Shadowplay

no sense in the raven dying, too, if that was what was to happen. Vansen pulled Skurn loose, then threw him into the dark rushes waving near the stream.

The reverberating cry of the creatures grew suddenly louder as the rest of the force, the troop that had been pursuing Vansen and the others down the hill, came dashing out onto open ground, waving their torches, their oddly-jointed movements stranger than any nightmare.

Vansen reined up beside his companions. Barrick looked up with glassy, fatalistic eyes. Gyir, his sword already dripping black with blood, stared past him at the Longskulls on either side.

“We are surrounded!” Vansen pulled on the reins, trying to keep his restive, frightened horse from rearing. The pursuers on the hillside had slowed from a full-tilt run to something more like a walk, but they still came on. Those at the head of the valley were moving closer now too, so that Vansen and his companions found themselves in the middle of a shrinking circle. Vansen looked for even a tiny opening—he would grab the prince and try to beat his way through—but their captors moved in without any jostling or confusion that might allow such an opening.

They were surrounded by many times their own numbers— perhaps a pentecount or more—but Vansen braced himself for a hopeless charge: better to die that way than be stuck as he stood like an exhausted boar at the end of a grueling hunt.

No. No, they’ve...stopped, he realized. Instead of finishing them off, the Longskulls watched the trio with calm interest, small eyes gleaming beneath heavy browridges, some of them opening and closing their bony, toothless mouths like fish. The two scouts Gyir had killed the night before had been better caparisoned than most of these club-wielding creatures, who wore little more than rags and shreds of chain mail and leather, but there were far more than enough of them to make up for any deficiency in their arms.

Gyir made the first speech-sound Vansen had ever heard from him, a hiss of air like a snake’s warning, so loud it could be heard even above the gabble of the surrounding Longskulls. The fairy raised his sword, and Vansen knew beyond doubt that he was about to leap into the nearest mass of them and sell his life dearly, shedding blood and breaking bones, but Vansen knew just as clearly that even a fierce fighter like Gyir would fail and quickly be dragged down by sheer weight of numbers, and that he and Barrick would then follow him into death.

“Gyir, no! Barrick, stop him!” he shouted. “They’re not going to kill us.”

The fairy-man took a step forward. Vansen leaned down to grab at Gyir. He caught the collar of the fairy- man’s cloak and hung on. The Storm Lantern’s strength was surprising —Vansen was almost dragged out of the saddle, even with both legs gripping and his hand locked on the horn. “Curse you, give over!” he grunted at the fairy. “They mean to take us alive! Look at them!”

Barrick, after a moment of indecision, suddenly leaped forward and grabbed at Gyir’s other arm. Trembling, the fairy-warrior turned on the young prince with a look of something like hatred, his eyes the only part of his face that lived, two burning slashes in the ivory mask. After a moment, though, he lowered his bloodstained blade. The Longskulls moved closer, hooting quietly, and began to disarm their new prisoners.

“We are a catch, it seems,” Vansen said to the prince. “Better to surrender than die needlessly, Highness. For the living, there is always hope.”

“Or torture.” Barrick was shoved roughly to the ground even as he spoke. The prince’s voice was flat and lifeless. “We will be slaves if we are lucky, or meat for their larders.” A moment later Vansen had been shoved down to his knees beside him. The Longskulls fastened heavy chains around his arms and a hard, rough rope around his throat, then the same was done to Barrick and Gyir.

One of the Longskulls stepped forward and honked imperiously as he tugged on the rope around the prince’s neck, forcing him to rise. For a moment it looked like Gyir might go mad when his own rope was pulled, but Vansen put out his hand and Gyir stilled, then allowed himself to be led. The Longskulls shared a gabbling hiss that might have been laughter. The creatures smelled of swamp mud and something else, an odor sharp and sour as vinegar.

As they trudged back up the dark hill they had ridden down such a short while before, Ferras Vansen could hear the heart-rending screams of his horse in the valley behind them as the Longskulls began to hack it into pieces.

Slaves or meat, he thought, feeling as hollow as a lightning burned tree. My horse is meat, but we are slaves—and still alive. At least for now.

Part Two MUMMERS

15. The Boy in the Mirror

Zhafaris became a tyrant who did not observe the laws, and who cheated his relatives of their due, my children, and they began to whisper against him and his authority. Fiercest of all when it came to talking were the three sons of Shusayem, but in truth they were all afraid of their father.

Then Argal Thunderer said to his brothers, “I hear that in far off Xandos there is a mountain, and on that mountain lives a shepherd named Nushash, who is as strong as any man who ever lived.” And it was true, because Nushash and his brother and sister were the true and first children of Zhafaris, although they had lived long in hiding.

—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One

The wind had blown the clouds into tatters, and although what remained was enough to keep the sun dodging in and out, for once the skies were dry. All over the castle people were emerging, eager to feel something other than rain on their faces.

A dozen young women came out into the garden of the royal residence. Matt Tinwright, who had been feeling sorry for himself and searching fruitlessly for something that rhymed with “misunderstood,” stood and straightened his jerkin. His mood had suddenly improved, and not only because he could show his well-turned legs and new beard to some pretty girls: their arrival, bright and lively as a flock of migrating birds, felt like a harbinger of spring, although winter still had weeks to run. As he watched them scatter across the formal garden, some wiping the benches dry so they could sit, others forming a circle on the central lawn to toss a ball of feather-stuffed cloth, Tinwright could almost believe that things in Southmarch might again become ordinary, despite all evidence to the contrary.

He took off his soft hat and ran his fingers through his hair, wondering whether it would be more enjoyable to insert himself into the proceedings directly or wait a while, watching the play and smiling in a friendly but slightly superior manner. A moment later all thought of the ball game fled his mind.

She walked slowly, like a much older woman, and with the young maid beside her she might have been someone’s dowager aunt—especially since on this day, when everyone else had chosen to wear something with a little color in it, she was still dressed head to foot in funeral black. But there was no mistaking that pale, resolute face, the fine, slightly sharp chin, the long fingers twined in prayer beads. At least she had left off her veil today.

What would have been quite sufficient for a casual game of ball and some seemingly accidental contact with the players was no longer enough to pass muster. Tinwright paused and pulled up his stockings, brushed a few crumbs from his chest—he had been eating bread and hard cheese while contemplating the unfairness of life—then made his way down the path looking only at plants, as if too taken by the harsh beauty of the winter garden to notice the arrival of several nubile young women showing more skin around the neck and bosom than they had in months. He wound in and out among the box hedges by a path so circuitous he might have been a foraging ant, crunching along gravel paths unraked since late autumn, until at last he approached the bench where the object of his garden quest sat with her maid.