Free (Shadowmarch #2) Shadowplay by Tad Williams

and already loathed Hendon Tolly and his entire family with an unquenchable hatred.
    “I can’t say, but the snatches of conversation I heard from him and his guards made them sound just as surprised as me. But their treachery to the royal family cannot be questioned, nor their desire to murder me, a witness of what really happened.”
    “They truly would have killed you?” asked Opal.
    “Definitely, had I remained to be killed,” Chaven said with a pained smile. “As I hid from them in the Tower of Spring, I heard Hendon Tolly telling his minions that I was by no means to survive my capture—that he would reward the man who finished me.”
    “Elders!” breathed Opal. “The castle’s in the hands of bandits and murderers!”
    “For the moment, certainly. Without Princess Briony or her brother, I see no way to change things.” All the talking had tired the physician; he seemed barely able to keep his head up.
    “We must get you to one of the powerful lords,” Chert said. “Someone still loyal to the king, who will protect you until your story is told.”
    “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.
    —from One Hundred Considerations
out of the Qar’s Book of Regret
    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