Shadowmarch

with you.”

Even in her astonishment, Qinnitan could not help thinking that the anguish on Luian’s face seemed less like that of a guardian unheeded than a lover scorned.

16. The Grand, and Worthy Nose

FLOATING ON THE POOL:

The rope, the knot, the tail, the road

Here is the place between the mountains

Where the sky freezes

—from The Bonefall Oracles

Collum Dyer had been cheerful all through the day’s ride, full of mocking remarks and droll assessments of life in Southmarch, and had managed to coax a few weak smiles out of the merchant Raemon Beck, but even Collum was grimly silent as they reached the crossroad. Dyer came from near the Brennish borderlands in the east and had never seen the old Northmarch Road. Ferras Vansen had passed this crossroad many times, but still found it a disturbing place.

“Gods,” said Collum. “It’s huge—you could drive three team-wagons abreast on it.”

“It is not that much wider than the Settland Road,” said Ferras, feeling a need to defend the more mundane thoroughfare that had so entranced him in his youth, which had led him to Southmarch and his current life.

“But look, Captain,” said one of the foot soldiers, pointing along the last clear stretch of the huge and disturbingly empty Northmarch Road before it vanished into the mist. “The ground drops away there on either side, but the road stays high.”

“They built it that way,” Vansen told them. “Because north of here it gets even wetter in the wintertime months. They built the roadbed up with stones and logs to keep it above the muck. They did things right back then. In the old days wagons and riders were going back and forth between Northmarch and Southmarch every day, and also the Westmarch Road joined it just on the other side of those hills.” He pointed, but the hills could only be seen m his memory; the mists were so thick today that someone might have draped a huge white quilt across the forested lands. It was strange to think of so much life here once, merchants, princes with their retinues, travelers of all sorts in what was now such a desolate place.

A thought flitted across his mind, quick and startling as a bat. Perin’s Hammer, what if we have to ride into the mist? What if we must pursue the caravan across the Shadowline into that… nothingness? In his life he had heard half a dozen people claim to have come back from the far side of that boundary, but he had not believed any of them. The one man of his village that everyone knew for certain had crossed the Shadowline and returned had never claimed anything. In fact, he had never spoken at all after his return, but had haunted the fringes of the village like a scavenging dog until the winter killed him. As a child, Ferras had seen that man’s constant expression of astonished horror—a look that suggested whatever had happened to him across the Shadowline was happening to him still and would continue happening every moment of every day. Although no one had said anything but what was correct and pious, everyone in the village had been relieved when the mad old man had died.

Collum’s question yanked him back to the here and now. “How far does the road lead?”

Ferras shook his head. “Northmarch Castle was about four or five days’ ride from here, I think. So the old gaffers in my village said, although it was at least a century before their time when anyone could still go there. And its lands and towns extended a good way farther north, I think.”

Collum Dyer clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Mesiya’s teats! And just think—now it’s all empty.”

Vansen stared at the wide road cutting across the hummocky land to where the fogs swallowed it. “So you think. So we hope. But I don’t want to consider it just now, to speak the plain truth. I don’t like this place.”

Collum turned and nodded toward Raemon Beck, sitting on his horse at the far side of the troop of guards, staring resolutely southward with a face pale as a fish’s belly. “Neither does he.”

FerrasVansen felt a tug of yearning as they rode along the Settland Road past the towns and villages of Daler’s Troth—Little Stell, Candlerstown, and Dale House, the seat of Earl Rorick Longarren, who would have wed the young woman stolen from Raemon Beck’s caravan. Vansen had not returned to his hilly home since he was still a raw young soldier, and it was hard not to think about how some of the men in Creedy’s Inn at Greater Stell would sit up to see him at the head of an entire troop, undertaking a mission at the direct order of the princess regent.

Yes, a mission that’s httle better than a banishment, he reminded himself.

But he was not much moved by the idea of preening in any case. His mother’s death a year before had left httle to tie him to this land of his childhood His sisters and their husbands had followed him to Southmarch Town. The folk here that he remembered would scarcely remember him, and in any case, what was the enjoyment of trying to make them feel worse about their hardscrabble lives? It was only the children of the really wealthy farmers, the ones who had mocked him for his shabbiness, for hisVuttish father’s strange way of speaking, that he would have wished to humiliate, and if they had inherited their fathers’ holdings they were undoubtedly richer than any mere guard captain, even the guard captain to the royal family.

There truly is nothing here for me now, he realized, with some surprise. Only my parents’ graves, and those are a half day’s ride off the road.

A light rain had begun to fall; it took him a moment to pick Raemon Beck from the crowd of hooded riders. Vansen guided his horse over to the young merchant’s side.

“You have a wife and some young ones at home, I think you said.”

Beck nodded. His face was grim, but it was the grimness of a child who was one harsh word away from tears. “What are their names?”

The young merchant looked at him with suspicion. Not all of Collum Dyer’s rough jokes had been kind, and clearly he wondered whether Vansen was going to make sport of him, too. “Derla. My wife’s name is Derla. And I have two boys.” He took a deep breath, let it out in an unsteady hiss. “Little Raemon, he’s the eldest. And Finton, he’s still… still in swaddling…” Beck turned away.

“I envy you.”

“Envy? I have not seen them in almost two months! And now…”

“And now you must wait -weeks longer. I know. But we have sent them word that you are well, that you are doing the crown’s business…”

Beck’s laugh had a ragged edge. “Weeks… ? You’re a fool, Captain.You didn’t see what I saw. They’re going to take you all, and me with you. I will never see my family again.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps the gods mean our end. They have their own plans, their own ways.” Ferras shrugged. “I would fear it more if I had more to lose, perhaps I honestly hope you come safe to your family again, Beck. I will do my best to see that it happens.”

The young merchant stared at his horse’s neck. Beck had a good face, Vansen thought, with strong nose and clear eyes, but not much of a chin. He wondered what the man’s wife looked like. Depends on Beck’s prospects with the family venture, he decided: a man could become surprisingly taller and handsomer merely by the addition of wealthy relatives.

“Do you… are you married?” Beck asked him suddenly.

“To the royal guard!” shouted Collum Dyer from a few yards away. “And it is a warm coupling—the guard gives us all a swiving every payday!”

Ferras grunted, amused. “No, not married,” he said. “Nor likely to be. One thing Dyer says is true—I am married to the guard.” There had been a few over the years he had almost thought possible, especially a merchant’s daughter he had met in the marketplace.They had liked each other, and had met and spoken several times, but she had already been pledged and so was duly married to a Marnnswalk furrier’s son with lucrative Brennish connections. Other than that, his dalliances had reached too low or too high, the taverner’s daughter at an inn called the Quiller’s Mint, friendly but twice widowed and five years his senior, and when he had first joined the