“Panegyric?"
“A tribute to your astonishing beauty.” He saw her expression and quickly added, “And most importantly, to your wisdom and kindness. Your mercy.” She smiled again, although it still had a nasty little curl to it. “In fact, as I sit here, fortunate enough finally to be within the radiant glow of your presence instead of worshiping you like the distant moon, I see that my central conceit was even more accurate than I had hoped—that you are indeed… indeed.
She got tired of waiting. “I am indeed what?”
“The very embodiment of Zoria, warrior goddess and mistress of wisdom.” There. He could only hope that he had guessed correctly, that her odd way of dressing and her solicitation of the goddess’ mercy were not chance occurrences. “When I was young, I often dreamed of Perin’s courageous daughter, but in my dreams I was blinded by her glow—I could never truly imagine the heavenly countenance. Now I know the true face of the goddess. Now I see her born again in Southmarch’s virgin princess.” He suddenly worried he had gone a bit too far: she didn’t look as flattered as he had hoped she would, although she didn’t look angry either. He held his breath. “Shall I have him beaten before I take him back to that brothel?” Brone asked her.
“To tell the truth,” Briony said, “he… amuses me. I have not laughed in days, and just now I almost did. That is a rare gift in these times.” She looked Tinwright up and down. “You wish to be my poet, do you? To tell the world of my virtues?”
He was not sure what was happening, but this was not a moment to be wasted on truth of any sort. “Yes, my lady, my princess, it has always been my greatest dream. Indeed, Highness, your patronage would make me the happiest man on earth, the luckiest poet upon Eion.”
“Patronage?” She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning what? Money?"
“Oh, never, my lady!” In due time, he thought. “No, it would be a boon beyond price if you simply allowed me to observe you—at a distance, of course!—so that I could better construct my poem. It has already been years in the making, Highness, the chief labor of my life, but it has been difficult, composed around a few brief glimpses of you at public festivals. If you favor me with the chance to witness you even from across a crowded room as you bring your wise rule to the fortunate people of Southmarch, that would be a kindness that proves you are truly Zoria reborn.”
“In other words, you want a place to stay.” For the first time there was something like genuine amusement in her smile. “Brone, see if Puzzle can find a place for him. They can share a room—keep each other company.”
“Princess Briony… !” Brone was annoyed.
“Now I must talk to my brother. You and I will meet again before sunset, Lord Constable.” She started toward the door, then stopped, looked Tinwnght up and down. “Farewell, poet. I’ll be expecting to hear that ode very soon. I’m looking forward to it.”
As he watched her go, Matty Tinwnght was not quite sure whether this had been the best day of his life or the worst. He thought it must be the best, but there was a small, sick feeling m his stomach that surely should not be part of the day he had become an appointed poet to the royal court.
At first, it seemed that Collum Dyer would be able to follow the fairy host like a blind man tracking the sun despite the confusion of the fogbound forest and the serpentine inconstancy of the road, the guard set off in a way that Vansen would have called confident, except that the rest of the man’s demeanor spoke of nothing so humble and human as confidence. In fact, Dyer might have been a sleepwalker, stumbling and murmuring to himself like one of the crazed penitents that had followed the effigies of the god Kermos from town to town during the days of the Great Death.
Quickly, though, it became clear that if Dyer was a blind man following the sun, that sun was setting. Within what seemed no more than an hour they were staggering in circles. So maddening was the forest-maze that Vansen would not even have known that for certain except that Dyer stepped on his own sword belt, which he had lost far back in the day’s march.
Exhausted, devastated,Vansen sank to the ground and crouched with his face in his hands, half expecting that Dyer would go on without him and mostly not caring Instead, to his surprise, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Where are they, Ferras? They were so beautiful.” Despite the dark beard, Collum Dyer looked like nothing so much as a child, his eyes wide, his mouth quivering.
“Gone on,” Vansen said. “Gone on to kill our friends and families.”
“No.” But what he had said troubled Dyer. “No, they bring something, but not death. Didn’t you hear them? They only take back what was already theirs. That is all they want.”
“But there are people living on what was already theirs. People like us.” Vansen only wanted to lie down, to sleep. He felt as though he had been endlessly, endlessly swimming in this ocean of trees with no glimpse of shore. “Do you think the farmers and smallholders will simply get up and move so your Twilight People can have their old lands back? Perhaps we can pull down Southmarch Castle as well, build it again in Jellon or Perikal where it won’t interfere with them.”
“Oh, no,” said Dyer very seriously. “They want the castle back. That’s theirs, too. Didn’t you hear them?”
Vansen closed his eyes but it only made him dizzy. He was lost behind the Shadowline with a madman. “I heard nothing.”
“They were singing! Their voices were so fair… ?" Now it was Dyer who squeezed his eyes shut. “They sang… they sang…” The child-face sagged again as though he might burst into tears. “I can’t remember! I can’t remember what they sang.”
That was the first good thing Vansen had heard in hours. Perhaps Dyer’s wits were returning. But why am I not mad, too? he wondered.
Then again, how do I know I’m not?
“Come,” said the guardsman, pulling at his arm. “They are going away from us.”
“We can’t catch them. We’re lost again.” Vansen pushed down his anger. Whatever the reason that Collum Dyer’s wits were clouded and his own were not, or at least not as badly, it was not Dyer’s fault. “We do have to get out of here, but not to follow the Twilight People off to war.” A few tattered scraps of duty seemed to be all that held him together. He clutched them tight. “We have to tell the princess about this… and the prince. We have to tell Avin Brone.”
“Yes.” Collum nodded. “They will be happy.”
Vansen groaned quietly and set about looking for enough damp sticks to try to make a fire. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
After a succession of terrible dreams in which he was pursued by faceless men through endless mist-cloaked gardens and unlit halls, FerrasVansen gave up on sleep. He warmed his hands beside the fire and fretted over their dismal circumstances, but he was exhausted and without useful ideas: all he could do was stare out at the endless trees and try to keep from screaming in despair. A child of the countryside, he had never imagined he could grow to hate something as familiar as a forest, as common as mere trees, but of course nothing here was mere anything. Outwardly familiar—he had seen oak and beech, rowan and birch and alder, and in the high places many kinds of evergreen—the dripping trees of this damp shadow-forest seemed to have a brooding life to them, a silence both purposeful and powerful. If he half-closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was surrounded by ancient priests and priestesses robed in gray and green, tall and stately and not very kindly disposed toward his intrusion into their sacred precincts.