Shadowheart Part 1

Shadowheart.

by Tad Williams.

Acknowledgments.

Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert and everyone at DAW Books receive my overwhelming grat.i.tude as usual as we finally steer this monstrous story into port. I also want to thank our fabulous a.s.sistant Dena Chavez and my wicked-cool agent Matt Bialer, as well as the lovely Lisa Tveit who has put in tons of work making our website, www.tadwilliams.com, a fun and informative place to visit. Please come and join us there, or see me make a fool of myself on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tad.williams. Don't worry. n.o.body has died yet from too much Tad, so you probably won't be the first.

Super, extra-big thanks and love also go to my awesome wife Deborah Beale, who put in a staggering amount of work helping me revise the late drafts of this book when she could have been doing something else fun, or at least non-Tad-related.

Author's Note

Because of repeated questions and occasional physical a.s.saults (yes, the bruises are healing nicely, thank you) I have included as a second appendix a genuine historical doc.u.ment which lists and names most of the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds of the Trigonate faith and the names by which other peoples of Eion and Xand call them.

Synopsis of Shadowmarch

Southmarch Castle, the last human city in the north, has stood for two hundred years as a bulwark against the immortal Qar-the fairy folk who have twice fought wars against humanity. This is a bad time for Southmarch, a country whose king, OLIN EDDON, is being held for ransom in another kingdom, leaving only his three children, KENDRICK, the oldest, and the twins BARRICK and BRIONY, to watch over his land and people. Making this uncertain time worse, the Shadowline-the boundary between human lands and the foggy, eternally twilit domain of the Qar-has begun to move closer to Southmarch.

Then Kendrick is murdered in his own castle. SHASO DAN-HEZA, Briony and Barrick's mentor, is imprisoned for the crime and it seems his guilt is undeniable. Briony does not feel entirely convinced but she is distracted by many other concerns, not least the problems of trying to rule alongside Barrick, her sickly, angry twin.

In fact, matters are growing more confused and more dangerous in Southmarch every day. CHERT and OPAL, two Funderlings, a dwarfish folk who live beneath Southmarch, see a child abandoned by mysterious riders from the far side of the Shadowline. The boy is one of the Big Folk-an ordinary sized human-but they give him the Funderling name FLINT and take him home to their town under the castle. Meanwhile, CHAVEN, the royal physician, finds his own attention absorbed by a mysterious mirror, and the even more mysterious ent.i.ty that seems to live inside it.

Princess Briony places much of the blame for her older brother's death on FERRAS VANSEN, the captain of the royal guard, who she thinks should have done more to protect him. Vansen has an affection for Briony Eddon that goes beyond the bounds of both propriety and good sense. He can only accept mutely when, in part as punishment, she sends him out to the site of a reported attack across the Shadowline by the Qar.

YNNIR, the blind king of those same Qar, has initiated a complicated strategy concerning the castle and its ruling family; dumping the boy Flint near Southmarch was only the first part. That act is already having repercussions: at Kendrick's funeral the Eddon children's great aunt, d.u.c.h.eSS MEROLANNA, sees the boy Flint and almost faints. She is positive she has seen her own illegitimate child, whose birth was kept secret but who disappeared more than fifty years earlier.

Ynnir is not the only one of the Qar with complicated plans. LADY YASAMMEZ, one of the most powerful of the fairies, has gathered an army and is marching across the Shadowline to attack the mortal lands.

Meanwhile, Barrick and Briony find themselves in an ever stranger situation. Their chief counselor, AVIN BRONE, tells them that the TOLLYS, the most powerful rival family in the March Kingdoms, have been entertaining agents of SULEPIS, the AUTARCH OF XIS, the malevolent southern G.o.d-king whose goal seems to be to conquer the whole of the northern continent as he as already enslaved the south. (We have already seen him and his apparent madness in his treatment of QINNITAN, an innocent temple novice whom he has declared his newest wife and moved into the harem called the Seclusion. Strangely, though, the only attention she receives there is a kind of religious instruction and a series of disturbing potions the priests force her to drink.) Back in the northern continent, things get worse. Ferras Vansen and his troop find themselves lured onto the wrong side of the Shadowline. Several of the soldiers are killed by various creatures, and before they find their way back to the lands of men, Vansen sees the army that Yasammez has mustered heading for the March Kingdoms.

MATT TINWRIGHT, a Southmarch poet down on his luck, is asked to write a letter to the Eddon family on behalf of an apparently simple-minded potboy named GIL. A ch.o.r.e Tinwright thinks of as easy money instead gets him arrested and brought in front of Avin Brone, accused of treason. Princess Briony takes pity on Tinwright and frees him, even allowing him to stay in the household as a poet. Of all the troubled folk in Southmarch Castle, Tinwright alone seems to have found some luck.

The Qar destroy Candlerstown and Princess Briony decides Southmarch must send an army to halt the fairies' advance. To her surprise, her brother Barrick is the first to volunteer to ride out against the Qar. He has confessed to his sister that their father Olin suffers from a kind of madness that caused him to cripple Barrick some years ago, and Barrick believes he has the madness as well, so he feels he might as well risk his life defending the kingdom. Briony cannot talk him out of this, so she tasks Ferras Vansen, who has finally made his way back from beyond the Shadowline, to protect her brother at any cost.

Beneath the castle in Funderling Town the strange boy known as Flint has disappeared. With the help of one of the tiny ROOFTOPPERS, Chert tracks him down in the mysterious, sacred place beneath even their subterranean city, the holy depths known as the Mysteries. There Flint has somehow made his way to an island in an underground lake where stands the strange stone figure known as the s.h.i.+ning Man, sacred to the Funderling people. Chert brings the boy home. Later, with the potboy Gil, Chert will take a magical artifact the boy has brought back from the Mysteries and give it to Yasammez, the dark lady who leads the Qar forces camped outside the castle walls.

It is mid-winter and the army has gone out to fight the Qar. Briony is taunted in public by HENDON TOLLY with her family's failings and she loses her head so badly that she challenges him to a duel. When he refuses to fight her she is humiliated in front of the court, many of whom already feel she is too young and unstable (and too female) to rule Southmarch. Later, when she goes to keep an appointment with her pregnant stepmother ANISSA, she is surprised by the sudden appearance of Chaven the physician, who has been missing from the castle for some time.

Back on the southern continent, Qinnitan, the reluctant bride of the Autarch, escapes the royal palace of Xis and manages to talk her way onto a s.h.i.+p bound for the northern continent.

Meanwhile, the Qar prove too powerful and too tricky for the Southmarch armies: Prince Barrick and the rest are badly defeated. Barrick himself is almost killed by a giant, but Yasammez spares his life. After a short while alone with him she sends him away and he rides toward the Shadowline in a kind of trance. Ferras Vansen sees him, and when he cannot stop or hinder the confused prince, Vansen goes with Barrick to protect him, as Princess Briony had begged him to do.

Meanwhile, Briony's meeting with her stepmother turns horrifying when Anissa's maid proves to be Kendrick's murderer and again uses a magical stone to turn herself into a demonic creature bent on murdering Briony as well. Only Briony's courage saves her; the creature is killed. In the shock of the moment, Anissa goes into labor.

Leaving Chaven behind to take care of her stepmother, Briony sets out to free Shaso, her mentor, who has now been proved innocent of Kendrick's death. When she frees him, though, they find themselves outmaneuvered by Hendon Tolly, who has been manipulating events all this time. He intends to make it look as though Shaso has murdered Briony so Hendon can take the throne. Instead, Briony and Shaso fight their way free and escape Southmarch with the help of some loyal SKIMMERS, a water-loving people who also share the castle. But Briony has been forced to leave her home in the hands of her worst enemies, her brother is gone without trace, and Yasammez and the murderous Qar are now surrounding the castle.

Synopsis of Shadowplay Shadowplay

BRIONY EDDON and her twin brother BARRICK, the last heirs of the Southmarch royal family, have been separated. Their castle and country are under the control of HENDON TOLLY, a murderous and particularly nasty relative. The vengeful fairies known as the QAR have surrounded Southmarch Castle.

After escaping Hendon, Briony and her mentor, SHASO, take refuge in a nearby city with one of Shaso's countrymen, but that refuge is soon attacked and burned. Only Briony escapes, but now she is friendless and alone. Starving and ill, she hides in the forest.

Barrick, compelled by something he doesn't understand, heads north through the fairy lands behind the Shadowline in company with the soldier FERRAS VANSEN. They soon gain a third companion, GYIR THE STORM LANTERN, one of the Qar general YASAMMEZ's most trusted servants, who has a mission from her to bring a mirror-the very object the boy FLINT took down into the depths beneath the castle and to the feet of the s.h.i.+ning Man-to YNNIR, the king of the Qar. But Barrick and the others are captured by a monster named JIKUYIN, a demiG.o.d who has reopened the mines at Greatdeeps in an attempt to find a way to gain the power of the sleeping G.o.ds.

Briony Eddon meets a demiG.o.ddess, LISIYA, a forest deity now fallen on hard times, who leads Briony to MAKEWELL'S MEN, a troop of theatrical players on their way south to the powerful nation of Syan. Briony joins them, telling them nothing of her real name and situation.

Back in Qul-na-Qar, the home of the fairies, their QUEEN SAQRI is dying, and King Ynnir is helpless to do anything more for her. His only hope, it seems, are the machinations taking place around the magical mirror currently in the hands of Gyir the Storm Lantern. That mirror, and the agreement about it called the Pact of the Gla.s.s, is the only thing keeping vengeful Yasammez and her fairy army from destroying Southmarch.

At the same time QINNITAN, the escaped bride of SULEPIS, the AUTARCH OF XIS, has made a life for herself in the city of Hierosol, the southernmost port on the northern continent. What she doesn't know is that the Autarch has sent DAIKONAS VO, a mercenary killer, to bring her back, compelling Vo with painful magic. The nature of the powerful Autarch's interest in Qinnitan is still a mystery.

Southmarch Castle remains under the strange non-siege of the Qar. Inside the castle, the poet MATT TINWRIGHT has become enamored of ELAN M'CORY, Hendon Tolly's mistreated lover. Recognizing that Tinwright cares for her, she asks him to help her kill herself. Unwilling to do this, he tricks her by giving her just enough poison to make her senseless, then smuggles her out of the royal residence so that he can hide her from Hendon.

Tolly maintains his hold on power largely because he has named himself the protector of the newborn ALESSANDROS, heir to the missing KING OLIN. Hendon Tolly appears largely uninterested in the besieging Qar or anything else.

Meanwhile, Olin is being held in the southern city of Hierosol, where he catches a glimpse of Qinnitan (working as a maid in the palace) and sees something strangely familiar in her. He does not have long to think about it before the Autarch's huge navy sweeps up from the south and besieges Hierosol. Olin's captor sells him to the Autarch to secure his own safety, although why the G.o.d-king of Xis should be interested in the monarch of a small northern country is not clear.

In Greatdeeps, Barrick Eddon and the other prisoners of the demiG.o.d Jikuyin are slated for sacrifice in a ritual meant to open the way to the land of the sleeping G.o.ds, but the fairy Gyir sacrifices his own life, defeating the demiG.o.d's forces with their own explosives. Gyir dies and Vansen falls through a magical doorway into nothingness. Barrick is left alone to fight his way out of the mines and escape, carrying the mirror that Gyir was meant to take to the fairy-king Ynnir. With his companions gone and only the raven SKURN for company, Barrick begins his lonely journey across the shadowlands toward the fairy city of Qul-na-Qar. His only other companion comes to him solely in dreams-the girl Qinnitan, whom he has never met, but whose thoughts can, for some reason, touch his.

Meanwhile Briony and the theatrical troop have reached the great city of Tessis, capitol of Syan. She and the other players meet DAWET there, the onetime servant of Ludis Drakava, King Olin's captor, but they are all surprised and arrested by Syannese soldiers, although Dawet escapes. The players and Briony are accused of spying. To save her companions, Briony declares her true ident.i.ty-the princess of Southmarch.

Ferras Vansen, who had fallen into seemingly endless darkness, undergoes a strange, dreamlike journey through the land of the dead at the side of his deceased father. He escapes at last only to find himself no longer behind the Shadowline, but in Funderling Town underneath Southmarch Castle. CHAVEN the physician, who is hiding from Hendon Tolly, is also with the Funderlings now.

Far to the south, in Hierosol, Qinnitan is captured by Daikonas Vo, who takes her to the Autarch Sulepis, but the Autarch has already left Hierosol on a s.h.i.+p bound for the obscure northern kingdom of Southmarch. Vo commandeers another s.h.i.+p and sets out after his cruel master.

The Autarch is not alone on his flags.h.i.+p. Besides his faithful minister PINIMMON VASH, he also has a prisoner-the northern king, OLIN EDDON. And Olin's ultimate fate, Sulepis informs him, will be to die so that the Autarch can gain the power of the sleeping G.o.ds.

Synopsis of Shadowrise Shadowrise

The twins, BARRICK EDDON and his sister BRIONY, are both far away from their embattled family home, Southmarch Castle. The usurper HENDON TOLLY still holds Southmarch, which has been besieged for weeks by the Qar, also called the fairies or the Twilight folk. The brunt of the attack has fallen on the Funderlings who live beneath the castle in a near-endless warren of tunnels that stretch deep, deep down into the ground, down to the sacred places the Funderlings call "the Mysteries."

Princess Briony is far to the south, a guest of sorts at the court of KING ENANDER of Syan. (She has given up her disguise as a traveling player after they were all arrested by the Syannese king's guards.) She makes some friends in the court but only one useful ally, the king's son, PRINCE ENEAS, who seems to think very highly of Briony indeed. She is all the more grateful for his support when she survives a poisoning attempt that kills one of her maids.

Her brother Barrick is traveling through the twilit fairy lands with an ill-mannered raven named SKURN, on a mission he does not entirely understand. Barrick knows only that before his death the Qar warrior GYIR made him swear he would deliver a magical mirror to the royal court of the fairies-the timeless halls of Qul-na-Qar. But between him and the legendary fairy city lie countless murderous miles of shadowlands, full of miniature dangers like the Tine Fay and stranger creatures like the faceless, murderous Silkins.

To Skurn's disgust, Barrick chooses to take refuge from the Silkins on a place called Cursed Hill, and at the top he encounters a trio of strange, apparently ancient creatures who call themselves SLEEPERS. They are renegade members of the Dreamless tribe of Qar, and they declare they know Barrick and want to help him reach Qul-na-Qar, but that he is both too weak and too far from Qul-na-Qar to succeed in reaching it. They perform a magic ceremony that makes him feel stronger and healthier and restores his crippled arm to full health, and then tell him that he must find the mystical gateway to Qul-na-Qar in the city of Sleep, home of the Qar's enemies (and former relations) the Dreamless.

It is not only the Qar who have designs on Southmarch. The AUTARCH, the G.o.d-king of the southern land of Xis, is bringing many men and s.h.i.+ps to conquer the castle, along with Southmarch's true ruler, the children's father, KING OLIN, who is his prisoner. The autarch is not at all reticent about what he plans to do, and even seems to enjoy talking about it: he plans to sacrifice Olin and use his blood (which derives in part from the Qar royal family, and thus from a G.o.d) as a magical tool to open a portal to the land where the G.o.ds lie trapped in sleep, banished there by the very G.o.d who is ancestor to both Olin's family and the Qar-KUPILAS, also known as CROOKED. But it is not dying Kupilas who interests the autarch, but some other, more sinister G.o.d whose power the autarch means to steal and take for himself in a ritual on Midsummer's Day, which is only a matter of days away.

Olin is not the only prisoner who interests the autarch. A young woman who escaped from him earlier, QINNITAN, has been recaptured by the autarch's hand-picked hunter, the mercenary DAIKONAS VO. Vo barely misses the autarch's s.h.i.+p, which has just left for Southmarch in the north, but he commandeers another Xixian vessel and pursues them, looking to give the autarch his prisoner and receive his reward. After several attempts, Qinnitan finally manages to escape from Vo in the wild coastal lands east of Southmarch, but Vo, who is growing increasingly mad, continues to pursue her.

FERRAS VANSEN, the captain of the Southmarch royal guard, has led the Funderlings in a long and brave resistance against the Qar, but now he learns that the autarch is on his way. Vansen sets off for the Qar camp, determined to make common cause with the fairies or to die trying. Meanwhile, the enigmatic boy FLINT, adopted by the Funderlings CHERT and OPAL, continues to take a mysterious role in events, but sometimes seems as confused by his own actions as everyone else is.

In Syan, Briony is betrayed and falsely accused of trying to undermine King Enander's rule. She escapes with the help of her actor friends. Prince Eneas, the king's heir who wants to aid her, catches up to her and declares he will help her reach her home, and even a.s.sist her to retake her throne if he can. With such an ally (and his troops) Briony can finally begin to think about heading home to her family's stolen kingdom.

Meanwhile her twin Barrick has finally made his way to the city of Sleep, and after defeating some particularly dreadful guardians he is able to use the magical gateway there to go directly to Qul-na-Qar, although his companions Skurn and the merchant RAEMON BECK enter the gateway with him but do not arrive in Qul-na-Qar. The ancient home of the Qar is all but abandoned (since most are besieging Southmarch with their fierce leader, LADY YASAMMEZ) but the blind king YNNIR and sleeping queen SAQRI and a few servants remain. Ynnir uses the mirror Barrick has brought so far, but its power is not enough to wake the queen.

The autarch and his prisoner King Olin land in Southmarch. Olin's home looks deserted: the Qar seem to have given up their siege and left, which means the autarch's huge army will quickly overcome the castle's meager defenses and then the autarch will open the doorway to the place where the angry, dispossessed G.o.ds are waiting for their revenge.

In Qul-na-Qar, King Ynnir tells the mortal prince Barrick that the only way Queen Saqri can be woken is if Ynnir gives her the last of his strength. But he cannot do this without finding a caretaker for the FIREFLOWER within him, the wisdom of all the kings of the Qar. (Saqri contains the female version, the wisdom of the fairy queens.) No human has ever taken the Fireflower, but Barrick, like his father, has the blood of the G.o.d Kupilas (or Crooked, as the Qar name him) in his veins. Barrick agrees.

He is almost destroyed by the power of the Fireflower, but Saqri revives even as Ynnir dies. Barrick is left alone in the house of his enemies with a head full of incomprehensible Qar memories.

Prelude

He was named after the tualum tualum, small antelope that ran in the dry desert hills. As a girl, his mother had often watched the herd come down to the river to drink, so lean, so bright of eye, so brave; when she first saw her son, she saw all those things in him. "Tulim," she gasped. "Call him Tulim." It was duly noted down as he was taken away from her and given to a royal wet nurse.

The first things the boy remembered were the sunset-colored hangings of the Seclusion where he lived among the women for the earliest years of his life, where kind, sweet-smelling nurses held him, sang to him, and rubbed his tiny brown limbs with expensive unguents. The child's only moments of sadness came when he was placed back in his cot and another of the monarch's youngest children was lifted out to be cosseted and caressed in turn. The unfairness of it, that the attention which should have been for him alone was also given to others, burned inside little Tulim like the flame of the lamp he stared at each night before he fell asleep-a flame that he watched so carefully he could sometimes see it in his mind's eye at midday, so bright that it pushed everything real into shadow.

When he was scarcely three years old, as a sort of experiment, Tulim drowned one of the other young princes in the bath they shared. He waited until the nurses were turned away to comfort another child who had been splashed and was crying, then he reached for his brother Kirgaz's head, shoved it under the blossom-strewn water, and held it down. The three or four other children in the bath were so busy splas.h.i.+ng and playing that they didn't notice.

It was strange to feel his brother's desperate struggles and to know that only inches away ordinary things went on without him. People made so much of life, Tulim realized, but he could take it away whenever he chose. He saw the lamp's flame again in his mind's eye, but this time it was as though he himself had become the fire, burning so brightly that the rest of creation fell into darkness. It was ecstasy.

By the time the nurses turned around, Kirgaz was floating lazily, his hair swirling on the surface like seaweed, pale flower petals tangled in it. They screamed and dragged him out, but it was too late to save him. Many princes lived in the Orchard Palace-the autarch had many wives and was a prolific father-so the loss of one was no great tragedy, but both nurses were, of course, immediately executed. Tulim was sad about that. One of them had been in the habit of smuggling him a honey-milk sweet out of the Seclusion's kitchen each night. Now he would have to go to bed without it.

Tulim soon grew too old to live in the Seclusion, so he was moved to the Cedar Court, the part of the mighty, sprawling Orchard Palace where the young sons of n.o.bles were raised until manhood in fortunate proximity to the royal sons of Tulim's father, the glorious G.o.d-king Parnad. There for the first time Tulim lived with true men-only the Favored were allowed in the Seclusion-and learned manly things, how to hunt and fight and sing a war-song. With his long-legged good looks and his sharp wits, he also for the first time came to the attention of the men of the Orchard Palace, including, most surprisingly, his own father.

Most of Parnad's sons hoped to remain unnoticed by their father. True, one of them would one day become his heir, but the autarch was a vigorous, powerful man in his fifties so that day was far away, and Xixian heirs had a way of suffering accidents. Parnad himself had found a few of his sons too popular with the soldiers or the common people. One such young man had been the sole casualty of a battle with pirates in the western islands. Another had died, purple and choking, after apparently being bitten by a snake in the Yenidos Mountains in midwinter-a most unusual season for snakebites. Thus, none of the other princes felt too jealous when their father noticed Tulim and began to speak to him occasionally.

"Who was your mother?" Parnad asked him the first time. The autarch was a big man, tall but also broad as an old crocodile. It was strange for Tulim to think that this heavyset man with his thick beard was the source of his own slender limbs. "Ah, yes, I remember her. Like a cat, she was. You have her eyes."

Tulim wasn't sure whether this way of talking meant his mother was no longer alive, but he did not want to ask, which might seem sentimental and womanish. If he had inherited her eyes, though, she must have been exceptional indeed, for that was the thing that people noticed first about Tulim, the strange, golden eyes like holes filled with molten metal. It was one of the reasons he had long known he was not like any of the others-that same bright, all-devouring flame did not burn within his brothers or the other children as it did in him.

He and his father the autarch had other conversations, although Tulim never said much, and after a while Tulim was taken from the sleeping room he shared with several of the other young princes and given his own room where the autarch could visit him at whatever time of the day or night he thought best without disturbing Tulim's brothers. Parnad also began to perform various odd cruelties and unwholesome practices on him, all the while explaining to him about the terrifying responsibility of being the Bishakh-the chief of the falcon line that had come out of the desert to trample down the thrones of the world's cities.

"The G.o.ds hold us dear," Parnad would explain as he held Tulim's mouth closed, silencing his cries of pain. "It is given by them that the falcon soars higher than any other-that he can look down on all creation. The very sun itself is only the great falcon's eye."

Tulim could not always make sense of what his father said, but as a whole the lessons, coupled with the pain and other strange feelings, made it clear that the way of the flame and the way of the falcon were more or less the same: Everything belongs to the man who can reach and grasp without fear. That man the G.o.ds love. Everything belongs to the man who can reach and grasp without fear. That man the G.o.ds love.

Still, although the visits went on for years, Prince Tulim made a vow the first night that he would kill his father one day. It was not so much the pain that had to be revenged as the helplessness-the flame should never be smothered by the shadow of another, not even the autarch himself.

As he approached the age at which boyhood would be set aside and manhood put on like a new garment, Tulim began to spend time with another grown man, this one much more deferential toward his feelings. It was the man he called Uncle Gorhan, one of the autarch's older half brothers. Gorhan had been sired by Parnad's father on a woman of extremely common blood, and so was no threat to take the throne. He had used this sullied n.o.bility to his advantage, becoming one of the autarch's most trusted councillors, a man of storied wisdom and ingenuity. His attraction to Tulim was both less physical and less metaphysical than that of the boy's father: he saw in the youth a mind like his own, one that could, with proper training, roam not just beyond the walls of the Orchard Palace or the boundaries of Xis but through all the endless corridors of the G.o.ds' creation. Gorhan it was who taught Tulim to read properly. Not simply to recognize characters printed on vellum or reed paper and glean their sense-all princes learned that-but to read as a way of harnessing new wisdom to one's own like draft oxen, or adding new ideas to one's own like soldiers, so that the reader's power grew ever greater.

Gorhan introduced Tulim to the works of famous tacticians like Kersus and Hereddin, and historians like the great Pirilab. Tulim learned that the thoughts of men could be saved in books for a thousand years-that the great and learned men of other ages could speak as if to his own ear. Even more important, he learned that the G.o.ds and their closest followers could also speak across the great abyss of time and the greater abyss that gaped between earth and Heaven, sharing the secrets of creation itself. In the words of the warrior-poet Hereddin, which Gorhan quoted to him, "He who reaches only for a throne will never grasp the stars." "He who reaches only for a throne will never grasp the stars." Tulim understood that and felt that his uncle also must have a wisdom beyond other men, a wisdom only a little less than the G.o.ds: Gorhan had clearly sensed that Tulim was like no other, that he was greater even than the blood of his father that rushed through his veins. Gorhan understood that Tulim was a child, not of a man, but of Heaven itself. Tulim understood that and felt that his uncle also must have a wisdom beyond other men, a wisdom only a little less than the G.o.ds: Gorhan had clearly sensed that Tulim was like no other, that he was greater even than the blood of his father that rushed through his veins. Gorhan understood that Tulim was a child, not of a man, but of Heaven itself.

Over the years, as Tulim grew older and his boyish limbs gained the supple sinews of young manhood, his father the autarch lost interest in him, which only confirmed him in his hatred. The autarch had only wished to use him, and not even for that which made him unique, but for those qualities he shared with any other handsome boy. If Tulim could have killed Parnad, he would have, but the autarch was not only constantly attended by his fierce Leopard guards but was himself a man of astounding strength and practiced, unflagging attention, even while engaged in activities which would leave a lesser man distracted or drowsy. In any case, generations of Xixian Autarchs had been protected by the existence of the scotarchs, the special, temporary heirs who were not of the autarch's direct line, men who would take the throne in the event of any autarch's suspicious death and mete out justice before handing the throne over to the true heir-providing that heir had not been the former autarch's murderer. It was a strange old custom; one with many twists and turns, but it had kept centuries of autarchs safer from intrigue than almost any other nation's monarchs.

So Tulim could do nothing except wait, and study, and plan . . . and dream.

At last came the day when the rectangular gongs in the Sycamore Tower and the Temple of Nushash sounded the royal death-knell. Parnad, only a little more than three-score years old, had died in the Seclusion, in the bed of one of his wives. Although there was no sign of foul play his scotarch promptly had the wife and her maids tortured to make sure they had no guilty knowledge, then executed them, which served as a reminder to other palace dwellers of how unsafe it was to be involved, even innocently, in the death of an autarch. The period of mourning began, after which Dordom, the oldest son, already a general in the army and a warrior of renowned skill and cruelty, would ascend to the throne.

But Dordom died choking the night of Parnad's death and it was whispered throughout the Orchard Palace that he had been poisoned. That began to seem even more likely when three more of Parnad's brothers (and a few of their friends, servants, and mistresses who happened to share the wrong plate or goblet) also died from some strange poison that could not be tasted or smelled, did not act at once, but then ate the victim away from inside like spirit of vitriol.

One by one the other heirs fell, poisoned like Dordom, stabbed in their sleep by servants thought incorruptible, or strangled by a.s.sa.s.sins while in the throes of love, with guards waiting outside who, apparently, heard nothing. Several of Parnad's less ambitious sons and daughters, seeing which way the winds of change were blowing, took their families and left Xis altogether to avoid their own deaths (which, nevertheless, eventually found them.) Others fell into the spirit of the game and for a year ancient Xis was like a single huge shanat shanat board, with every move by a surviving member of the royal family considered and countered. Tulim, who was twenty-third in the line of succession, was not even considered as a possible culprit in the early deaths-many people believed that Parnad's death had set off a long-prepared, murderous rivalry between many of the aspirants to the throne. In fact, during the Scotarch's Year (as it was afterward called) most inhabitants of Xis, and certainly the wisest minds in the Orchard Palace, believed that the struggle for supremacy was between Dordom's younger brothers, the princes Ultin and Mehnad, who survived as other heirs fell or fled until only they, Tulim, and a demi-handful of others remained alive in Xis. board, with every move by a surviving member of the royal family considered and countered. Tulim, who was twenty-third in the line of succession, was not even considered as a possible culprit in the early deaths-many people believed that Parnad's death had set off a long-prepared, murderous rivalry between many of the aspirants to the throne. In fact, during the Scotarch's Year (as it was afterward called) most inhabitants of Xis, and certainly the wisest minds in the Orchard Palace, believed that the struggle for supremacy was between Dordom's younger brothers, the princes Ultin and Mehnad, who survived as other heirs fell or fled until only they, Tulim, and a demi-handful of others remained alive in Xis.

Most of the wisest courtiers felt certain that Tulim's survival was a mark of how little a threat he was to anyone. The few who knew him better, who might have had suspicions that things were not as they seemed, also knew him well enough not to gossip about him. Many of these truly wise ones survived to serve him.

Wisest of all, of course, was Uncle Gorhan, who had recognized a certain implacability in young Tulim-perhaps the reflection of his inner flame-and cast his own fate with the obscure princeling, so far from the throne. This was a genuine gamble on Gorhan's part because he was the sort of wise, unthreatening elder most likely to survive the accession of a new monarch, most likely to carry his service through another reign or even two, to die at last peacefully and in dignity and then be interred along with as many as a thousand living slaves, a mark of the royal family's great favor. Instead he was risking everything on one unlikely throw of the dice . . . or so it would have seemed to anyone who had not looked deeply into Tulim's disquieting golden eyes.

"I could do nothing else, Blessed Highness," Gorhan told him. "Because I knew what you would be when I first saw you and nothing could make me betray you. You and I, we are like this." The older man lifted his hand, index and middle fingers raised and pressed tight together to show the completeness of his connection to Tulim. "Like this."

"Like this, Uncle," echoed the prince, raising his own hand, fingers twinned. "I hear you."

As it happened, it was not long until their partners.h.i.+p bore its final fruits. One of the lesser princes was having an uncomfortable dinner with Mehnad, one of the two main rivals for the throne. In the midst of the meal the lesser princeling began to breathe like a man who had an entire duck egg stuck in his throat. He turned black, lurched to his feet and walked through the sumptuous meal set on the floor without seeing it, then fell into a crowd of servants bearing finger bowls and wine jugs, making such a clatter that for long moments it obscured the fact that his young wife had also died of a similar, although quieter, apoplexy.

Prince Mehnad, furious, shouted that this was nothing to do with him, that it was a plot to make him look petty (because what else was one to think of someone who poisons guests in his own house, and not only men but a woman as well?) Certain that his brother Ultin was behind it, Mehnad took a squadron of guards and went to Ultin's apartments in the city's Blue Lamp Quarter, but news of the murder had gone before them, and Ultin was waiting with a squadron of his own guards. Both brothers were so tired of the months of plot and counterplot, of murder and mistrust, that they needed no excuse to settle their differences now once and for all. As the guards brawled among themselves, Ultin and Mehnad singled each other out and, like the fierce soldiers they were, fought each other without mercy.

It was only when Ultin had finally cut down his brother and stood over his body in triumph, bloodied by a few wounds but largely unhurt, that the nature of Tulim's plan became obvious. Even as he crowed in victory, Ultin suddenly began to choke as the unfortunate princeling had choked-as if a duck egg were lodged in his throat. Blood pa.s.sed from his nose and mouth, then Ultin fell down on top of his dead brother. Both men's swords, it was later discovered, had been poisoned by some third party, but Mehnad had not lived long enough to suffer the effects.

And as the two princes' household guards stood around the bodies in a cloud of confusion and rage, Tulim and Gorhan stepped out from the place where they had been watching. They had only a few of Gorhan's own guards with them, a much smaller number than either Ultin's or Mehnad's forces, but those who had so recently fought for the two older brothers recognized quickly that if they fought Tulim the best they could hope for was to be in search of new employment afterward-for what is a prince's guard with no prince? After all, Tulim was one of Parnad's heirs, and although he had begun as a very unimportant one he had managed to outlast nearly two dozen others-that in itself was enough to convince them his candidacy was worth considering; Gorhan's small but firmly committed bodyguard and their sharp spears were enough to make the argument convincing.

So it was that Prince Tulim, whom few had even noticed and none had particularly feared, walked across the bodies of dozens to achieve the Falcon Throne of Xis, taking for himself the autarchical name Sulepis am Bishakh Sulepis am Bishakh. In days to come, Sulepis would rea.s.sert the historical right of Xis to rule over all the continent of Xand, walking across the bodies of hundreds of thousands more to do so, covering most of the land south of the Osteian Sea with his b.l.o.o.d.y footprints. And if he then set his sights on conquering the northern continent of Eion, who could blame him? He clearly had destiny on his side: his flame had indeed proved to burn brighter than all others.

And, like a G.o.d, Tulim-who-became-Sulepis didn't only mete out justice on the scale of continents: he could be personal as well. Within a few days of taking the throne he found himself in disagreement with his uncle Gorhan over some minor matter of statecraft, at which point Gorhan gave the new autarch a look calculated to make him feel, if not shame, at least discomfort at his own ingrat.i.tude.

"I am disappointed, my lord," Gorhan told his nephew. "I thought we were to be like this like this," he held up his fingers, index and middle pressed together. "I thought you cared enough to heed my advice. You are like a son to me, Tulim. I had hoped to be like a father to you."

"Like a father?" Sulepis raised one eyebrow, fixing Gorhan with a stare as remorseless and golden as that of a hunting hawk. "So be it." He turned to the captain of his Leopard guard. "Take the old man away," he said. "Flay the skin from his body-but slowly, so that he may feel it. Not all at once, either, but in a single strip winding the length of his body, starting at his feet and continuing to the top of his head. I would like him to live until then, this new 'father' of mine."

Even the hardened captain hesitated as old Gorhan fell to his knees, weeping and begging for mercy. "A single strip, Golden One?" the soldier asked. "How wide?"

Sulepis smiled and lifted two fingers. "Like this."