Shadowplay

she or Merolanna were expected to ask a question, but then the woman in the bed began to move, first to twitch as in a fever-dream, then to thrash weakly. Suddenly she sat up. Her eyes opened wide, but she did not seem to be looking at anything in the room, not even the two giant women. She spoke in a surprisingly low voice, a slurry string of quiet sounds like bees buzzing. The priestesses swayed.

“What does she say?” demanded Merolanna.

“She says nothing,” the queen of the Rooftoppers corrected her. “It is the Lord of the Peak himself who speaks, and he says, ‘The end of these days comes on white wings, but it bears darkness like an egg. Old Night waits to be born, and unless the sea swallows all untimely, the stars themselves will rain down like flaming arrows.’ Those are the words of the Lord of High Places.”

Vague, apocalyptic prophecy was not what the dowager duchess had come to hear. “Ask about my son,” she said in a sharp whisper. But Utta could tell that a bargain was being struck, even if she did not yet know with whom they were bargaining—the Rooftoppers and their queen? Their god? Or simply this one Rooftopper oracle?

“We have been told that you know something of this woman’s son, O Lord of the Peak,” Utta said slowly and clearly, hoping that if the Rooftoppers spoke her language, so did their god. “Will you tell us of him?”

The woman thrashed again and almost fell from her bed. Two tiny, shaven-headed priestesses stepped forward to hold her as she mumbled and rasped again.

“‘The High Ones took him, fifty winters past,’” the queen said, translating or simply amplifying the Ears’ quiet mumble. “‘He was carried behind the cloud of unknowing mortals call the Shadowline. But he yet lives.’”

Merolanna let out a little shriek, swayed, and collapsed against Utta, who did her best to hold her upright: the duchess was of a size that she would destroy much of the Rooftoppers’ religious quarter if allowed to fall. “She will thank you for this news—but I think not today,” Utta said, a little out of breath. She bent closer to Queen Upsteeplebat. “Can your god not tell us more?” she whispered. “Is there a way to find her child?”

For long moments the Ears lay like a dead woman—much like Merolanna, who seemed to have fainted. Then the tiny shape stirred and spoke again, but so quietly that Utta could only see her lips move. Even the little queen had to lean against the rail of her chariot to hear.

“The Lord of High Places says, ‘The world’s need is great. Old Night pecks at its shell, yearning to breathe the air of Time. This castle’s priest of light and stars once owned a piece of the House of the Moon, ancient and powerful, but now it has been taken. Find where that stolen piece has gone and in return Heaven will speak more of this mortal woman’s son.”

With that the Ears fell into a deep, deathlike sleep. When it was clear she would speak the god’s words no longer, the priestesses wrapped her up again. This time the tiny soldiers moved in and carried the entire bed away into the shadows like a funeral bier.

Utta held Merolanna, who groaned like a woman in a bad dream, and wondered and wondered at the surpassing strangeness this day had brought.

The duchess stirred in her bed and sat up, hands clawing out as though something had been pulled away from her.

“Where are they? Did I dream?”

“You did not dream,” Utta told her. “Unless I dreamed the same dream.”

“But what else did that little creature say? I cannot remember!” Merolanna fumbled for the cup of watered wine on the chest by her bed, drank it so fast that a pinkish rivulet spilled and ran down her chin.

Utta told her the rest of the Ears’ pronouncement. “But I can make no sense of it.”

“My child!” Merolanna fell back against the pillows, her chest heaving. “I gave him away,” she moaned, “and now the fairies have him. Poor, poor boy!” In halting words, she told Utta of the child’s secret birth and disappearance. Utta was surprised, but not astonished—the Zorians did not believe humans could be perfected, only forgiven.

“If the little people’s oracle spoke correctly, that was almost fifty years gone, Your Grace,” she told Merolanna. “Still, we must try to understand the god’s words—if it really was a god who spoke. A piece of the Moon’s House, the little woman said. And that it belonged to the castle’s priest of light and stars.”

“Priest? Do they mean Father Timoid? But he is gone!” Merolanna tossed her head as if in a fever. “Why should some god send this message to torture me?”

“Perhaps they mean Hierarch Sisel.” Utta reached out to take the duchess’ hand, hoping to calm her. “He is the highest priest of all, so...”

“But he is gone too, to his house in the country. He told me he could not bear to see what the Tollys were doing.” Merolanna tried to calm herself. “Would he be the priest of light and stars, though? He is the great priest of the Trigon, and they are air, water, and earth...” She moaned again. “Ah, if only Chaven were here. He knows of such things—he studies the stars, and knows almost as much about the old tales of the gods as Sisel...”

“Wait,” said Utta. “Perhaps that is who it means. Chaven is a priest of sorts—a priest of logic and science. And his is the particular study of light and the stars, with those lenses of his. Perhaps Chaven had some powerful object that is now lost.”

“But Chaven is the one who’s lost!” said Merolanna. “He’s vanished! And that means my son is lost forever...!”

“No one simply disappears,” said Utta. “Unless the gods themselves take them. And the Rooftoppers’ god, at least, does not seem to know what’s happened to Chaven, so perhaps he is still alive.” She stood. “I will see what I can discover, Your Grace.”

“Be careful!” Merolanna cried as Utta moved to the door. She extended her arms again as though to draw the Zorian sister back. “You are all I have left!”

“We have the gods, Duchess. I will pray for my gracious lady Zoria’s help. You should do the same.”

Merolanna slumped back. “Gods, fairies...the world has run utterly mad.”

Utta called in the little maid Eilis. “See to your mistress,” she told the girl. “Take good care of her. She has had a shock.”

But who will see to me? she wondered as she left Merolanna’s chambers. Who will take care of me in this mad time when legends spring to life at our feet? Zoria, merciful goddess, I need your help now more than ever.

Even to Matty Tinwright, who had never found it easy to say no to a celebration or a feast, especially if someone else was paying the tally, it seemed a bit much. Surely with an invading force just across the river—an invading force of monsters and demons at that—all these fetes and fairs were a waste, if not worse?

Perhaps Lord Hendon is only trying to divert us from our troubles. If so, he had set himself a hard task, because troubles were plentiful. The creatures across the bay had not attacked the keep, but they had certainly cut off all supplies coming to the overfilled castle from the west, and the short, terrifying war had emptied the valleys to the west and south as well, so there were no cattle or sheep being driven in from Marrinswalk and Silverside and no wool or cheese from Settland, only such supplies as could be brought in by ships, which lay crammed in Southmarch harbor like driftwood against a seawall.

Despite all this, the merriment went on. Tonight, to celebrate the first evening of Gestrimadi, the festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods, there would be a public fair in Market Square and here in the castle a great supper and masked fete, with music and dancing.

And yet surely there has not been a darker Dimenemonth since the Twilight folk last marched on us, two hundred years gone?

It was strange, Tinwright thought, that a place as solemn and silent during the day as this should spring to life so feverishly at night, as though the chambers were tombs which discharged their occupants only after sunset, so that they could dance and flirt in imitation of the living.

It was a powerful image, and he thought suddenly that he should write it down. Surely there was a poem in it, the courtiers emerging from their stony dens at nightfall, wearing masks that hid everything but their too-bright eyes... But Hendon Tolly and his circle will not like it, and these days that is a very dangerous thing. Didn’t Lord Nynor disappear after being heard criticizing the Tollys’ rule?

Still, the lure of the idea was strong. He decided that he could write it and keep it hidden until better times, when his foresight would be recognized, and his brilliance (if not his courage) honored.

Poets are not made to be hanged, he reminded himself. They are made to admired. And even if I could only be admired for being hanged, I would choose obscurity, I