Shadowheart (3 page)

B
RIONY 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 Shining Man—to YNNIR, the king of the Qar. But Barrick and the others are captured by a monster named JIKUYIN, a demigod who has reopened the mines at Greatdeeps in an attempt to find a way to gain the power of the sleeping gods.

Briony Eddon meets a demigoddess, 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 Glass, 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 god-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 demigod Jikuyin are slated for sacrifice in a ritual meant to open the way to the land of the sleeping gods, but the fairy Gyir sacrifices his own life, defeating the demigod’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 identity—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 ship bound for the obscure northern kingdom of Southmarch. Vo commandeers another ship and sets out after his cruel master.

The Autarch is not alone on his flagship. 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 gods.

T
he 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 god-king of the southern land of Xis, is bringing many men and ships 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 god) as a magical tool to open a portal to the land where the gods lie trapped in sleep, banished there by the very god 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 god 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 ship, 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 assist 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 gods 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 god 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.

H
e was named after the
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.