(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (80 page)

Here between the Reach and the Sea in the Depths there were also no natural lights, and Chert had to make his way through the Maze in darkness, with only the sound of his own ragged, weary breathing and the thump of his heart for company. After what seemed like an hour tracing and retracing what to the touch were indistinguishable passages, he finally grew certain he was lost; he was just about to sit down and weep with despair when he felt moving air on his face. Heart pounding now for joy and relief, he followed the breeze a few more turnings until he stepped out of the Maze and into the blue-lit vastness of the Sea Hall, but his happiness lasted only moments. He was on the balcony on the outside of the Maze with a long fatal drop below him, a barrier so effective that even the pilgrims who completed the Mysteries never saw more of the monsterous Sea Hall cavern than this. There was no way down to the cavern floor, and no sign of Flint on the great raw stone balcony.

There was nowhere else the boy could be.

Now Chert did weep a little, exhausted and despondent. He got down on his knees and crawled close to the edge, half certain that he would see the boy’s mangled body on the jagged, rocky shore beneath him, illuminated by the weird blue crystals of the cavern’s roof. Instead, the reach of broken, piled stone was empty all the way to the silvery Sea in the Depths and the unreachable island at its center where the vast rocky form stood that figured in so many Funderling nightmares and revelations. The man-shaped formation was shrouded in shadow, but the roof-stones shed their light almost everywhere else. There was no sign of Flint, either living or dead.

Chert was plunged back into the misery of uncertainty. Had he and Beetledown walked right past Flint at some other turning, not knowing that the boy lay senseless or even dead nearby? The Mysteries and the tunnels and caves above them were unimaginably complex. How could he even guess where to start a new search if the Rooftopper’s nose was not to be trusted?

Then, as if it had sensed Chert’s distant presence, the huge and mysterious stone figure known as the Shining Man began to flicker alight on its island at the center of the Sea in the Depths, and Chert’s heart sped until he thought it might burst. He had seen the statue only one other time, at his initiation, in the company of other young Funderlings, under the guidance of the Metamorphic Brothers. This time, he was alone and full of an interloper’s guilt. As the massive crystalline shape suddenly blazed with blue and purple and golden light, it threw strange reflections on the sea itself, which was not water but an immense pool of something like quicksilver, so that all the cavern was full of leaping colors and the Shining Man almost appeared to move, as if awakening from a long slumber. Chert flung himself down, his belly against the stone. He begged the Earth Elders’ forgiveness and prayed to be spared.

The gods did not see fit to strike him dead, and after a few moments the light dimmed a little, enough that he dared to raise his head, but when he did so, Chert’s superstitious terror was suddenly made worse. In the new light he could see a small shape on the island—a moving figure that advanced, crawling slowly upward from the edge of the shining metal sea toward the feet of the glowing giant, the Shining Man. Even from this distance, with the figure small as an insect, Chert knew who it was.

“Flint!” he shouted, and his voice echoed out across the quicksilver sea, but the small shadow did not stop or even look back.

30

Awakening

T
HE CEILING OF THE MAIN trigonate temple was so high that even with the great doors closed it had its own subtle winds—the thousands of candles on altars and in alcoves were all fluttering. At this hour of the morning it was also very cold. Barrick’s arm ached.

The prince regent was surrounded by the men who would accompany him into the west, his unloved cousin Rorick Longarren and more proven warriors like Tyne of Blueshore and Tyne’s old friend, the extravagantly mustached Droy Nikomede of Eastlake, along with many others Barrick knew mostly by reputation. In fact, much of the flower of the March Kingdoms’ nobility had gathered for this blessing—doughty Mayne Calough from far Kertewall, Sivney Fiddicks who some called the Piecemeal Knight because his armor and battle array were all prizes he had won in various tilts, Earl Gowan M’Ardall of Helmingsea, and several dozen other high lords dressed in white robes, plus five or six times that number of humbler stature who yet possessed their own horses and armor and at least a cottage or field somewhere so they could call themselves “landed.”

Like all the others, Barrick Eddon was down on one knee, facing the altar where Sisel told the blessing, the ancient Hierosoline phrases rolling from the hierarch’s tongue like the meaningless babble of a fast-running stream. Barrick knew he would soon be riding to war, perhaps even to death. Not only that, the enemy they all faced were the wild creatures from the shadowlands, the old terror, the stuff of nightmares—yet he felt oddly flat, empty and unconcerned.

He raised his eyes to the vast tripartite statue behind the altar, the three gods of the Trigon standing atop an artfully carved stone plinth that became clouds around the sky god’s feet, stones and waves respectively for the gods of earth and sea. The three towering deities stared outward, with Perin in the center in his rightful place as the highest of the high, fish-scaled Erivor on his right, glowering Kernios on his left. They were half brothers, all children of old Sveros, the night sky, from different mothers. Barrick wondered if any one of the Trigon would be willing to die for his brothers as he would give his life for Briony—as he almost certainly was going to give his life for her. But since they were gods and thus immortal and invulnerable, how would such a thing happen? How could gods be brave?

Hierarch Sisel was still droning. The old man had insisted on leading the ceremony himself because of the importance of the occasion—and because, Barrick suspected, like so many others he wished to do something to help, to feel himself a contributor. Word had passed swiftly through castle and city: there was not one person in a hundred now who did not know that war was coming, and that it was apparently going to be a strange and frightening sort of war as well.

How Barrick himself felt about it all was even stranger, he had to admit—like reaching for something on a high shelf that was just out of reach no matter how one jumped or strained. He simply couldn’t make himself feel much of anything.

 

When the hierarch’s part of the ceremony was over, Sisel took Barrick aside as the other nobles were having their robes perfumed with sacred smoke by the blue-clad temple mantises. The hierarch had a half-humble, half-irritated expression that Barrick knew very well: it was a look his elders often wore when they wanted to scold him but couldn’t help remembering that one or two of Barrick’s ancestors had imprisoned people—or even killed them, if certain popular rumors were true—for giving unwelcome advice.

“It is a brave thing you are doing, my prince,” Sisel said.

He means to say “stupid,”
Barrick decided, but of course that was a word even a hierarch of the Trigonate would not use to an enthroned prince. “I have my reasons, Eminence. Some of them are good ones.”

Sisel raised his hand. It was meant to signify
no more needs to be said,
but to Barrick it was irritatingly close to Shaso’s raised hand, which throughout his childhood usually meant:
Shut up, boy.
“Of course, Highness. Of course. And the Three Powerful Ones grant that you and the others come home safely. Tyne is to lead, of course?” His forehead wrinkled as he realized what he had said. “In support of you, of course, Prince Barrick.”

He almost smiled. “Of course. But let us be honest. I’m to be a sort of . . . what do they have on the front of a ship? A masthead?”

“Figurehead?”

“Yes. I don’t expect the soldiers to listen to me, Hierarch—I have no experience of war yet. In fact, I hope to learn something from Tyne and the others. If the Three grant I come back safely, that is.”

Sisel gave him a strange look—he had perhaps detected something a little false in Barrick’s pious manner—but he was also relieved and clearly didn’t want to think about it much. “You show great wisdom, my prince. You are unquestionably your father’s son.”

“Yes, I think that’s true.”

Sisel was still puzzled by whatever lurked beneath Barrick’s words. “These are not natural creatures we face, my prince. We should not be troubled at what we do.”

We?
“What do you mean?”

“These . . . things. The Twilight People, as they are superstitiously named, the Old Ones. They are unnatural—the enemies of men. They would take what is ours. They must be destroyed like rats or locusts, without compunction.”

Barrick could only nod.
Rats. Locusts.
He let himself be censed. The perfumes in the smoke reminded him of the spice stalls of Market Square, made him wish badly to be there again with Briony, as when they were children and had escaped for a delicious, giggling moment or two with half the household in ragged pursuit.

After he had removed the ceremonial robe, Barrick followed the knights and nobles out of the temple. Tyne Aldritch and the others looked rested and refreshed, as though they had just come from a bath and a nap, and Barrick couldn’t help being jealous that the trip to the temple had given them this comfort—a comfort he himself did not feel.

Earl Tyne saw Barrick’s troubled face and slowed until they were walking side by side. “The gods will protect us, never fear, Prince Barrick. The creatures are uncanny things, but they are real—they are made of flesh. When we cut them, their blood will flow.”

How can you be sure of that?
he wanted to ask. After all, the only person in all of Southmarch with any experience of their enemy was that soldier Vansen, who had actually been present for the killing of one of the Shadowline creatures, although admittedly a small and not very dangerous one, and who had also been attacked by a much larger thing that half a dozen soldiers had not managed to harm at all, even as it took one of their company like a child snatching a sweetmeat from an unguarded plate.

Barrick did not share any of these thoughts either.

“The monsters will be frightening, no doubt,” said Tyne quietly. They paused as the temple acolytes pushed open the heavy bronze doors and let the bay air spill in, ruffling hair and clothing and making the candle flames sputter. “Remember, Highness, it is important that we show the men a courageous face.”

“The gods will give us what courage we need, no doubt.”

“Yes,” said Tyne, nodding vigorously. “They did for me when I was a youth.”

Barrick suddenly realized that although Tyne Aldritch was more than twice Barrick’s own age, he was still a great deal younger than the twins’ father, King Olin. He was a man still young enough to have ambitions—perhaps he hoped that Barrick would remember him as a loyal friend and mentor if they all survived, that his fortune would rise even higher if Barrick Eddon became king someday. Tyne’s daughter was nearly of marriageable age, after all. Perhaps he dreamed of a royal connection.

Up until this moment it had been hard for Barrick to think of most of his elders as anything other than an undifferentiated mass, at least those who were not yet dodderingly old. Now for the first time he examined the battle-scarred Earl of Blueshore and wondered what Tyne himself saw when he gazed out at the world, what he thought and hoped and feared. Barrick looked around at Sivney Fiddicks and Ivar of Silverside and the other lords, faces held up, jaws set in expressions meant to be brave and inspiring as the pale sunshine spilled in through the open doors, and realized that every one of these men lived inside his own head just as Barrick lived in his, and that all of the hundreds of people waiting anxiously on the stairs outside the temple for a glimpse of the nobility of Southmarch lived within their own thoughts as well, as completely and separately as Barrick himself did.

It’s as if we live on a thousand, thousand different islands in the middle of an ocean
, he thought,
but with no boats. We can see each other. We can shout to each other. But we can none of us leave our own island and travel to another.

This idea hit him with a far stronger force than any of the ritual he had just experienced inside the temple, and so he did not realize for a moment that the crowd of people on the steps was pushing the ring of guards back toward the temple doors, that in their fear over the rumors of war and even more terrifying things, the throng of common folk was only moments away from trampling the very people they expected to defend them. Some of the priests began to shut the great doors again. The guards were shoving back with the long handles of their pikes and a few of the crowd were knocked down and bruised. A woman screamed. Some men began trying to pull the pikes away from the guards. A few clods of dirt thudded down on the steps; one hit a Marrinswalk baron on the leg and he stared dumbfounded at the stain on his clean hose as though it were blood. Rorick shouted in alarm, perhaps as much at the threat to his own cleanliness as the danger to his person. Then, as if it happened in a dream—he was still caught up in the idea of people as islands—Barrick watched Tyne draw his sword, heard the rattle and hiss of a dozen blades leaving their scabbards as other nobles followed Blueshore’s lead. The smell of the crowd so close around them was an animal reek, alien and frightening.

Tyne and the others—they’re going to kill people,
he realized. It scarcely seemed possible it was happening so swiftly.
Or the people may kill us. But why?
He looked at the faces around him, saw a growing realization reflected between the nobles and commons that things were falling to pieces and that none of them knew how to stop it.