“Who is left? Tyne Aldritch is dead in Kolkan’s Field, Nynor retreated to his country house in fear,” Chaven said flatly. “And Avin Brone seems to have made his own peace with the Tollys. I trust no one.” He shook his head as if it were a heavy stone he had carried too long. “And worst of all, the Tollys have taken my house, my splendid observatory!”
“But why would they do that? Do they think you’re still hiding there?”
“No. They want something, and I fear I know what. They are tearing things apart—I could hear them through the walls from my tunnel hiding-places—searching. Searching...”
“Why? For what?”
Chaven groaned. “Even if I am right about what they seek, I am not certain why they want it—but I am frightened, Chert. There is more afoot here and in the world outside than simply a struggle for the throne of the March Kingdoms.”
Chert suddenly realized that Chaven did not know the story of his own adventures, about the inexplicable events surrounding the boy in the other room. “There is more,” he said suddenly. “Now you must rest, but later I will tell you of our own experiences. I met the Twilight folk. And the boy got into the Mysteries.”
“What? Tell me now!”
“Let the poor man sleep.” Opal sounded weary, too, or perhaps just weighed down again with unhappiness. “He is weak as a weanling.”
“Thank you...” Chaven said, barely able to form words. “But...I must hear this tale...immediately. I said once that I feared what the moving of the Shadowline might mean. But now I think I feared...too little.” His head sagged, nodded. “Too little...” he sighed, “...and too...late...” Within a few breaths he was asleep, leaving Chert and Opal to stare at each other, eyes wide with apprehension and confusion.
4. The Hada-d’in-Mozan
The greatest offspring of Void and Light was Daystar, and by his shining all was better known and the songs had new shapes. And in this new light Daystar found Bird Mother and together they engendered many things, children, and music, and ideas.
But all beginnings contain their own endings.
When the Song of All was much older, Daystar lost his own song and went away into the sky to sing only of the sun. Bird Mother did not die, though her grief was mighty, but instead she birthed a great egg, and from it the beautiful twins Breeze and Moisture came forth to scatter the seeds of living thought, to bring the earth sustenance and fruitfulness.
A storm swept in from the ocean in the wake of the setting sun, but although cold rain pelted them and the little boat pitched until Briony felt quite ill, the air was actually warmer than it had been on their first trip across Brenn’s Bay. It was still, however, a chilly, miserable jouney.
Winter, Briony thought ruefully. Only a fool would lose her throne and be forced to run for her life in this fatal season. The Tollys won’t need to kill me—I’ll probably drown myself, or simply freeze. She was even more worried about Shaso soaking in the cold rain so soon after his fever had broken, but as usual the old man showed less evidence of discomfort than a stone statue. That was reassuring, at least: if he was well enough for his stiffnecked pride to rule him, he had unquestionably improved.
By comparison, the Skimmer girl Ena seemed neither to be made miserable by the storm nor to bear it bravely—in fact, she hardly seemed to notice it. Her hood was back and she rowed with the ease and carelessness of someone steering a punt through the gentle waters of a summertime lake. They owed this Skimmer girl much, Briony knew: without her knowledge of the bay and its tides they would have had little hope of escape.
I shall reward her well. Of course, just now the daughter of Southmarch’s royal family had nothing to give.
The worst of the storm soon passed, though the high waves lingered. The monotony of the trip, the continuous pattering of rain on Briony’s hooded cloak and the rocking of the swells, kept dropping her into a dreamy near-sleep and a fantasy of the day when she would ride back into Southmarch, greeted with joy by her people and...and who else? Barrick was gone and she could not think too much about his absence just yet: it was as though she had sustained a dreadful wound and dared not look at it until it had been tended, for fear she would faint away and die by the roadside without reaching help. But who else was left? Her father was still a prisoner in far-off Hierosol. Her stepmother Anissa, although perhaps not an enemy if her servant’s murderous treachery had been nothing to do with her, was still not really a friend, and certainly no mother. What other people did Briony treasure, or even care about? Avin Brone? He was too stern, too guarded. Who else?
For some reason, the guard captain Ferras Vansen came to her mind—but that was nonsense! What was he to her, with his ordinary face and his ordinary brown hair and his posture so carefully correct it almost seemed like a kind of swagger? If she recognized now that he had not been as guilty in the death of her older brother as she had once felt, he was still nothing to her—a common soldier, a functionary, a man who no doubt thought little beyond the barracks and the tavern, and likely spent what spare time he had putting his hands up the dresses of tavern wenches.
Still, it was odd that she should see his thoughtful face just now, that she should think of him so suddenly, and almost fondly... Merolanna. Of course—dear old Auntie ’Lanna! Briony’s great-aunt would be there for any triumphant return. But what must she be feeling now? Briony abruptly felt a kind of panic steal over her. Poor Auntie! She must be mad with grief and worry, both twins gone, the whole order of life over-tuned. But Merolanna would persevere, of course. She would hold together for the sake of others, for the sake of the family, even for the sake of Olin’s newborn son, Anissa’s child. Briony pushed away a pang of jealousy. What else should her great-aunt do? She would be protecting the Eddons as best she could.
Oh, Auntie, I will give you such a hug when I come back, it will almost crack your bones! And I’ll kiss your old cheeks pink! You will be so astonished! The duchess would cry of course—she always did for happy things, scarcely ever for sad. And you’ll be so proud of me. “You wise girl,” you’ll say to me. “Just what your father would have done. And so brave...!”
Briony nodded and drowsed, thinking about that day to come, so easy to imagine in every way except how it might actually come to pass.
They reached the hilly north Marrinswalk coast just as the rising sun warmed the storm clouds from black to bruised gray, rowing across the empty cove to within a few yards of the shore. Briony bunched the homespun skirt Ena had given her around her thighs and helped the Skimmer girl guide the hull up onto the wet sand. The wind was stingingly cold, the saltgrass and beach heather along the dunes rippling as if in imitation of the shallow wavelets frothing on the bay.
“Where are we?” she asked.
Shaso wrung water out of his saggy clothes. Just as Briony had been clothed in Ena’s spares, he wore one of Turley’s baggy, salt-bleached shirts and a pair of the Skimmer’s plain, knee-length breeches. As he surveyed the surrounding hills, his leathery, wrinkled face gaunt from his long imprisonment, Shaso dan-Heza looked like some ancient spirit dressed in a child’s castoff clothing. “Somewhere not far from Kinemarket, I’d say, about three or four days’ walk from Oscastle.”
“Kinemarket is that way.” Ena pointed east. “On the far side of these hills, south of the coast road. You could be there before the sun lifts over the top.”