Free (Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch by Tad Williams

common knowledge that the gate had been here far longer than the human inhabitants.
    “That monster is not alive,” he told the child gently. “Not even real. It is only chiseled stone.”
    The boy looked at him, and Chert thought that something in his expression seemed deeper and stranger than mere terror.
    “I . . . I do not like to see it,” he said.
    “Then close your eyes while we walk through, otherwise we will not be able to reach our house. That is where the food is.”
    The boy squinted up at the lowering worm for a moment through his pale lashes, then shut his eyes tight.
    “Come on, you two!” Opal called. “It will be dark soon.”
    Chert led the boy under the gate. Guards in high-crested helmets and black tabards watched curiously, unused to the sight of a human child being led by Funderlings. But if these tall men wearing the Eddons’ silver wolf-and-stars emblem were concerned by the oddity, they were not concerned enough to lift their halberds and move out of the last warm rays of the sun.
    The princess and her party had already reached their destination. As the Funderlings and their new ward reached arcade-fenced Market Square in front of the great Trigon temple, Chert could see all the way to the new wall at the base of the central hill, where the lights of the inner keep were as numerous as fireflies on a midsummer evening. The keep’s Raven’s Gate was open and dozens of servants with torches had come out from the residence to meet the returning hunters, to take the horses and equipment and guide the nobles to hot meals and warm beds.
    “Who rules here?” asked the boy.
    It seemed an odd sort of question, and now it was Chert who hesitated. “In this country? Do you mean in name? Or in truth?”
    The boy frowned—the meaning was chopped too fine for him. “Who rules in that big house?”
    It still seemed a strange thing for a child to ask, but Chert had experienced far stranger today. “King Olin, but he is not here. He is a prisoner in the south.” Almost half a year had passed since Olin had left on his journey to urge the small kingdoms and principalities across the heartland of Eion to make federation against Xis. He had hoped to unite them against the growing menace of the Autarch, the god-king who was reaching out from his empire on the southern continent of Xand to snap up territories along the lower coast of Eion like a spider snaring flies, but instead Olin had been delivered by the treachery of his rival Hesper, King of Jellon, into the hands of the Protector of Hierosol, an adventurer named Ludis Drakava who was now master of that ancient city. But Chert scarcely understood all the details himself. It was far too much to try to explain to a small, hungry child. “The king’s oldest son Kendrick is the prince regent. That means he is the ruler while his father is gone. The king has two younger children, too—a son and daughter.”
    A gleam came to the boy’s eyes, a light behind a curtain. “Merolanna?”
    “Merolanna?” Chert stared as if the child had slapped him. “You have heard of the duchess? You must be from somewhere near here. Where are you from, child? Can you remember now?”
    But the small white-haired boy only looked back at him silently.
    “Yes, there is a Merolanna, but she is the king’s aunt. Kendrick’s younger brother and sister are named Barrick and Briony. Oh, and the king’s wife is carrying another child as well.” Chert reflexively made the sign of the Stone Bed, a Funderling charm for good luck in childbirth.
    The strange gleam in the boy’s eyes faded.
    “He’s heard of Duchess Merolanna,” Chert told Opal. “He must be from these parts.”
    She rolled her eyes. “He’ll probably remember a lot more when he gets a meal and some sleep. Or were you planning to stand in the street all night talking to him of things you know nothing about?”
    Chert snorted but waved the boy forward.
    More people were streaming out of the castle than