(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch by Tad Williams

sentries on the wall called out the midnight watch and their voices echoed thinly across the water.
    Even as the sound faded, a light gleamed at the end of one of the docks. It burned for a moment, then went dark, then burned again. It was a shuttered lantern; its beam pointed out across the dark width of the lagoon. No one within the castle or on the walls seemed to mark it.
    But the light did not go entirely unobserved. A small, black-painted skiff slid silently and almost invisibly across the misty lagoon and stopped at the end of the dock. The lantern-bearer, outline obscured by a heavy hooded cloak, crouched and whispered in a language seldom spoken in Southmarch, or indeed anywhere in the north. The shadowy boatman answered just as quietly in the same language, then handed something up to the one who had been waiting for almost an hour on the cold pier—a small object that disappeared immediately into the pockets of the dark cloak.
    Without another word, the boatman turned his little craft and vanished back into the fogs that blanketed the dark lagoon.
    The figure on the dock extinguished the lantern and turned back toward the castle, moving carefully from shadow to shadow as though it carried something extremely precious or extremely dangerous.

4
    A Surprising Proposal
    THE LAMP:
    The flame is her fingers
The leaping is her eye as the rain is the cricket’s song
All can be foretold
    —from The Bonefall Oracles
    P UZZLE LOOKED SADLY at the dove that he had just produced from his sleeve. Its head was cocked at a very unnatural angle; in fact, it seemed to be dead.
    “My apologies, Highness.” A frown creased the jester’s gaunt face like a crumpled kerchief. A few people were laughing nastily near the back of the throne room. One of the noblewomen made a small and somewhat overwrought noise of grief for the luckless dove. “The trick worked most wonderfully when I was practicing earlier. Perhaps I need to find a bird of hardier constitution . . .”
    Barrick rolled his eyes and snorted, but his older brother was more of a diplomat. Puzzle was an old favorite of their father’s. “An accident, good Puzzle. Doubtless you will solve it with further study.”
    “And a few dozen more dead birds,” whispered Barrick. His sister frowned.
    “But I still owe Your Highness the day’s debt of entertainment.” The old man tucked the dove carefully into the breast of his checkered outfit.
    “Well, we know what he’s having for supper,” Barrick told Briony, who shushed him.
    “I will find some other pleasantries to amuse you,” Puzzle continued, with only a brief wounded look at the whispering twins. “Or perhaps one of my other renowned antics? I have not juggled flaming brands for you for some time—not since the unfortunate accident with the Syannese tapestry. I have reduced the number of torches, so the trick is much safer now . . .”
    “No need,” Kendrick said gently. “No need. You have entertained us long enough—now the business of the court waits.”
    Puzzle nodded his head sadly, then bowed and backed away from the throne toward the rear of the room, putting one long leg behind the other as though doing something he had been forced to practice even more carefully than the dove trick. Barrick could not help noticing how much the old man looked like a grasshopper in motley. The assembled courtiers laughed and whispered behind their hands.
    We’re all fools here. His dark mood, alleviated a little by watching Puzzle’s fumbling, came sweeping back. Most of us are just better at it than he is. Even at the best of times he found it difficult to sit on the hard chairs. Despite the open windows high above, the throne room was thick with the smell of incense and dust and other people—too many other people. He turned to watch his brother, conferring with Steffans Nynor the lord castellan, making a joke that set Summerfield and the other nobles laughing and made old Nynor blush and stammer. Look at