Free Shadowheart by Tad Williams

lifted and carried the grass for a moment and then, like a bored child, let it fall.
     
    “You sent for me, Highness?” she asked.
    Eneas frowned. “Please, Briony. Princess. Do not speak to me as though we have not been friends.”
    She realized he was right. There was a stiffness in her manner. “I . . . I’m sorry, Eneas. I meant nothing by it. I did not sleep well.”
    He showed a rueful smile. “You are not the only one. But now I have decided what I must do—what common sense demands as much as honor.” He nodded. “I will stay with you, Briony Eddon. We will continue to Southmarch.”
    Briony had already begun to tell him she had expected it, and to thank him for all he had done for her; she was even pondering what she could decently ask of him besides the horse and armor he had already given her when she realized what he had said. “What? Stay . . . with me?”
    “I gave my word. And I realized that, with Jino and other friends at Broadhall, I am not so cut off as I might think. Even should something . . . the Brothers prevent it, the gods all forswear it . . . should something happen to my father, the kingdom is sound . . . and the throne is safe.” He smiled, although it did not come easily. “If Ananka had given my sire an heir, things might be different.”
    As Anissa did with my father, Briony thought but did not say. The thought echoed in her head unpleasantly, but she pushed it away for later consideration. “Your Highness . . . Eneas . . . I don’t know what to say!”
    “Then say nothing. And don’t assume it is only because of obligation, either. Your company means much to me, Briony—your happiness, too. And I have my own curiosity about what is happening in the north. Now go and make yourself ready, I beg you. We ride out within the hour and I must prepare a letter to be sent back to good Erasmias Jino.”
    She left him scratching away at a sheet of parchment and walked back to her tent with the feeling that she had stepped unexpectedly from one road to another, and that because of that much had changed and much more would change in days ahead.

3
    Seal of War
    “His parents named him Adis, and when he was old enough they sent him out to watch over the flocks. He was pious and good, and he loved his parents nearly as much as he loved the gods themselves ...”
     
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
     
     
     
    B OTH CHAVEN AND ANTIMONY carried torches, although the young Funderling monk was only carrying his as a favor to the physician. Only a few brands glowed in the whole of the great chamber called Sandsilver’s Dancing Room, since the Qar had little more need for light than the Funderlings themselves . . . or at least that was true for many of them: Chaven had already seen examples of some who needed no light at all because they seemed to have no eyes, as well as huge-eyed folk who blinked and winced at even the dimmest glow. Chaven could not help marveling at the variety.
    “How can such things be?” Brother Antimony asked quietly. “The Great God has made men in many shapes and sizes, we know—look at you and me!—but why should he make one kind of creature with so many different shapes?”
    Chaven couldn’t answer. He would have loved to study every single Qar with a strong lamp and seeing-glass, calipers and folding rule, but at the moment he and Antimony had a more important task, which was seeing to the comfort (and covertly examining the mood) of these new allies. Vansen had asked him to do it, so Chaven had chosen Antimony, the most open-minded of the Metamorphic Brothers, as his companion.
    “I was thinking only a moment ago how much we could learn from these folk,” Chaven told the Funderling. “Even Phayallos admits that when they lived beside us centuries ago very little proper study was done. Most of the works that purport to describe the Qar from detailed studies sadly turn out to be filled with hearsay