barrick. "Listen! It is you who cannot listen!" How could the man continue to scrape and bray like that when he could have words and silence, music and stillness, both the plucked string and the expectant pause before the lute sounded? But perhaps the guardsman couldn't. Perhaps Barrick was being unfair. He himself had been touched by the Dark Lady-poor, earnest Ferras Vansen had not. "I apologize, Captain," he said, and was pleased by his own magnanimity. No wonder he had been chosen from the crowded, mad battlefield, singled out like the oracle Iaris, who of all men had been given the words of Perin to bear back to humanity. "What is it that… that squawking gore-crow has to say?"
"Cannot go this way," the raven said. "The High One with no food-hole, the caulbearer, he knows it. These be Jack Chain's lands now, since the queen sleeps and the King has grown so old. Us that care for our life don't go there."
"He's talking about Northmarch, Highness," Vansen said. "It seems to belong to some enemy-some dangerous person."
"I am not stupid, Vansen. I understood that." Barrick scowled. At this moment, the captain reminded him more than he would wish of Shaso: the old man, too, had always been judging him, always underestimating him, speaking words that sounded full of reason to the ear but made him sting with shame. Well, half a year in the stronghold had no doubt made Shaso dan-Heza a little less proud and scornful.
A twinge of shame, a distant thing but still painful, made him want to think about something else. Shaso had brought his doom on himself, hadn't he? Nothing to do with Barrick.
"I am sorry, Highness," Vansen said, and bowed, the first time he had done that since they had crossed over the Shadowline."I have overstepped."
"Oh, stop." Barrick's mood had gone sour. He turned to Gyir, tried to form the words in his head so the other could understand him. It was so easy when the faceless man spoke to him first-like a flying dream, no labor, just the leap and then the freedom of the air. What is this creature talk¬ing about? Is it true?
I do not know. I have not traveled here, in this part of… Here another idea floated past that seemed to have no words, a jumble of formless shapes that
somehow spiraled inward like snailshells. Except when the army went to war, but none would have dared to attack us in that force. Still, there are many here he-hind the Mantle that do not love… Again there was a picture rather than a word, this one a paradoxical image of black towers and shining light. Only after it had ceased to glow in his head did Barrick perceive the words that went with it. Qul-na-Qar.
What is that? Is that you, your people?
That is the place we have made the heart of our… Here an idea that seemed to mean not so much «rule» or «kingdom» as "story." That is where the Knowing make their home. Those Qar who know what was lost, and what sleeps.
Barrick shook his head-too many ideas he could not understand were floating through his mind, although he had finally come to understand one of Gyir's idea-sounds, Qar, meant "people like myself"-those Barrick still thought of in the back of his mind as "fairy folk." Still, even the clearest of Gyir's ideas were as slippery as live fish. / need to know if what this unpleasant bird says is important, Barrick said. The… the Lady… has given you a charge, that you told me. You must do what she asked. Although he had no idea of Gyir's task, he knew as well as he knew that his bones were inside his body that what the dark woman wanted must be done.
/ am not allowed to delay, it is true. My errand is too vital. Still, it is hard to be¬lieve that one of our enemies has grown so strong here, an enemy that was thought dead. If it is true, I fear my luck-the luck of all the People, perhaps-has turned for ill. We are far from my home and in dangerous lands. I am wounded, perhaps crippled forever, your companion has my sword, and I have no horse.
Gyir's thoughts were heavy and fearful in a way that Barrick had not felt before. That alone was enough to make the prince really frightened for the first time since the giant's war club had swung up high above him and his old life had come to an end.
"I don't know what that fairy's done to you, Highness, what kind of spell he's put on you, but I'm not giving him back his sword. He may pretend friendship, but he'll likely kill us if we give him a chance. Don't you remem¬ber what he and his kind did to the men of Southmarch at Kolkan's Field? Don't you remember Tyne Aldritch, crushed into… into bloody suet?"
The prince stared at him. "We will talk more of this," Barrick said, and
mounted his horse. The faceless man Clyir, with an agility that Vansen carefully noted-he was recovering very swiftly indeed from wounds that Would have killed an ordinary man-swung himself up behind the prince.
Vansen pulled himself up into his own saddle. Unlike Barrick's strange black horse, Vansen's mount was beginning to look a little the worse for wear, despite the long pause for rest. It shuddered restively as Skurn climbed the saddle blanket with beak and talons and hopped forward to a perch on the beast's neck. Pleased with himself, the black bird looked around like a child about to be given a treat.
Mortal horses weren't meant for this place, Vansen thought. No more than mor¬tal men.
Although a dragging succession of hours had passed, and Vansen himself had slept long enough to feel heavy in his wits, his head was foggy as the tangled forest into which Barrick and Gyir now rode.
"Where be they going, Master?" Skurn asked, agitated. "Us must turn back! Didn't uns listen? Don't uns see that this be all Jack Chain's land round about?"
"How should I know?" Vansen had no command of the situation, and
the addition of the fairy-warrior to their party had made things worse, if
anything. Gyir, the murderer of Prince Barrick's people, a proven enemy,
now seemed to have become the prince's confidant, while Ferras Vansen,
the captain of the royal guard, a man who had already risked his life for Bar¬
rick's sake, had become some kind of foe. "Why do you ask me, bird? Can't
you understand that Gyir thing?"
The raven groomed himself nervously. Up close he was quite repulsive, scaly skin visible in many places, what feathers remained matted with the gods only knew what. "Not us, Master. That be a trick of the High Ones, to talk so, without voices, not such as old Skurn. Us knows nothing of what they are saying or where they think they go."
"Well, then, that makes two of us."
The remains of the ancient road stayed wide and relatively flat beneath them, but now the trees had grown thick again around them, shutting out anything but the briefest glimpses of the gray sky, as though they traveled down a long tunnel. Birds and other creatures Vansen could not identify hooted and whistled in the shadows; it was hard not to feel their approach was being heralded, as though he were back on one of the Eddons' royal
progresses with the trumpeters and criers running ahead, calling the com-mon folk to come out, come out, a king's son was passing, But Vansen could not help feeling that those who waited in this place did not wish them well.
His sense of danger, of being visible to some hostile, lurking force, grew stronger as the day of riding wore on. The unfamiliar bird and animal sounds died away, but Vansen found the silence even more foreboding, Bar-rick and the faceless man ignored him, no doubt deep in unspoken con¬versation, and even Skurn had fallen quiet, but Ferras Vansen's patience had become so thin that every time the little creature moved and he caught a whiff of its putrid scent, he had to steel himself not to simply sweep it off onto the ground.
"This was once a great road, Highness, just as the bird said," he called at last, and then wished he hadn't: the echoes died almost immediately in the thick growth on either side of the road, but even the absence of an echo made the noise seem more stark, more exceptional. He could imagine an entire gallery of shadowy watchers leaning forward to listen. He spurred his horse forward so that he could speak more quietly. "This is the old North-march Road, not simply a forest path. If we follow it long enough we will arrive at something-perhaps the raven's Jack Chain-but it will not be something we'll like. Can't you feel that?"
The prince turned his cool stare on him. Barrick's hair was stuck to his forehead in damp red ringlets. "We know, Captain. We are looking for an¬other road, one that crosses this one. If we ride overland through this tan¬gled forest, we will come to grief."
"But it is only a short way to Northmarch, and that is where Jack Chain has his hall!" squealed Skurn, hopping up and down, which made Vansen's horse snort and prance so that he had to tighten his grip on the reins. "Even if we are lucky and One-Eye bes far away, and there be no Night Men about, still Jack-Rovers and Longskulls there be all around here, as well as the Follower-folk who remember not sunlanders nor nothing even of the High Ones! They will capture us, poor old Skurn. They will kill us!"
"They will certainly hear us if we stop to argue every few paces," Bar-rick said harshly. "I did not bring you here, Vansen, and I certainly did not bring that… bird. If you wish to find your own way, you may do so."
"I cannot leave you, Highness."
"Yes, you can. I have told you to do it but you do not: listen. You say you are my liegeman, but you will not obey the simplest order. Go away, Cap¬tain Vansen,"
1 le hung his head, hoping to hide both the shame and rage. "I cannot, Prince Barrick."
"Then do as you wish. But do it silently."
They had been riding for what seemed like most of a day when an as¬tonishing thing happened, something that alarmed not only Vansen, but the raven, too, and even Gyir the Storm Lantern.
The sky began to grow dark.
It crept up on them slowly, and at first Ferras Vansen thought it no more than the ceaseless movement of gray cloud overhead, the blanket of mist which thickened and even sometimes thinned without ever diminishing much, and which gave the light of these lands its only real variety. But as he found himself squinting at trees beside the wide road, Vansen suddenly realized he could not doubt the truth any longer.
The twilight was dying. The sky was turning black.
"What's going on?" Vansen reined up. "Prince Barrick, ask your fairy what this means!"
Gyir was looking up between the trees, but not as though searching for something with his eyes-it was an odd, blind gaze, as though he were smelling rather than staring.
"He says it is smoke."
"What? What does that mean?"
Skurn was clinging to the horse's neck, beak tucked under a wing, mumbling to himself.
"What does he mean, smoke?" Vansen demanded of the raven. "Smoke from what? Do you know what's happening here, bird? Why is it getting dark?"
"Crooked's curse has come at last, must be. Must be!" The black bird moaned and bobbed its head. "If the Night Men catch us or don't, it mat¬ters not. The queen will die and the Great Pig will swallow us all down to blackness!"
He could get nothing more out of him-the raven only croaked in ter¬ror. "I do not understand!" Vansen cried. "Where is the smoke coming from? Has the forest caught fire?"
"Gyir says no,"Barrick said slowly, and now even he sounded uneasy, "ll is from fire someone has made-he says it stinks of metal and flesh." The prince turned to look at silent Gyir, whose eyes were little more than red slits in his blank mask of a face. "He says it is the smoke of many small fires… or one very big one."
Chasing the Jackals
Twilight had been jealous from the first of his brother's gleaming songs,
and when Daystar lost the depth of his music and flew away, Twilight
climbed into his brother's place among the Firstborn.
He made children with both Breeze and Moisture.
From the womb of Breeze came the brothers Whitefire and Silvergleam,
and Judgment their sister. From the womb of Moisture came Thunder,
Ocean, and Black Earth, and though their mothers were twinned, from the
very first these six children could not find harmony among themselves.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
EVEN THE WEAK MORNING LIGHT seeping in from the high, small windows was enough to tell Briony that she was not in her own paneled chamber in the royal residence. In fact, she was sur¬rounded by white plastered walls and dark-skinned women in loose, soft dresses, all busy making beds or darning clothes, and talking in a quiet, mu¬sical language Briony could not understand. For a long moment she could only stare, dumbfounded, wondering what had happened.
The truth did not wait long, though: as she rolled over and sat up, clutch ing the blanket close around the flimsy nightclothes she had somehow ac quired, memories began to leak back.
"Good morning, Bri-oh-nee-zisaya! Briony turned to find a s slender
middle-aged woman standing beside the bed. The woman smiled, showing a flash of unusual color. "Did you sleep well?"
Of course. Shaso had brought her to this place in the back alloys of whatever this Marrinswalk town was called… Lander's something…? They had taken refuge in the house of one of Shaso's Tuani countrymen, and this was the gold-toothed mistress of the house.
"Yes. Yes, thank you, very well." Suddenly she felt shy, knowing she had been lying here sleeping, perhaps snoring, while these dark, delicate women worked quietly around her. "Is… I would like to speak to Shaso." She re¬membered the reverence with which the women had spoken of him, as though Princess Briony should be his servant instead of the other way around, something that irritated her more than she liked to admit. "Lord Shaso. Can you take me to him?"
"He will know you are waking and will be expecting you," the older woman said, smiling again. Briony could count half a dozen other women in the large room, and she seemed to recall there had been even more the previous night. "Let us help you dress."
It all went swiftly and even enjoyably, the women's talk mostly incom¬prehensible, a continuous dove-soft murmur that even in the waxing morn¬ing light made Briony feel sleepy again. It was so odd, these women and their foreign rooms and ways, their foreign tongue, as if the entire house had been lifted out of the sandy streets of some distant southern city by a mis¬chievous god or goddess and spun through the air to land here in the mid¬dle of cold, muddy, winter's-end Eion. Somebody was definitely on the wrong continent.
The older woman, guessing correctly that Briony had forgotten her name, politely reintroduced herself as Idite. She didn't put Briony back into the Skimmer girl's tattered dress, but clothed her in a beautiful bil¬lowing robe of some pale pink fabric so thin she could easily see the light through it, so thin that she had to wear an underdress of a thicker, more clinging white cloth, with sleeves long enough to reach her fingertips. The Tuani women lifted her hair up and pinned it, cooing and giggling at its yellowness, then set a circlet of pearls on her head. Idite brought Briony a mirror, a small, precious thing in the shape of a lotus leaf, so she could see the result of all their work. She found it both charming and disturbing to discover herself so transfigured by a few articles of clothing and jewelry, turned so easily into a soft, pretty creature (yes, she actually looked pretty, even she had to admit it) of the kind she suspected all the men of Southmarch had always hoped she would become. It was hard not to bristle a bit, But the transformation was an act of kindness, not domination, so she smiled and thanked Idite and the others, then smiled some more as they complimented her at length, haltingly in her own tongue and fluently in their own.
"Come," the mistress of the house said at last. "Now you shall go to see the Dan-Heza and my good husband."
Idite and one of the younger women, a shy, slender creature not much older than Briony herself, with a nervous smile so fixed that it was painful to see, led her out of the women's quarters. The passageway turned so many times that it made the house seem even larger, but they emerged at last into what had to be the front room, although instead of looking out toward the front of the house all the furniture faced doors opening onto the rainy courtyard. Shaso stood there waiting beside three chairs, two empty, one occupied by a small, bald man in a simple white robe who looked to be a little more than Briony's father's age, with skin a half-shade lighter than Shaso's. The man's short fingers were covered with splendid, glittering rings.
"Thank you, Idite, my flower," he said; unlike his wife's, his words were scarcely accented. "You may go now."
Idite and the girl made courtesies and withdrew, even as the small man lifted himself from his chair and bowed in turn to Briony. "I am Effir dan-Mozan," he said. "Welcome to my house, Princess. You do us honor."
Briony nodded and seated herself in the chair he indicated. "Thank you. Everyone has been very kind to me."
Shaso cleared his throat. "I am sorry I left you so suddenly, Highness, but I had much to talk about with Effir."
"I had no idea there were such places in Marrinswalk!" Briony could not help laughing a little at her own surprise.
"If by 'such places' you mean Tuani hadami-houses of our people-you will find them in quite a few places, even here in the north. Even, I think, in your own city."
"In Southmarch? Truly?"
"Oh, yes-but this is rude, expecting a guest to make conversation when she has not even been fed. Forgive me." He raised a little bell from the arm of his chair and rang it. The bearded man who had opened the gate the night before suddenly appeared from behind a curtained doorway. He was even younger than she had thought then, perhaps only a year or two older
than Briony herself. "Tal, would you please bring food and gawa for our guests-and for me, too. I was up early this morning and I am beginning to feel the need for a little something."
The young man bowed and went out, but not before giving Briony a long, unreadable look.
"My nephew Talibo," explained Dan-Mozan. "A good lad, although a little too enamored of these northern towns and northern ways. Still, he is a fast learner and perhaps these new ideas he so values will bring something useful to the House of Mozan. Now, let me ask, my child, was everything to your satisfaction? Did the women verily treat you well? Lord Shaso asked that you be given every kindness-not that you would have been less than an honored guest in any case."
"Yes, thank you, Lord Dan-Mozan. They all were very kind."
He chuckled with pleasure. "Oh, no, Princess, I am no lord. Only a mer¬chant. Please call me Effir, and it will be to my ears as sweet honey on the tongue. I am glad you were treated well. A guest is a holy thing." He looked up as Talibo came back through the door leading an older man who seemed to be a servant, both of them bearing large trays. The food had ob¬viously been prepared earlier and only waited her arrival. The youth and the older servant arranged the bowls and platters carefully on the wide, low table, putting out unleavened bread, fruit, bits of cold spicy fish, vinegar-soaked mushrooms, and other savories Briony did not recognize. Tal then poured a dark, steaming liquid from a pot into three cups. When Briony had finished filling a shallow bowl with things to eat, she followed the lead of Shaso and Effir dan-Mozan, curling her legs under her and placing the bowl on her lap. She took a careful sip of the hot liquid, expecting it to be tea, which she had learned to drink from her great-aunt Merolanna, but it was something much stranger, bitter as death, and it was all she could do not to spit it out.
"You do not like the gawa, eh?" Dan-Mozan smiled, not hiding his amusement very well. "Too hot?"
"Too… too bitter."
"Ah, then you must add cream and honey. I often do myself, especially in the evening, after a meal."'He gestured to a smaller tray with two small pitchers on it. "May I do it for you?"
Briony wasn't sure she wanted it any way at all, but she nodded, just to be polite.
"Having you in my house is a privilege even greater than it is a surprise,"
DAN-Mozan said as he directed young Tal, with grimaces and flapping hands, through the delicate task of putting things in L3riony's gawa cup. "Lord Shaso has told me something of what happened. Please be certain that you are welcome here as long as you need to stay, and that nothing of…" He paused, then looked at his nephew, who had finished with Briony's gawa and was waiting expectantly. "You may go now, Tal," he said, a litde coolly."We have things to talk about."
"She is staying?" Tal remembered himself and shut his mouth in a tight line, but the question clearly annoyed his uncle.
"Yes. She is a companion of Lord Shaso's, and more important, she is our guest-my guest. Now go. You and I will speak later."
"Yes, Uncle." Tal bowed, stole another quick look at Briony, then went out.
Dan-Mozan sighed, spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. "As I said, a good lad, but he has swallowed too many new ideas too quickly, like a naughty child given a whole bowl of sweetmeats. It has disturbed his con¬stitution and he has forgotten how to behave."
"These northern lands can poison a young man," said Shaso, managing to look grim even as he piled mushrooms in his bowl.
"Of course, of course," Dan-Mozan said with a smile. "But young men are particularly susceptible wherever they find themselves. He will go back to Tuan after his year here, marry a good girl, and find himself again. Now, let us bless our food." He said a few words under his breath.
"Back to Tuan," Shaso said darkly. He looked drawn and tired despite the early hour. "There have been times when I wished I could do that, too, but it is not my Tuan, not anymore. How can it be, when it belongs to Xis?" He pursed his lips as though he might spit on the floor, but then seemed to think better of it. Effir dan-Mozan, who for a moment had looked concerned for his beautiful carpets, smiled again, but more sadly this time.
"You are right, my lord. Even though some of us unworthy ones must still keep ties there because of our trade, it is not the place we loved, not as long as those Xixian sons of whores-ah, your pardon, my lady, I forgot you were here-hold the keys to our gates. But that will change. All things change if the Great Mother wills it." He briefly assumed a pious face as he brought his hands together, then turned brightly to Briony. "Your food, Highness-is it to your liking?"
"Yes… yes, it's very nice." She had been eating slowly, wary of appearing
too much of a pig in front of this small, neat man, but she was very hun-gry indeed and the food was excellent, full of tangy, unfamiliar flavors.
"Good. Well, my Lord Shaso, you wished to speak with me and here I sit, at your command. I am very pleased, of course, simply to see you free, and amazed by your story." The merchant turned to smile at Briony. "Your bravery was, it need not be said, a large and impressive part of Lord Shaso's tale.",
Her mouth was full; she nodded her head carefully. She was also the per¬son who had locked Shaso up in the first place and she was not entirely certain whether this small, amiable man might not be mocking her.
"I need information," Shaso said, "and I wished the princess to be here since it saves me the work of repeating it." He saw her irritated look. "And of course it is her right to be here, since she is heir to her father's throne."
"Ah, yes," said Dan-Mozan gravely. "We all pray for King Olin's safe and speedy return, may the gods give him health."
"Information," repeated Shaso, a bit of impatience coloring his voice. "Your ships go everywhere up and down the coasts, Dan-Mozan, and you have many eyes and ears on the inland waterways as well. What have you hearci of the fairy-invasion, of the autarch, of anything I should know? As¬sume 1 know nothing."
"I would never be foolish enough to assume that, Lord Shaso," said Dan-Mozan. "But 1 take your meaning. Well, I will make as much sense of it as the Mother grants me to make. The north is all confusion, of course, be¬cause of the strange d'shinna army that has come from behind the Line of Shadows." He nodded, as though this was something he had long predicted. "The great army of Southmarch has been broken-I crave your pardon for saying it, estimable princess, but it is true. Those that have survived but could not reach the castle have scattered, some fleeing south toward Kerte-wall or into Silverside-they say that the streets of Onsilpia's Veil are crowded with weeping soldiers. Many others are heading on toward Sett-land or down into Brenland, convinced that the north will fall, hoping to find shelter in those places or take ship for the south. But the southern lands, they may find, will soon offer no safe harbor, either…"
Barrick, Barrick…! She tried to imagine him free and alive, perhaps leading a group of survivors toward Settesyard. Her beloved other half- surely she would know if someone she had known and loved like a part of herself were dead! "What of the city and Southmarch Castle itself?" she asked. "Does it still stand? And how did you discover all this so quickly?"
"From the boats that fish in Brain's Bay and supply the castle goods from the south, many of which belong to me," said Dan-Mozan, smiling. "And of course, my captains also hear much in port from the river-men Coming down from the other parts of the March Kingdoms. Even in time of war, people must send their wool and beer to market. Yes, Southmarch Clastle still stands, but the city on its shore has fallen. The countryside is emptied all around. The place is full of demons."
It all suddenly seemed so bleak, so hopeless. Briony clenched her jaw. She would not cry in front of these older men, would not be reassured or coddled. It was her kingdom-her father's, yes, but Olin was a prisoner in Hierosol. Southmarch needed her, and it especially needed her to be strong. "My father, the king-have you heard anything of him?"
The merchant nodded soberly. "Nothing that suggests he is not safe, I lighness, or that anything has changed, but I hear rumors that Drakava's grip on Hierosol is not as strong as it might be. And there are other tales, mere whispers, that the autarch is readying a great fleet-that he might wish Hierosol for himself."
"What?" Shaso sat up, almost spilling his cup of gawa. Clearly this was new to him. "The autarch surely cannot be ready for that-he has only just pacified his own vassals in Xand-surely half his army must be garrisoned in Mihan, Marash, and our own miserable country. How could he move so soon against Hierosol and its mighty walls?"
Dan-Mozan shook his head. "I cannot answer you, my lord. All I can tell you is what I hear, and the whisper is that Sulepis has been assembling a fleet with great speed, as though something has happened which has pushed forward his plans." He turned to Briony, almost apologetically. "We all know that the Xixians have desired greater conquest on Eion, and that taking Hierosol would let them control all the Osteian Sea and the south¬ern oceans on either side."
Briony waved away all this detail, angry and intent. "The autarch plans to attack Hierosol? Where my father is?"
"Rumors, only," said Dan-Mozan. "Do not let yourself be too alarmed, Princess. It is probably only these uncertain times, which tend to set tongues wagging even when there is nothing useful to say"
"We must go and get my father," she told Shaso. "If we take ship now we could be there before spring!"
He scowled and shook his head. "You will forgive me for being blunt, Highness, but that is foolishness. What could we do there? Join him in
captivity, that is all. No, in fact you would be married by force to Drakava and I would go to the gibbet. There are many in Hierosol who wish me dead, not least of which is my onetime pupil, Dawet."
"But if the autarch is coming…!"
"If the autarch is coming to Eion, then we have many problems, and your father is only one of them."
"Please, please, honored guests!" Effir dan-Mozan lifted his hands and clapped. "Have more gawa, and we have some very nice almond pastries as well. Do not let yourself be frightened, Princess. These are the merest whis¬pers, as I said, and likely not true."
"I'm not frightened. I'm angry." But she fell into an unhappy silence as Dan-Mozan's nephew Talibo returned and served more food and hot drinks. Briony looked at her hands, which she was having trouble keeping decorously still: if the youth was staring at her again, she was not going to give him the satisfaction of noticing.
Shaso, though, watched with a calculating eye as the young man went out again. "Do you think your nephew might have some spare garments he could lend us?" Shaso asked suddenly.
"Garments?" Dan-Mozan raised an eyebrow.
"Rough ones, not fine cloth. Suitable for some hard labor."
"I do not understand."
"He looks as though clothing of his might fit the princess. We can roll up the cuffs and sleeves." He turned to Briony. "We will put that anger of yours to some good work this afternoon."
"But surely you will come," Puzzle said. "I asked for you, Matty-I told them you were a poet, a very gifted poet."
Ordinarily, the chance to perform at table for the masters of Southmarch would have been the first and last thing solicited in Matt Tinwright's nightly prayers (if he had been the sort of person to pray) but for some rea¬son, he was not so certain he wanted to be known by the Tollys and their friends at court, both old and new. The past tennight things had seemed to change, as though the dark clouds that these days always clung to the city across the bay had drifted over the castle as well.
Perhaps I am too sensitive, he told himself. My poet's nature. The Tollys have done nothing but good in an ill time, surely. Still, he had begun to hear tales
from the kitchen workers and sonic of the other servitors with whom lie shared quarters in the back of the residence that made him uneasy-tales of people disappearing and others being badly beaten or even executed for minor mistakes. One of the kitchen potboys had seen a young page's fin¬gers cut off at the table by Tolly's lieutenant Berkan Hood for spilling a cup of wine, and Tinwright knew it was true because he had seen the poor lad being tended in a bed with a bandage over his bloody stumps.
"I… I am not certain I am ready to perform for them myself," he told I'uzzle. "But I will help you. A new song, perhaps?"
"Aye, truly? Something I could dedicate to Lord Tolly…?" As Puzzle paused to consider this and its possible results, Tinwright noticed move¬ment on the wall of the Inner Keep where it passed around Wolfstooth Spire, a short arrow's flight from the residence garden where he and Puz¬zle had met to share some cooking wine that Puzzle had filched from the lesser buttery. For a moment he thought it was a phantom, a transparent thing of dark mists, but then he realized that the woman walking atop the wall was wearing veils and a net shawl over her black dress and he knew at once who it was.
"We will talk later, yes?" he said to Puzzle, giving the jester a clap on the back that almost knocked the old man over. "There is something I need to do."
Tinwright ran across the garden, dodging wandering sheep and goats as though in some village festival game. He knew Puzzle must be staring at his sudden retreat as though he were mad, but if this was madness it was the sweetest kind, the sort that a man could catch and never wish to lose.
He slowed near the armory and wiped the perspiration from his fore¬head with a sleeve, then straightened his breeches and hose. It was strange: he felt almost a little shamefaced, as though he were betraying his patroness Briony Eddon, but he shrugged the feeling away. Just because he did not wish to recite his poems before the whole of the Tolly contingent did not mean that he had no ambitions whatsoever.
He walked around the base of Wolfstooth Spire and made his way up its outer staircase, so that when he reached the wall he should seem to be en¬countering her by accident. He was gratified to see she had not continued on, which would have necessitated him trying to hide the fact of walking swiftly after her to catch up. She was leaning on the high top of the outer wall, peering out through a crenellation across the Outer Keep, her weeds fluttering about her.
When he thought he was close enough to be heard above the fluting of
the wind, he cleared his throat. "Oh! Your pardon, Lady. I did not know anyone else was walking on the walls. It is something 1 like to do- to dunk, to feel the air." He hoped that sounded sufficiently poetic. The truth was, it was cold and damp here at the edge of the Inner Keep with the bay churning just below them. Were it not for her, he would much rather be under roof and by a fire, with a cup full of something to warm his guts.
She turned toward him and brushed back the veil to stare with cool, gray eyes. Her skin would be pale at the best of times, but here, on this dank, overcast day, with her black clothes and hat, her face almost disappeared ex¬cept for her eyes and fever-red mouth. "Who are you?"
He suppressed an exultant shout. She had asked his name! "Matthias Tinwright, my lady." He made his best bow and prepared to kiss her hand, but it did not emerge from the dark folds of her cloak. "A humble poet. I was bard to Princess Briony." He realized phrasing things that way might seem disloyal, not to mention suggesting he was out of work. "I am bard to Princess Briony," he said, putting on his best, most pious aspect. "Because, with the mercy of Zoria and the Three, she will come back to us."
An expression he could not read passed across Elan M'Cory's face as she turned slowly back to the view. Why did she wear those widow's clothes, when he knew for a fact-he had pursued the questionacarefully-that she was not married? Was it truly in mourning for Gailon Tolly? They had not even been betrothed, or so at least the servants said. Many of them thought her a little mad, but Tinwright didn't care. One view of her with her hair hanging copper-brown against her white neck, her large, sad eyes watching nothing as the rest laughed and gibed at one of Puzzle's entertainments, and he had been smitten.
He hesitated, unsure of whether to go or not.
"A poet," she said suddenly. "Truly?"
He suppressed a boast and thus surprised himself."I have long called my¬self so. Sometimes I doubt my skills."
She turned again and looked at him with a little more interest. "But surely this is a poet's world, Master…"
"Tinwright."
"Master Tinwright. Surely this your time of glory. Legends of the old days walk beneath the sun. Men are killed and no one can say why. Ghosts walk the battlements." She smiled, but it was not pleasant to see. Tinwright took a step back. "Do you know, I have even heard that mariners have lately returned with tales of a new continent in the west beyond the Smoking IsKinds,a great, unexplored land full of savages and gold.'Think of it! I'erhaps there are plaees where life still runs strong, where people are full of hope."
"Why should that not be true of this place, Lady Elan? Are we truly so weak and hopeless?"
She laughed, a small sound like scissors cutting string. "This place? Our world is old, Master Tinwright. Old and palsied-doddering, and even the young ones gasping in their cots. The end is coming soon, don't you think?"
While he was considering what to say to this strange assertion, he heard noises and looked up to see two young women hurrying along the battle¬ments toward them, slipping a little on the wet stones in their haste. He rec¬ognized them as Princess Briony's ladies-in-waiting-the yellow-haired one was Rose or some other such flower name. They looked at Tinwright suspiciously as they approached, and for the first time he wished he was wearing better clothes. Oddly, it had not occurred to him during his con¬versation with Elan M'Cory.
"Lady Elan," the dark one cried, "you should not be walking here by yourself! Not after what happened to the princess!
She laughed. "What, you think someone will climb the wall of the Inner Keep and steal me away? I can promise you, I have nothing to offer any kidnapper."
Ah, but you are wrong, thought Tinwright: if Briony Eddon was the bright morning sun, Elan M'Cory was the sullen, alluring moon. In truth, he thought, his mind as always leaping to the tropes of myth and story, the goddess Mesiya must look much like this, so pale and mysterious, she who walks the night sky with her retinue oj clouds.
He remembered then that Mesiya was the wife of Erivor and mother of the Eddon family line, or so it was claimed, her wolf their battle-standard. How quickly these poetic thoughts grew muddled…
"Come with us," the two ladies-in-waiting were saying, tugging gently at the black-clad Elan's arms. "It is damp here-you will catch your death."
"Ho!" a voice cried from below, lazy and cheerful. "There you are."
"Never fear," Elan M'Cory said, but so quietly that only Tinwright heard her. "It has caught me instead."
Hendon Tolly stood at the base of the wall on the Inner Keep side, a small crowd of guardsmen in Tolly livery standing near him but at a re¬spectful distance. "Come down, good lady. I have been looking for you."
"Surely you should go and lie down instead," said yellow-haired Rose, almost whispering. "Let us take care of you, Lady Elan."
"No, if my brother-in-law calls me, I must go." She turned to Tinwright "It has been good speaking with you, Master Poet. If you think ol any, an-swer to my question, I shall be interested to know. It seems to me that things move more quickly toward an ending every day."
"I am waiting, my lady!" Hendon Tolly seemed full of rich humor, as though at a joke only he understood. "I have things I wish to show you."
She turned and walked behind the ladies, heading back toward the steps that Tinwright had climbed and the waiting master of Southmarch.Just be fore she reached them, when Tolly had looked away to talk to his guards, she turned back toward Tinwright for a brief moment. He thought she might nod or give some other sign of farewell, but she only looked at him with an expression as bizarrely full of mixed shame and excitement as a dog who has been caught gorging on the last of the family's dinner, who knows he will be fiercely beaten but cannot even run.
Matt Tinwright would see that face again and again in nightmares.
Briony wriggled, trying to ease herself. The scarf she had borrowed from one of Idite's daughters bound her breasts securely, but left an uncomfort-able knot in the center of her back.
"Do the clothes fit?" Shaso had put on something similar to the loose homespun garments that one of the servants had brought to Briony. The pants were long; she had rolled them so they would not drag on the floor and trip her, but she was pleased to find that the rough shirt, though large, was not so big as to hinder her movements.
"Well enough, I suppose," she said. "Why am I wearing them?"
"Because you are going to learn something new." He was holding a bun¬dle wrapped in oiled cloth, which he tucked under his arm, then led her down the hall and out to the courtyard. The rain had stopped but the sky was still heavy with dark clouds and the stones of the courtyard were wet. He gestured for her to sit down on the edge of the stone planter that housed the courtyard's lone quince tree, bare now except for the last few shriveled fruits the birds had not taken. "That should be dry."
"What am I going to learn?"
He scowled. "The first thing you must learn, like all Eddons, is to be pa¬tient. You are better at it than your brother-but not much." He raised his
hand. NO, do not think of him. I shouldn't have spoken of him. We must pray that he is safe."
She nodded, willing her eyes to stay dry. Poor Barrick! Zoria, watch over his every moment. Put your shield above him, wherever he is.
"I would not have chosen to teach you swordplay, had you not wished it and your father not have given in to your whim." Shaso held up his hand again. "Remember-patience! But I have, and you have learned to fight well, for a woman. It is not the nature of women to fight, after all."
Again she started to speak, but she knew the look in the old man's eyes and did not have the strength for another argument. She closed her mouth.
"But whatever happens in the days to come, I think you will not be car¬rying a sword. You will not need one here, and if we leave this place we will go in secret." He placed his bundle down on the ground beside him, put his hand in and pulled out a wooden dowel that was only a little shorter than Briony's forearm. "I have taught you something of how to use a poniard, but primarily how to use it in combination with a sword. So now I am going to teach you how a Tuani fights without a sword. Stand up." He took the dowel in his fist. "Pretend this is a knife. Protect yourself."
He took a step toward her, swept the dowel down. She threw her hands up and shuffled backward.
"Wrong, child." He handed the bar of wood to her. "Do the same to me."
She looked at him, uncertain, then took a step forward, stabbing toward his chest, but unable to keep herself from holding back a little. Shaso put up a hand.
"No. Strike hard. I promise you will not hurt me."
She took a breath and then lunged. His hand flew out so quickly she al¬most could not see it move, knocking her hand aside even as Shaso himself stepped toward her, then put his leg behind her and pushed with his other hand against her neck. Just before she fell backward over his leg he caught at the sleeve of her shirt and kept her upright. He gently took the wooden rod out of her hand.
"Now you try what I have done."
It took her a dozen tries before she could get the trick of moving for¬ward at the same time as she deflected his attack-it was different than swordfighting, far more intimate, the angles and speed affected by the small size of the weapon and the fact that she had no weapon of her own. When the old man was satisfied, he showed her several other blocks and leg-locks,
and a few twisting moves meant not simply to deflect or stop an opponent's thrust but to loose the weapon from his hand.
The sun, climbing toward noon, finally made an appearance through the clouds. Briony was sweating now, and she had fallen down three or four times on the hard stones of the courtyard, bruising her knee and hip. By contrast, Shaso looked as calm and unruffled as when the lesson had first started.
"Take some moments to catch your breath," he said. "You are doing well."
"Why are you teaching me this?" she said. "Why now?"
"Because you are not royalty any longer," he said. "At least, you will have none of royalty's privileges. No men to guard you, no castle walls to keep your enemies away. Are you ready to begin again?"
She rubbed her aching hip, wondered if it was wrong to ask Zoria to grant Shaso a painful cramp-wondered if Zoria could even hear her, in this house of Tuan's Great Mother. "I'm ready," was all she said.
They stopped once for water and so that Briony could eat some dried fruit and bread that a wide-eyed servant brought out into the courtyard. Later, several of the house's women gathered under the covered walkway to watch, giggling inside their hooded robes, fascinated by the spectacle. Shaso showed her more unarmed blocks, grapple holds, kicks, and other methods of defending herself or even disarming an attacker, ways to break the arm of a man half again her size, or kick him in such a way that he would fight no more that day. When the old man was satisfied with her progress he brought out a second wooden dowel and gave it to her, then began to work with her on the skills of knife against knife.
"Do not let your enemy get his blade between you and him once you have closed," Shaso said. "Then even a backhand thrust can be fatal. Always turn it away, force the knife-hand out. There-see! If your enemy brings it too close, you can slash the tendons on the back of his hand or his wrist. But do not let him take your blade with his other hand."
By the time the sun had begun to slide behind the courtyard roof, and the women of the hadar had found even their deep curiosity satisfied and had gone back inside, Shaso let her stop and rest again. Her legs and arms were quivering with weariness and would not stop.
"We are finished for today," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "But we will do this again tomorrow and the days after, until I can sleep at night." He put the dowels back in the oilskin bundle. Something else inside it clinked, but he closed the wrapping and she did not see what it was. "This is not the world you knew, Briony Eddon. This is not a World that anyone knows, and what it will become is yet to be seen. Your part may be great or small, but I am sworn to your family and I want you alive to play that part."
She wasn't sure what he meant, but as she looked at the old man and saw that for all his seeming invincibility his hands were trembling as much as hers and his breathing was short and rapid, she was filled with misery and a kind of love. "I am sorry we had you imprisoned, Shaso. I am ashamed."
He gave her a strange look, not angry, but distant. "You did what you had to. As do we all, from the greatest to the smallest. Even the autarch in his palace is only a clay doll in the hands of the Great Mother." He tucked his bundle under his arm."Go now. You did well-for a woman, very well."
The moment of affection disappeared in a burst of irritation. "You keep saying that. Why shouldn't a woman fight as well as a man?"
"Some women can fight as well as some men, child," he said with a sour smile. "But men are bigger, Briony, and stronger. Do you know what a lion is? It is a great cat that lives in the deserts near my country."
"I've seen one."
"Then you know its size and strength. The female lion is a great hunter, fierce and dangerous, a mighty killer. She brings down the gazelle and she slaughters the barking jackals that try to feed on her kill. But she gives way always before the male."
"But I don't want to be a male lion," Briony said. "I'd be happy just to chase away the jackals."
Shaso's smile lightened, became something almost peaceful. "That, any¬way, I can try to give you. Go now, and I will see you in the morning."
"Won't I see you at supper?"
"In this house, the men and women do not eat together in the evening. It is the way of Tuan." He turned and walked, with just the hint of a limp, across the courtyard.
Dan-Mozan's nephew was waiting for her in the hallway. She groaned quietly as he stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, eyes averted as though he had not yet noticed her, as though he had not been waiting here on purpose. All she wanted was to get into a hot bath, if such a thing could be found, and steam the aches from her muscles and the dirt from her scratched knees and feet.
"You are wearing my clothes," Talibo said.
"Yes, and thank you. Your uncle loaned them to me."
"Why?"
"Because Lord Shaso wished me to practice knife-fighting." She frowned at the expression of arrogant disbelief on his face, had to hold her tongue How dare he look at her that way-Briony Eddon, a princess of all the March Kingdoms? He was no older than she was. It was true that he was not a bad-looking boy, she thought as she looked at his liquid brown eyes, the wispy mustache on his upper lip, but from the way his every feeling showed on his face he was still most definitely a boy. Seeing this one, she could imagine how Ludis' envoy Dawet dan-Faar must have looked in his youth, imagine the same look of youthful pride. Warrantless pride, she thought, annoyed: what had this brown-skinned boy ever done, living in a house, surrounded by women who deferred to him just because he was not a girl? "I have to go now," she said. "Thank you again for the use of these clothes."
She brushed past him, aware that the young man had more to say but unwilling to stand around while he worked up the nerve to say it. She thought she could feel his eyes on her as she walked wearily back to the women's quarters.