Shadowrise

26. Born of Nothing

Prince Eneas left her when they reached the front doors of Broadhall Palace. “I hope you will forgive me,” he told Briony. “I have duties to my troops and we are later than I had thought we would be.”

“Of course. Thank you so much for coming with me, your Highness. I hope I did not cause you too much trouble or offense.”

His expression was indeed a bit troubled, but he did his best to smile before he bent to kiss her hand. “You are a most unusual woman, Briony Eddon. I do not know exactly what you have brought to us, but I can sense things here in Tessis will never be the same.”

Oh, dear, she thought. “I only wish to do my best for my family and my people.”

“As do we all,” the prince said. “But your path seems a bit stranger than most.” He smiled again; this time it seemed more genuine. “Stranger, but also more interesting. I would like to speak more of this and… other matters soon. Will I see you at supper tonight? Perhaps we could walk in the garden afterward and talk.”

“As you wish, Prince Eneas.” But what Briony really wanted was some time on her own—time to think. Could her brother really be alive, or was she making too much of a strange message in the Funderlings antiquated drum language? But if it was true, then what was she doing here in a foreign land? She should be at his side, ruling Southmarch or fighting against the Tolly usurpers. Dawet dan-Faar had been right: the Eddon family could expect no loyalty from their subjects unless the people could see that the Eddons were loyal to them. But did she dare to go back without an army, simply because of a single, confusing message?

Of course not—too much is at risk for such foolishness. I must be patient. But it was hard, of course, and even more so now that there was a chance Barrick might be waiting for her in Southmarch.

“It’s not enough to think you’re a leader,” her father had always said—“you must think like a leader. You must honor the people who risk their lives for you—honor them every day, in your thoughts and your deeds.”

The memory made her feel ashamed. She had not been to see Ivvie all day—the friend who had almost died for Briony’s sake. She was exhausted and didn’t want to go just now, but a leader could not dishonor a sacrifice like that.

Ivgenia e’Doursos had been given a room of her own for her recuperation, a small, sunny chamber in the southern wing of the palace. Briony suspected that Eneas had ordered it so, and although she feared too many obligations to the prince, she was grateful for this favor.

Ivvie was pale with dark circles under her eyes and a tremor in her hands when she reached up as Briony bent to kiss her. “It is so kind of you to come, Highness.”

“Nonsense.” She sat down beside the bed and took one of the girl’s cold hands in her own. “Lie back. Do you need anything? Where is your maid?”

“She is fetching me more cold water,” Ivvie said. “Sometimes I am cold myself, but then other times I feel so hot it is as though I am burning up! She mops my brow and that helps a little.”

“I am so angry that I let this happen to you.”

Ivgenia gave her a weak smile. “It is not your fault, Princess. Someone was trying to kill you.” Her eyes grew wide. “Have they caught him yet?”

Of course, it could just as well be a her, Briony thought. “No. But I’m certain they will find the villain and he will be punished. I only wish it had not happened to you.” Briony did not want to speak too much about it for fear of making the girl feel unwell again, so she steered the conversation in another direction, telling Ivvie of her strange trip to meet the Kallikans. By the time Briony had finished the girl’s eyes were wide again.

“But who would ever have guessed! Tunnels down into the earth? The same place that I showed you?”

“The same,” Briony laughed. “I am beginning to learn the truth of the old saying about oracles in ragged robes.”

“And they truly had a message for you from your home in Southmarch? What was it?”

Briony suddenly felt she might have said too much. “Perhaps I exaggerated a bit when I said it was for me. In truth it was almost impossible to tell what it might have meant—I cannot even remember all the words. Something about the Old Ones. I was told that it meant the fairy folk who have besieged the castle—those monsters attacking my home. I can scarcely stand to think about it.”

“Your Highness must be in anguish to be so far away from your family and your subjects! That’s what I told those stupid women.”

“What women?”

“Oh, you know, Seris, the duke of Gela’s daughter, Erinna e’Herayas—that group who are always hovering around the Lady Ananka. They came to see me.” Ivvie frowned. She looked as though the visit had tired her already. “They were talking and talking about everyone—this one is so fat she has to have three maids to pull her stays tight, that one will never take her hat off because she’s beginning to lose her hair. Most unpleasant. They know you’re my friend so they didn’t say anything foul about you—or at least they didn’t come right out and do it—but they were saying that you must be happy to be here in such a civilized place, so far away from all those dreadful things happening in Southmarch. They also said of course you’d want to stay here as long as you could, especially when Prince Eneas himself is paying you such attention.”

Briony realized she was grinding her teeth together. “All I think about is getting back to my people.”

“I know, Highness, I know!” Now Ivvie looked worried, as though she had done something wrong. Briony fought down the urge to walk out of the girl’s sickroom and go straight off to pick a fight with Lady Ananka and her little witches’ coven. Instead, she steered the conversation back toward milder matters.

When Ivgenia’s maid returned with a pail of water, puffing and muttering and looking quite sorry for herself about having to carry it so far, Briony stood and kissed Ivvie good-bye. She met the prince’s physician on the stairs, a bony older man with a brisk, distracted air who was stopping to look in on Ivgenia. “Ah, Princess,” he said, bowing. “May I trouble you for a moment?”

“What is it? She is getting better, isn’t she?”

“Who? Oh, young Mistress e’Doursos, yes, yes, never fear. No, I only wanted to ask you about Chaven Ulosian. You were his patron, I understand. Do you know his current whereabouts?”

“I have not seen him nor heard anything of him since the night I left Southmarch.”

“Hmmm. Pity. I have sent several letters but they are never answered.”

“The castle is besieged,” she pointed out.

“Oh, certainly, certainly. But ships are landing—other letters have got through. I heard from an old friend there, Okros Dioketian, only a month past.”

Briony dimly remembered Okros, a colleague of Chaven’s who had treated her brother during his fever. “I am sorry I cannot help you, sir.”

“And I am sorry to trouble you, Highness. I hope Chaven is well, but I fear for him. He was always very reliable in the past when I needed an answer from him, very prompt.”

By the time she had returned to her own chambers, Briony was full of frustration with her lot and itching to take some action. She burst in on Feival so abruptly that he jumped with a squeak and dropped the letter he was reading on the floor. “I want Finn,” she announced.

Feival swept up the sheets of paper. “Want him for what? Zosim’s fire, you gave me a start.”

“Hurry and send for him. I want to talk to him.” She glared at the letter. “What’s that? Another admirer for me? Or a threat of death, perhaps?”

“Nothing you want to bore yourself with, Highness.” He slipped the pages into his sleeve and stood. He was wearing a beautiful green doublet of slashed silk with gold underlining, and looked every inch the young Tessian nobleman. “I’ll fetch him. Have you eaten? There’s some chicken under a dish and some good brown bread. There might be some grapes left, as well…”

But Briony had begun pacing back and forth and was no longer listening.

“Does everyone in this cursed city think I have my eyes set on marrying the prince?” she demanded.

Finn looked at Feival. “What have you said to her?”

“Nothing! She came back in this temper.”

“Do me the courtesy of talking to me, not each other.” Still, she stopped pacing and sat in her chair facing Finn, who perched anxiously on the small bench that was ordinarily the resting place of diminutive ladies-in-waiting. “What do people think?”

“Of you, Highness? To be honest, your name is not much on the tongues of the Tessian groundlings, at least on the streets of the neighborhood in which you have so kindly lodged us. Southmarch is much discussed, of course, but that is because of the siege there and the presence of the fairies. The latest news is that the fairies have finally begun their siege in earnest—that they are trying to breach the walls—may the gods protect Southmarch!”

“May they hear all our prayers, yes.” Briony made the sign of the Three. “But that is what the message from the Funderlings suggested—that the Qar were no longer content to sit and wait.” She felt a momentary lift of her spirits—if the message had been right about that, then perhaps Barrick really had returned!

Finn nodded. “But there are always fools—even now some folk in Syan still do not believe the fairy folk have come back—they dismiss an entire war as exaggeration.”

Briony scowled. “I wish they could see what I saw on Winter’s Eve, my last night in Southmarch—or hear the stories the soldiers told…” Thoughts of that night always troubled her, but of all the strange things that had happened it was something much smaller that tugged at her memory now.

That doctor today talked about how reliable and prompt Chaven is. But that night, he came back after having been gone most of a tennight, without explanation. Where was he? Was Brone right to suspect his loyalty? Why would a man disappear in the middle of such dire happenings and not come back for days… ?

“Pay no attention, Highness,” Finn was saying. “Such people are fools, we all know it. But you asked us to keep our ears and eyes open so I tell you all we have heard.”

“And how about you?” Briony asked, turning to Feival. “You spend a great deal of time out and about in the castle—sometimes I do not see you for hours. I hope my wayward secretary is doing more than simply following the handsome young page boys.”

She thought it was to Feival’s credit that he still had the grace to color a bit. “I… I hear many things, Highness, but as Finn says, so much of it is simply the babbling of fools…”

“Do not explain it to me, please, simply relate it. What are the courtiers saying?”

“That… that you are determined to have Eneas as your husband. Those are the more… honorable rumors.” He rolled his eyes. “Truly, Highness, it is all rubbish…”

“Continue.”

“Others say that you have your sights set on a… a higher target.”

“What does that mean?”

“The king.”

Briony bounced up out of her chair, her wide skirts nearly sweeping the dishes and cups from the low table. “What? Are they mad? King Enander? What would I want with the king?”

“They ask, what more certain way to get your throne back than to… to flaunt yourself to the king? Forgive me, Briony—Highness—I am only saying what I hear!”

“Go… on.” She was squeezing the fabric of her dress so hard that she was ruining the velvet.

“Feival is right,” Finn said. “You should not concern yourself with such dreadful gossip…”

She raised her hand to silence him. “I said, go on, Feival.”

He looked strangely angry at having to pass on this news. “Some of the folk of the court are suggesting that your idea from the first was to take Lady Ananka’s place, to use your youth and your position to catch the king’s eye. And there are uglier rumors, many of which you have already heard. That you and Shaso tried to steal the Southmarch throne. That your brother Kendrick’s death was… was your fault.” He wrapped his arms across his chest like a furious child. “Why do you make me say such things? You know the poison people can spout.”

Briony threw herself back down in her chair again. “I hate them all. The king? I would sooner wed Ludis Drakava—at least he is an honest villain!”

Finn Teodoros clambered from the bench and kneeled beside her, not without difficulty. “Please, Highness, I beg you, mind your words! You are surrounded by spies and enemies here. You do not know who might be listening.”

“Murder my sweet Kendrick?” She was fighting tears now. “Gods! I wish I were the one who had died instead!”

After Finn Teodoros left Feival seemed almost as agitated as Briony herself. He went to the writing desk and sat for a while staring at the household accounts, but soon was up again and tidying things that didn’t need to be tidied.

Briony, who had finally begun to calm a bit, was not in the mood to watch Feival Ulian march back and forth across the small sitting room. Between her confusion over Eneas, the Funderlings’ message, Ivvie’s illness and a dozen other matters she had more than enough to trouble her peace. She was considering going out to walk in the palace gardens and enjoy the last bit of evening light when Feival came and sat down across from her.

“Highness, may I speak with you? I truly must say something.” He took a breath. “I think… I wish… I think you should leave Tessis.”

“What? Why?”

He straightened his stockings. “Because it is too dangerous for you. Because twice someone has tried to kill you. Because the people here in court are liars and traitors—you can trust no one.”

“I trust you. I trust Finn.”

“You can trust no one.” He got up and began to walk around the room, picking up and replacing things he had already moved several times. “Because everyone has a price.”

Briony was astonished. “Are you trying to tell me something about Finn?”

He turned, his face red with what looked like anger. “No! I am trying to tell you that this place is a nest of serpents! I know! I hear them talk every day—I see what they do! You are too… too good for this place, Briony Eddon. Go away. Don’t you have family in Brenland? Go to them instead. That’s a small court—I’ve been there. People aren’t so… ambitious.”

She shook her head. “What are you talking about, Feival? If I didn’t know you, I’d think you had lost your mind. Brenland? My mother’s family? I’ve scarcely even met them…”

“Then go somewhere else.” Feival turned back to her, his face distraught. “This is a terrible place.”

He went out then and shut himself in the tiny room, little more than a closet, where he had his bed. He would not explain what had upset him so, and by the next day seemed too embarrassed even to discuss the incident.

Qinnitan awoke dizzy and unhappy and sick to her stomach. Half a tennight had passed since she and the nameless man had left Agamid and her life had settled into a familiar round of misery.

Her ankle was tied to a short length of rope knotted around one of the cleats on the boat’s rail. She could stand up and stretch, and sit awkwardly on the gunwale to urinate, but if she let herself fall overboard she would only dangle helplessly a little way above the water until someone pulled her back. Now that Pigeon was gone and her captor could not compel her with the boy’s life, he was making certain she could not kill herself. He was going to give her to the autarch alive, whether she wanted it or not.

Her tormentor had allies now, as well. The survivors of the fire, decimated and now without a ship, were waiting in Agamid for the rest of the autarch’s fleet to arrive, so her captor had been forced into other arrangements. This fishing shallop he had hired came complete with a dour captain named Vilas and his two thick-bodied sons. All three of them were burned brown by long exposure to sun, but still somehow gave the impression of dampness and stickiness, as if they had crawled from under a tidepool rock. They also shared a family trait of a single thick eyebrow and seemed to speak only gutter Perikalese, a language that her captor could understand but which sounded to Qinnitan like they were constantly clearing their throats to spit. Except for leering at her whenever the nameless man was looking away, the three fishermen seemed utterly uninterested in her: the fact that she was clearly a prisoner did not bother them in the least.

So Qinnitan had little to do as the coastline bobbed past but watch and wait… and think. As she gnawed the piece of tack one of Vilas’ sons had tossed her as offhandedly as if she had been a dog she wondered how long she had until the nameless man handed her over to the autarch. Agamid was days behind them but the Jellonian headlands were still out of sight ahead. Where were they going? If they were following the autarch, why was Sulepis traveling so far north? Surely he would gain more from conquering vast Hierosol with all its treasure and its control of the northern side of the Osteian Sea. Why would the most powerful monarch in the world sail all the way north to the forested hinterlands of Eion?

For that matter, why had the autarch gone to such trouble to take Qinnitan from her family in the first place? It had never made any sense, never once. Why choose a girl for a royal wife whose father was a petty priest? Why do nothing with her or to her except for some kind of bizarre religious instruction?

And why had the northern king Olin taken an interest in her as well? He had been a kind man, but that alone should not have made him single her out from all the other girls working in the Hierosoline stronghold.

Hold a moment. Qinnitan stood, suddenly full of excited thought, but within two steps she had come to the limit of the rope that bound her. She swallowed her frustration, determined to hang onto the thought. The autarch had chosen her for something that she had never understood. Now he was heading north, up the coast of Eion. The foreign king, the prisoner, had thought he recognized something in Qinnitan—a resemblance, had he said? Was that where the autarch was going—to the land of the foreign king, Olin? Was that where everyone was headed?

It still made no real sense, but for that moment, out on the featureless, trackless ocean and surrounded by enemies, she felt as though she had touched something true.

With nothing to do and little to eat Qinnitan did not sleep well. At night she often huddled in her thin blanket for hours, trying to push away imaginings of what the autarch had in store for her as she waited for the blessed release of sleep. In the mornings she kept her eyes closed long past the time she was completely awake, listening to the keening of seabirds and praying to fall asleep again, to flee back into oblivion for even a short time, but it seldom happened. Often she woke while even her captor was still asleep, only Vilas or one of his sons on duty at the tiller.

After a few days of watching her nameless jailer Qinnitan came to realize he was a creature of patterns: he woke up every morning at the same time, just as the first coppery light of dawn was bleeding up from the eastern horizon. Then, directly after waking each day he put himself through a series of stretching movements, going from one to the other with the predictability of the great clock in the Orchard Palace’s main tower, as though he were made of wheels and gears instead of flesh and blood. Then, as Qinnitan watched through slitted eyes, pretending to be asleep, this pale, unexceptional man who held her life in his hands would take a small black bottle out of his cloak, pull out the stopper, then dip what looked like a needle or a tiny twig into the bottle before withdrawing it and licking whatever he had drawn out. The container would then be stopped with great care and bottle and needle would disappear into his cloak once more. He would then generally eat some dried fish and drink a little water. Morning after morning the stretching rituals and the bottle continued, unchanged.

What was in the black glass container? Qinnitan had no idea. It looked like poison, but why would a man take poison by his own choice? Perhaps it was some powerful physic. Still, even though she could make little sense of it, the ritual was something to think about—to think about long and carefully. With nothing else left to her she had begun to hoard ideas like a miser hoarded coins.

Qinnitan lay silent, eyes closed, but she had grown so sensitive to changes in the hour and temperature that she could feel the first warmth of approaching morning push gently against her chill face.

How could she escape from her captor? And, if that failed, how could she end her life before he gave her to the autarch? She would welcome even as horrid a death as Luian’s—the strangler had at least been relatively quick. It was what the autarch’s servants would do to her while she lived that terrified her…

Her thoughts were interrupted by the quiet clink of the stopper being pushed back into the black bottle, and then by the even more surprising sound of her captor’s voice.

“I know you are not asleep. Your breathing is different. Stop pretending.”

Qinnitan opened her eyes. He was staring at her, his own eyes strangely bright, glittering as though with some secret jest. As he tucked the bottle away in his cloak the wiry muscles moved like snakes beneath the skin of his forearms. He was horribly strong, she knew that, and quick as a cat. How could she hope to get away from him?

“What is your name?” she asked for perhaps the hundredth time. He watched her, his lip minutely curled in amusement or contempt.

“Vo,” he said abruptly. “It means ‘of.’ But I am not ‘of ’ anything. I am the end, not the beginning.”

Qinnitan was so startled by this little speech that for a moment she could think of nothing to say. “I… I don’t understand.” She struggled to keep her voice calm, as if it was nothing unusual for this silent killer to divulge something about himself. “Vo?”

“My father was from Perikal. His father was a baron. The family name was ‘Vo Jovandil,’ but my father disgraced it.” He laughed. There was something wrong with him, she thought, something strange and feverish. Qinnitan was almost afraid to continue. “So he cut off his last name and went to war. He was captured by the autarch and became a White Hound.”

Even to Qinnitan, who had lived much of her life in the isolation of the Hive and the Seclusion, the name of the autarch’s troop of northern killers was enough to make her heart skip a beat. So that was why a white man from Eion spoke such perfect Xixian. “And… and your mother?”

“She was a whore.” He said it offhandedly, but he turned his gaze away from her for the first time, looking out at the gleam of sunrise spreading across the horizon like a burning slick of oil. “All women are whores, but she was honest about it. He killed her.”

“What? Your father killed your mother?”

Now he turned back to her, his eyes dull with contempt. “She asked for it. She struck him. So he beat her head in.”

Qinnitan no longer wanted to keep him talking. She could only raise shaking hands as if to keep such things away from her.

“I would have killed her, too,” Vo said, then got up and walked across the gently rocking deck to talk to the old fisherman Vilas, who was minding the tiller.

Qinnitan sat crouched down against the stiff, chill breeze for as long as she could, then clambered along the bench to the rail where she vomited up the meager contents of her stomach. When she had finished she lay with her cheek against the cold, wet wood of the rail. The coastline itself was almost invisible, shrouded by fog, so that the boat seemed to travel through some lonely place between worlds.

Something had definitely changed. In the following days Vo grew positively conversational, at least compared to what he had been. As the shallop crept northward along the coast it became his habit when he finished his morning ritual to talk to her a little. Occasionally he even mentioned places he had been and things he had seen, tiny fragments of his life and history, although he never again spoke of either of his parents. Qinnitan did her best to listen closely, although sometimes it was hard: this man Vo seemed to make no distinction between a meal he ate and a man he killed. There was nothing friendly in his talk, nothing of ordinary interaction. It seemed instead a kind of compulsion that came upon him when he had finished licking the needle, as though whatever lurked inside the poison bottle made him too ecstatic to remain silent. The fever never lasted long, though, and often he was angry and resentful with her later on, giving her less food or treating her roughly for no reason, as though she had tricked him into speech.

“Why do you say all women are whores?” she asked quietly one morning. “Whatever the autarch told you of me, I am not that. I am still a virgin. I was training to be a priestess. The autarch plucked me out of the Hive and put me in the Seclusion.”

Vo rolled his eyes. The iron control that usually governed his every action seemed to grow slack during that first hour of the morning. “Whoring has nothing to do with… coupling,” he said, as though the word tasted bad. “A whore sells who she is for protection, or food, or richer things.” He looked Qinnitan up and down with blank disinterest. “Women have nothing else to offer but themselves, so that is what they sell.”

“And you? What do you sell?”

“Oh, never doubt I am a whore, too,” he said and laughed. He clearly did not laugh very often—it sounded awkward and angry. “Most men are, except those who are born with wealth and power. They are the buyers. The rest of us are their sluts and catamites.”

“So you would be the autarch’s whore, then?” She put as much scorn in her voice as she could muster. “You would hand me over to him, to be tortured and murdered, just to earn his gold?”

He stared at his own hand for a long, silent moment, then held it up before her. “Do you see this? I could snap your neck in a heartbeat, or drive my fingers through your eyes or between your ribs to kill you and there is nothing you could do to prevent me. So I own you. But here in my gut is something that belongs to the autarch. If I do not do what he commands it will kill me. Very painfully. So he owns me.” Vo stood, swaying a little as swells rolled the boat, and looked down at her vacantly, his feverish mood beginning to fade once more. “Like most people, you waste your time trying to puzzle out the meaning of things.

“The world is a ball of dung and we are the worms that live in it and eat each other.” He turned his back on her, pausing only to add: “The one who eats all the others wins—but he is still the last living worm in a lump of shit.”

27. Mayflies

For long moments Ferras Vansen could only sit and stare into the near-darkness trying to understand what had happened. He was weak and queasy and his head was ringing like a bell, a single continuous chime. Chert Blue Quartz stood over him, mouth working broadly, but Vansen could hear no sound.

Deaf, he thought. I’m deaf. And then he remembered the thunderclap that had knocked him from his feet, a crash louder than anything he had heard since the blasting in the pits of Greatdeeps.

He pushed that nightmare memory from his mind and closed his eyes once more. Dizziness picked him up like a boat on a rough current and swirled him around and around. He was suddenly aware for the first time in days that he was really, truly underground—deep in a hole beneath the world, with an unimaginable weight of stone between him and the sun. If only someone would take a giant stick and poke a hole through it so he could see the light again, instead of being lost beneath it… lost, confused, baff led…

“… Throw it farther,” someone whispered. “… Didn’t know…”

Vansen opened his eyes again. Chert was still talking but now he could hear him, although the small man sounded as if he were a hundred paces away. Still, it meant that his hearing was coming back.

The cavern was full of other Funderlings as well, living Funderlings, none of whom Vansen recognized until Cinnabar himself appeared beside him, dressed in armor of a type he had never seen before: the small man was covered with round plates so that he looked a cross between a turtle and a pile of discarded dishes.

“How is he?” the Funderling magister asked Chert. Where had Cinnabar come from? All Vansen could remember was that he hadn’t expected to see him anytime soon. For that matter, it seemed strange to him that Chert Blue Quartz was here as well.

“I think he was deafened by the burst.” Chert’s voice still sounded muffled.

“I’m not deaf,” Vansen said, but the Funderlings showed no sign of having heard him. He repeated it, trying to be louder. It seemed to work because both of them turned toward him at the same time. “My hearing is returning,” he explained. “What happened?”

“It was all my fault,” said Chert, his face creased in worry. “I found some of our blasting powder beetles in the storage hall—we use them to crack rock—and thought, well, I didn’t have a weapon, and it might scare the Qar away, so I brought one. When I got here I saw they were all over you, so I lit it, came up behind, and threw the beetle as far as I could.” He looked chagrined. “My arm is not as strong as it once was…”

“Nonsense!” said Cinnabar. “My men and I would never have arrived in time. Because of you, Master Blue Quartz, the fairies were reeling and confused when we arrived and they couldn’t retreat fast enough. You saved Captain Vansen and quite possibly the temple as well!”

Chert looked surprised. “Really… ?”

Vansen suddenly remembered the last moments. “Where is Sledge Jasper? Is he… ?”

“Alive,” Cinnabar assured him. “Ears ringing like yours, but he is not complaining—oh, no. Too weak to complain, in any case. Some of my men are bandaging him—he leaked a lot of blood, but he’ll live. There is a fighter who would make the Elders proud!”

Vansen could not quite shake the feeling that he was buried beneath a millionweight of heavy stone. He could move, but every part of him seemed misshapen, unfamiliar, and his thoughts were sluggish. “You said this… beetle… was full of rock-cracking powder. Is it the stuff called serpentine or gunflour—the same black powder we use for cannons? Is there more of it?”

“Yes, there’s more,” Chert said. “Nearly another dozen shells in the storeroom, and probably more blasting powder as well. But we have no cannons down here, nor room to shoot them…”

A young Funderling in armor hurried up. “Magister Cinnabar, one of the enemy that was smashed up by the blasting powder… one of those drows… !”

“What, man? Chip it loose and let’s have it.”

“He’s alive.”

Strangely, Vansen recognized the captive. The dirty little man staring resentfully up at him was the one who had tried to stab him, and whose wrist he had snapped. Indeed, the shaggy creature was cradling that arm, which was swollen and bruised.

“Can we speak to him?” Vansen asked.

Cinnabar shrugged. “My men have been trying to. He refuses to answer. We know nothing of what tongue he speaks—he may not even understand us.”

“Then kill him,” Vansen said loudly. “He’s useless to us. Cut off his head.”

“What?” Chert was shocked. Even Cinnabar looked taken aback.

Vansen had been watching the prisoner carefully: the little man had not flinched, had not even looked up. “I do not mean it. I was just curious whether he was only pretending not to understand. We must think of a way to make him tell us what he knows about his mistress’ plans.”

Chert still looked suspicious. “What does that mean? Torture?”

Vansen laughed sadly. “I would not hesitate if I thought it would save your family and my people aboveground, but the answers given by a man under torture are seldom useful, especially if we cannot speak his tongue well. But if you think of any other ways, let me know. Otherwise, I may begin to change my mind.”

Magister Cinnabar gave directions for the prisoner to be taken back to the temple, then hurried off to supervise the other tasks he had assigned. Those of his reinforcements not gathering up bodies or helping the wounded had already been sent to repair the breach the Qar had made into the Festival Halls.

Vansen rubbed his aching head. He wanted nothing so much as to lie down and sleep. He had been exhausted long before Chert’s bursting shell had nearly deafened him, and although his wounds had been washed and bandaged while he was senseless he ached mightily all over. He wanted a drink of something strong and at least an hour in bed, but he was the commander here, more or less, so it would have to wait.

“You said you had a dozen more of the gunflour beetles and more powder,” Vansen said to Chert.

“That’s what we have at the temple. We have more in Funderling Town, much more. We use it to break up stone when we must work fast—when we are not given time to do things in the old, proper ways…”

Vansen had learned more than he really wanted to in the past month about the good old days of wet-wedging and sand-polishing. “Let us talk to Cinnabar about it, then,” he said hurriedly. “Perhaps we can prepare a welcome for next time that will make the dark lady and her soldiers think twice about coming into our home uninvited.”

Chert did his best to get Vansen to rest—the captain was ribboned with cuts and still clearly not hearing very well—but the big man would not be dragged away from the battlefield, so Chert returned to the temple alone. The Metamorphic Brothers had already heard news of the battle and almost all of them wanted to ask Chert about it, including many who seemed to think of him as a kind of hero. In another time he might have enjoyed the attention but now he was too frightened and weary to want anything but to get back to his room. He had seen some of the Qar forces, however briefly, and he knew there were thousands more of them besieging Southmarch aboveground. He had caught a very small number of these attackers by surprise with a blasting beetle, but next time there would be no surprise. The drows might even have rock-cracking powder of their own.

Chert was almost back to his room when he remembered Flint, whom he had left with the physician. Wearily he turned back up the corridor, but when he got to Chaven’s room and rapped on the heavy door nobody answered. When he tried it, the door was not locked or even latched. He pushed it open, suddenly fearful.

Chaven lay stretched full-length on the floor as if he had been stunned with a club; there was no sign of Flint. For a terrible moment Chert thought the physician was dead, but when he kneeled beside him he could hear Chaven moaning quietly. Chert found a basin of cold water and a cloth and splashed water across the physician’s broad, pale forehead.

“Wake up!” He did his best to shake Chaven, who was twice his size. “Where is my boy? Where is Flint?”

Chaven groaned and rolled over, then struggled until he could sit by himself. “What?” The physician looked around his room as if he had not seen it before. “Flint?”

“Yes, Flint! I left him with you. Where is he? What happened?”

Chaven looked blank. “Happened? Nothing happened. Flint, you say? He was here?” He shook his head slowly, like a weary horse trying to dislodge a biting fly. “No, wait—he was here, of course he was. But… but I do not remember what happened. Is he gone?”

Chert almost threw the wet rag at him in exasperation. He quickly searched the small chamber to make sure the boy was not hiding somewhere. He did not find him, but in one corner of the room he discovered a small hand mirror and a stump of candle lying on the floor. He smelled the wick. It had only recently been extinguished.

“What is this?” he demanded of the confused physician. “Did you get up to some of your mirror tricks with him? Did you frighten him into running away?”

Chaven looked both affronted and anxious. “I can’t remember, to tell the truth. But I would never hurt or frighten a child, Chert—you should know that.”

Chert remembered the boy’s cries of terror the last time the fat physician had tried out his mirror-magics. “Pfah! He’s gone, that’s all I know. Have you no idea at all where he might be? How long he’s been gone?”

But Chaven was mystified—and useless. He could only look from one corner of the room to another, rubbing his eyes as though the light in the dark room was too bright.

Chert was hurrying through the halls when he suddenly remembered the library. Flint had already got them both into trouble for going there once. What more likely place for him to end up this time?

To his immense relief he found the boy slumped in what seemed like ordinary childish sleep at one of the ancient tables, his head cradled on an irreplaceable book, a centuries-old collection of shallow carvings on sheets of mica thinner than parchment. As Chert lifted the boy’s head to slide the pages from beneath him he glanced at the antique writing. He could not read it—it was too old, too strange—but it reminded him of the scratchings he had seen on the walls deep in the Mysteries. What was the boy doing with it? Did he have any sense of what he was up to? Flint acted sometimes as if he was ten times his true age, but at others he seemed nothing more than the child he was.

“Wake up, boy,” he said gently. He could forgive almost anything as long as he didn’t have to tell Opal he’d lost their child. “Come, now.”

Flint lifted his head and looked around, then closed his eyes again as if to go back to sleep. He was far too big for Chert to carry—he was taller than his foster father, now—so Chert had to pull on his arm until the boy got to his feet and reluctantly allowed himself to be led out of the library and back across the temple to the room they shared. For once they seemed to be in luck: Vansen was apparently keeping Brother Nickel and the other monks busy with the temple’s defense. Flint’s return to the library had apparently gone undetected.

“Why did you do that, boy?” he demanded. “The brothers said to stay out of there—what were you doing? And what happened in Chaven’s room?”

Flint shook his head sleepily. “I don’t know.” He walked on in silence for several paces, then suddenly said, “Sometimes… sometimes I think I know things. Sometimes I do know things—important things! And then… and then I don’t.” To Chert’s astonishment, the boy abruptly burst into tears, something Chert had never, ever seen him do. “I just don’t know, Father! I don’t understand!”

Chert wrapped his arms around Flint, hugging this strange creature, this alien child, feeling the boy shake with helpless sorrow. There was nothing else he could do.

He had just got Flint settled in bed when someone rapped at the door. Wearily, Chert got up and opened it to reveal Chaven, wide-eyed in the dark hallway.

“Did you find the boy?” he asked.

“Yes. He is well. He went to the library. I have just put him to bed.” He stepped back, beckoned the physician to enter. “Come in and I’ll see if I can find us some mossbrew. Do you remember what happened?”

“I cannot,” said Chaven. “In truth, I came to bring you a message. Ferras Vansen has sent to say that they have learned how to speak with the Funderling they captured.”

Chert lifted an eyebrow. “I am a Funderling. That murderous creature is a drow.”

Chaven waved his hand. “Of course, of course. Your pardon. In any case, will you come? Captain Vansen asked for you.”

He shook his head. “No. I must stay with my boy. Too many things have called me away from him. Besides, there is nothing I can do there to help Vansen. If he truly needs me I will come to him tomorrow.” He smiled sourly. “Unless the Qar murder us all before then, of course.”

The physician didn’t know quite how to take this. “Of course.”

When Chaven had left Chert went to look in on the boy. Flint’s face was slack in sleep, mouth open, his tousled hair lighter even than citron quartz. What did all that mean? Chert wondered. He knows, but he doesn’t know?

As always, Chert could only wonder at the strange thing he and Opal had brought into their lives, this changeling boy… this walking mystery.

Utta pulled at the older woman’s arm, trying to hold her back, but her efforts had little effect. Together they slid and slipped in the mud of the main street. Kayyin made a languid move to help them, but they regained their balance.

“I will not be stopped, Sister.” Merolanna was breathing hard from the exertion and the cold. Before the Bridge of Thorns had begun to grow the days had actually turned warm, but since the beginning of the monstrous project the entirety of the coastline around Southmarch had been shrouded in chill wet mist, as if summer had entirely passed them by and they had tumbled straight into Dekamene or even later.

“Kayyin, help me,” Utta begged. “The dark lady will kill her.”

“Perhaps,” the Qar said. “But, see—we are all still alive. My mother seems to have lost a bit of her bloodlust in these sad, late days.”

“Are you mad, Halfling?” Merolanna said. “Lost her bloodlust! She is killing our people this moment! I can hear the screams!”

Kayyin shrugged. “I did not say she had become a different person entirely.”

Merolanna strode on, determined, smacking away Utta’s hand when the Zorian sister tried to slow her. “No! She will hear me. I will not be stopped!”

“If Snout and his fellow guards had not been called to the siege,” Kayyin said cheerfully, “you would not have gotten out the front door.”

Merolanna only showed her teeth in an expression that on someone other than a respectable dowager might have been called a snarl.

The collection of docks and harbor buildings facing the castle’s drowned causeway had become a scene of nightmarish chaos. Creatures of dozens of different shapes and sizes hurried back and forth through the fog as the vast, creaking, treelike branches of the Bridge of Thorns loomed over all like the deformed bones of a collapsing temple. Merolanna, mud now spattered halfway up her skirt, did not flinch from even the most grotesque creatures that appeared out of the murk, but stamped along like a determined soldier, headed for the black and gold tent standing by itself at the center of things.

She is brave, Utta thought, I cannot take that away from her. But the one she seeks is not some ordinary mortal to be cowed by an irate old woman. If what Kayyin said was true, the dark lady herself is older than we can imagine—the child of a god. And sweet Zoria knows that she is angry and vengeful beyond our understanding as well.

If it had not been for the strangeness of the last year, the mad things she herself had seen, Utta would have dismissed the Qar’s talk of gods and Fireflowers and immortal siblings as nonsense… but no other answers fit what she had seen and what was all around her this moment! For Utta Fornsdodir, who thought of herself as an educated woman, one who despite her calling could glean the difference between the important truths in the old stories and the superstition and silliness of some of the tales themselves, it had been a shocking and even disheartening time.

Yasammez stood before her tent like a statue of Nightmare, all in spiked black armor, an ivory-white sword hanging naked and unsheathed at her belt. She was watching something Utta could not see in the clouded heights of the thorns and did not turn even when Duchess Merolanna stumbled to a halt in front of her and slowly, painfully, lowered herself to her knees. A thin shrieking that might have been the wind wafted over the silent tableau, but Utta knew it was not the wind. Inside the walls of Southmarch castle, the fairies were killing men, women, and children.

“I cannot take this cruelty any longer!” Merolanna’s voice, so firm only moments ago, now had a hitch that was more than fear, Utta sensed: something about dark Yasammez was enough to make the words stumble in anyone’s throat. “Why are you murdering my people? What have they done to you? Two hundred years since the last war with your kind—we had all but forgotten you even existed!”

The face of Yasammez turned slowly toward her—an emotionless mask, pale and weirdly beautiful despite the inhuman angles of its bones. “Two hundred years? ” the fairy-woman said in her harshly musical voice. “Mere moments. When you have seen the centuries flutter past as I have, then you may talk of time as if it meant something. Your people have doomed mine and now I am returning the favor. You may watch the ending or you may hide yourself away, but do not waste my time.”

“Kill me, then,” said Merolanna. The hitch in her throat was gone.

“No, Duchess!” Utta cried, but her legs suddenly felt wobbly as spring rushes and she could not move closer.

“Quiet, Sister Utta.” The duchess turned back to the angular shadow that was Yasammez. “I cannot simply watch my people die—my nieces and nephews and friends—but I cannot hide from it, either. If you understand suffering as you say you do, end mine.” She bowed her head. “Take my life, you cold thing. Torture does not befit a great lady.”

Yasammez looked at Merolanna and something like a cold smile played across her face. For a long moment they stood like characters in a play, by appearance a terrifying conqueror and a helpless victim or an executioner and condemned prisoner—but it was nothing quite so simple, Utta realized.

“You should not speak to me of suffering,” Yasammez said at last. Her voice was still rough and strange, but lower, softer. “Never. Were I to bring your loved ones here one by one and execute them in front of you, still you should not speak that word to me.”

“I don’t know what…” Merolanna began.

“Silence.” The word hissed like a red-hot blade thrust into cold water. “Do you know what you and your wretched kind have done to my people? Hunted us, murdered us, poisoned us like vermin. Those who survived driven into exile in the cold lands to the north, forced to draw the mantle of twilight over themselves like a child hiding beneath a blanket. Yes, you even stole the sun from us! But, cruelest jest of all, you pushed our race to the brink of destruction and then also snatched away our last chance at survival.” The pale face tilted forward, black eyes slitted. “Torture? If I could, I would torture every one of you soft mortal slugs, then burn the fat from your bodies while you screamed. Mounds of your charred bones would be your only monument.”

The dark woman’s hatred was like an icy blast of wind down a mountainside. Utta could not help herself—she let out a little noise of terror.

Yasammez turned on her as if she had noticed her for the first time. “You. You call yourself a servant of Zoria. What beside sentimental nonsense do you know of the white dove—of the true Dawnflower? What do you know of the way her father and his clan tormented her, killed her beloved, then handed her over to one of the victorious brothers as if the goddess of the first light was nothing but a spoil of war? What do you know of the way they tortured her son Crooked, the one you mayflies call Kupilas, until he was willing to give up his own life to rid the world of them? For thousands of years he has suffered to keep the world safe, agonies you and even I cannot imagine. Then think of this—you call him a god… but I call him Father.” Her face, the mask of rage, suddenly went as slack as the features of a corpse. “And now he is dying. My father is dying, my family is dying, my entire race is dying—and you talk to me of suffering.”

Utta’s legs buckled at last and she sank down into the mud beside Merolanna. In the moment’s hush she could again hear the cries of Yasammez’ victims across the bay, a chorus of terror that sounded like nothing so much as the screeching of distant seabirds.

The dark lady turned her back on them. “Kayyin, take these things away from me, these… insects. I have a war to fight. Tell them the story of how their kind stole the Fireflower and murdered my family. After that, if they still want to die, I will be happy to accommodate them.”

28. The Lonely Ones

“The repose… skrikers? I don’t understand.”Barrick took up the heavy oars again and began to row. The weird murk of the darklights lined the river like an arbor of old trees, dense along the bank and stretching high on either side until it finally began to thin far above their heads. “It makes no sense,” he growled at Raemon Beck, struggling to keep his voice to a whisper. “Why would the Dreamless shut themselves away for hours each day when they do not sleep? And if everyone’s inside, why would they have these skriker things guarding the streets? From what?”

Beck had dried his eyes, but he looked as if he might burst into tears again any moment; the man’s weak, puffy face made Barrick angry. “The Dreamless are fairies,” Beck said quietly, “and except for my master they aren’t kind ones. They trust no one—not even their own kind. As for the Repose, it is their law to lock themselves in, and that is what the skrikers see to. My master Qu’arus used to tell me that his people had to shut themselves away because too much wakefulness made their hearts and their thoughts sick. Before the Law of Repose many of them grew so damaged and secretive that they slaughtered their own families or their neighbors. There still are places where you can see the black ruins of estates that burned to the ground centuries ago with the family and all their servants inside, turned into funeral pyres by those who had grown tired of living…”

Barrick felt a disturbing moment of kinship with the Dreamless. How often had he dreamed of his own home in flames? How often had he wished for some disaster to end his pain, little caring who else might be harmed?

He rowed as quietly as he could, but the city was still as a tomb; every splash seemed certain to draw attention. The small waterway they were on came to an end, leaving them no choice but to move into a larger branch of one of the main canals. Three or four other boats were visible on the water, albeit distantly, but Barrick pulled hard on the oars and they managed to slip quickly across the wide waterway and then back onto one of the smaller side streams.

It was tiring to go so fast, though: the boat was twice as big as the sort of two-man skiffs used in Southmarch. Barrick found himself thinking of the headless blemmy that had done the work before—he wished they could have brought one of the horrible things, just to spare himself this backbreaking labor.

Barrick soon discovered that if he kept the skiff away from the darklights along the edge of the canals he could actually see fairly well, but the effect was still disturbing: out in the middle of the larger waterways was something like the shadowland twilight he had grown used to, but the banks seemed swaddled in inky black smoke. To see anything of what they were passing he had to move in close, until they were within the penumbra of the darklights and his eyes became accustomed to the deep shadow. But he had no idea whether they could be seen in turn or who might be looking at them.

“We need a place to hide,” he told Beck. “Some place no one will find us while we decide what to do next.”

“There is no such place,” Beck said bleakly. “Not here. Not in Sleep.”

Barrick scowled. “And you do not know where Crooked’s Hall is, either. You are as useless as a boar’s teats…”

At that moment something dropped on them out of the blackness, as though the darklights themselves had spat out part of their essence. Raemon Beck threw himself down, pressing his face against the deck, but Barrick recognized the clot of shadow and its method of entrance.

“I didn’t expect to see you again, bird,” he said.

“Us didn’t expect to see you, neither… not alive, like.” The bird bent to groom its chest feathers. “So, how went your guesting with those kindly blue-eyed folk?”

Barrick almost laughed. “As you can see, we’ve decided to move on. The problem is, Beck here doesn’t know where Crooked’s Hall might be. We need somewhere to go where we can be safe from the Night Men. And the others… what did you call them, Beck? Skrikers? ”

“Quiet!” The patchwork man looked around in anxious terror. “Do not name them here where the banks are close by! You’ll summon them.”

Skurn, who had been standing on one leg at the bow of the boat while he picked something out of his toes, shook himself and fluttered a little closer to Barrick. “P’raps us could fly up and try to see somewhat for you,” he said offhandedly. “P’raps.”

Barrick couldn’t help noticing the overture of comradeship. “Yes, that would be good, Skurn. Thank you.” He looked at the pitchy clouds of blacklight along the banks. “Find a place where the darkness is not so thick—an island, perhaps. Unused. Maybe wild.”

The black bird flapped upward in a spiral and then leveled out, flying toward the nearest bank.

“My stomach is empty,” Barrick said as he watched the raven disappear. “If we take a fish from this water will it poison us?”

Beck shook his head. “I don’t think so. But there is already food in the boat. I doubt anyone touched it after we brought my master home. With so many lost on our hunting trip and my master wounded we did not eat it all—a good deal of dried meat and road bread should be left.” He crawled forward and found a large waterproof sack folded underneath the foremost bench. “Yes, see!”

The food had a strange, musty taste, but Barrick was far too tired and hungy to mind. They shared a handful of dried meat and two pieces of bread as hard as boot-leather that reminded Barrick of the brown maslin loaves back home.

“And you are truly Prince Barrick!” Raemon Beck had recovered his spirits a bit. “I cannot believe I should see you again, my lord—and here of all places!”

“If you say so. I do not remember our first meeting.” In truth, Barrick didn’t much want to remember. It was nothing to do with the man in the ragged clothes. He had felt such relief at being separated from all that he had left behind—his past, his heritage, his pain—and he was in no hurry to bring any of it back.

Beck haltingly told him of how his caravan had been attacked by the Qar, he the lone survivor, and how after telling his story he had been summoned to a royal council and then had been sent back again to the same place along the Settland Road. The tale took a long while—Beck’s memory had been addled by so much time behind the Shadowline, a stay even longer than Barrick’s—and every name he recovered was a victory for him but gave Barrick only pain.

“And then your sister told the captain… what was his name? The tall one?”

“Vansen,” said Barrick flatly. The guardsman had fallen into blackness defending Barrick’s life after Barrick himself had cursed him many times. Was there to be no end to this parade of wretched, useless memories?

“Yes, your sister told him to take me back to where the caravan was attacked. But we never reached it—or I never did. I woke up in the night surrounded by mist. I was lost. I called and called but no one found me. Or at least none of the ones that I traveled with found me…” Raemon Beck broke off, shuddering, and would say no more about what had happened to him between that time and the time he was taken in by Qu’arus of Sleep. “He treated me well, did Master. Fed me. Didn’t beat me unless I deserved it. And now he’s dead…” Beck’s shoulders trembled. “But I do not think your sister, bless her—forgive me, Lord, I should say Princess Briony… I do not think she meant me any harm. She was angry, but I don’t think she was angry at me…”

“Enough, man. Leave it.” Barrick had heard as much as he could bear.

Beck lapsed into silence. Barrick sat hunched in the robe that had cushioned Qu’arus on his dying journey and took up the oars again, rowing just enough to keep them in the middle of the quiet, backwater stream while they waited for the raven’s return. The canal was narrow and the houses rose up on either side, scarcely distinguishable from the rough stony cliffs out of which they had been carved, only recognizable as dwellings by the occasional tiny window and the huge, gatelike doors in the walls above the waterline.

Doors, he thought. More doors in this city than I can count. And all I have to do is find the right one.

Skurn dropped down out of the dim sky and spread his wings to land on the boat’s tall stern. It was easy to forget how big the bird was, Barrick thought—its wingspan nearly matched the spread of a man’s arms. The raven did not speak at once, but picked and pruned at his feathers. It was clear Skurn wanted to be asked.

“Have you found us anything? A place to go?”

“Mought be. Then again, moughtn’t.”

Barrick sighed. Was it any wonder he was mostly alone in the world and preferred it that way? “Then please tell me,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. “Afterward, I will thank you fulsomely for your kind service.”

Pleased, the raven fluffed himself and stood straighter. “Happens that this is what Skurn has found—a skerry off the great canal, midstream. Trees and such, and only ruins. Us didn’t see sign of naught on two legs.”

“Good,” said Barrick. “And I do thank you. Which direction?”

“Follow us.” The raven flapped up again.

As Barrick paddled after the slow-flapping shape, Raemon Beck suddenly said, “Not all the animals here talk. And sometimes even with the ones that do, you’re better off not to listen.” He shook himself like a wet dog, beset by some evil memory. “Especially when they invite you back to their houses. It’s not like one of those children’s tales, you know.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that.”

The island was much as Skurn had described, a small, overgrown knot of stone in the middle of one of the large canals, far enough from the darklights that it basked in a pool of twilit gray. Some immense structure had once stood among the dark pines, taking up most of the small island, but little remained of it now except a few crumbling walls and the circular ruins of what might have been a tower.

There was no beach to be found, and nothing left of the dock that had once served the island except a few bleached piers that looked enough like great ribs to make Barrick think uneasily of the Sleepers and their bone mountain. They moored the boat to the closest of these and waded to the rocky shore through water up to their chests; Beck and Barrick were both shivering by the time they reached dry ground and crawled into the shelter of the pines.

“We need a fire,” Barrick said. “I don’t care if anyone sees it or not.” He got up and led Beck through the thick growth until they reached the remains of the stone tower. “This will at least hide the light of the flames,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about the smoke.”

“Use these,” said Beck, bending to pick deadfall from the ground. “It’s a good wood and they’ll put off less smoke than green branches.”

Barrick nodded. So the man wasn’t useless after all.

With a small fire burning, Barrick finally settled back to warm his hands and realized that Skurn was gone. Before he had too much chance to think about it the bird came back, flapping down through the upper branches before hopping the rest of the way from limb to tangled limb. Something dangled in his beak, a dark bundle that he dropped with great ceremony.

“Us thought you would be hungry, like,” the raven announced.

Barrick examined the almost eyeless corpse, a creature like a large mole but with longer and more delicate, fingered paws. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it: he was painfully hungry. Except for the few morsels he had shared with Raemon Beck he hadn’t eaten in what seemed like days.

“I’ll do for that,” Beck said. “Have you a knife?”

With some reluctance, Barrick produced Qu’arus’ short sword. Beck examined it for a moment and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The merchant bent to the task of skinning and gutting the creature while Barrick stoked the fire, and he gave the entrails and hide to Skurn without asking. The raven gulped them down, then hopped onto a stone and began to groom himself.

“So what do you know of this city?” Barrick asked as their dinner roasted on a pine-skewer over the open flame. The smell was most distracting, musky but appetizing. “Where are we? How is the place shaped?”

Beck wrinkled his dirty face in thought. “I know little, to be truthful. The only time my master took me out before the hunting trip was on a ceremonial visit to the Duke of Spidersilk. He brought several of his mortal servants—just to put out the duke, or so it seemed.” A sad little smile flickered on Raemon Beck’s lips. “We had to go far into the city, and he pointed things out to me along the way. Let me think.” He picked up a pine twig and began to draw with it in the dark, damp soil. “It has a shape like this, I think.” He scratched an awkward spiral. “K’ze-shehaoui—the River Fade—that is what they call the great canal,” he said, tracing this main line. “But there are other waterways crossing it all the way in.” He drew other lines across the main line. The shape began to look like one of the halved chamber shells the priests of Erivor wore upon their breasts as an emblem of their god.

“But where are we?” Barrick asked.

Raemon Beck rubbed his face for a moment. “I think the house of Qu’arus must be somewhere here,” he said, jabbing with his stick about halfway along the outermost spiral. “Master was always proud that he lived outside the heart of the city, separate from the other wealthy, important families. And this spot is probably somewhere near here.” He poked again, scratching a larger mark on the second and third spirals. “I couldn’t guess how far we’ve come exactly, but I know that part is full of islands.”

Barrick frowned. He pulled the meat from the fire, then set it on a clean rock and began to cut it into two portions, an awkward process with a blade so big and a meal so small. He left Beck’s on the rock and began to eat his own share with his fingers. “I need to know more. I have been set a task.”

“What kind of task?” Beck asked.

Even the unfamiliar human company and the comfort of a hot meal was not enough to induce Barrick to share all his secrets with someone who was after all nearly a stranger. “Never mind that. I need to find a certain door, as I said, but I have no idea where it might be except for the name Crooked’s Hall. What else can you tell me? If you don’t know Crooked’s Hall, is there a famous door somewhere in Sleep? An important gate? Something guarded?”

“Everything is guarded,” Beck said grimly. “What is not watched by the skrikers is in the houses of the Dreamless, clutched tight.”

“You mentioned some fellow your master took you to see—the Duke of Spiderwebs, was it?”

“Spidersilk. He is tremendously old. My master said he was one of the oldest in the city, second only to the members of the Laughing Council.”

Despite himself, Barrick blinked. “What sort of name is that?”

“I don’t know, my lord. Master hated them. He said someone should suck the last of the juices from them and then we could all begin again. He also said that laughter should have a sound, but I do not know what he meant.”

Barrick was growing impatient with all the history. “This Spidersilk— where is he? Could we reach him? Could we make him tell us what we want to know?”

Raemon Beck stared in abject horror. “The duke? No! We cannot go near him. He would destroy us without lifting a finger!”

“But where did he live? Can you at least tell me that?”

“I’m not certain. Somewhere near the heart of the city. I remember because we passed many of the oldest places as we reached the middle of Sleep, some of them burned and others fallen down into ruins, some of them so surrounded with darklight that I could not see them even from a short distance. My master pointed out many things—such strange names!—the Garden of Hands was one, and a place called Five Red Stones, the Library of Painful Music—no, Pitiful Music…” He took a breath. “So many names! Syu’maa’s Tower, Traitor’s Gate, the Field of the First Waking ...”

“Hold,” said Barrick, suddenly intent. “Traitor’s Gate? What was that?”

“I… I don’t remember ...”

Barrick reached out and grabbed Beck’s arm with his left hand, and only realized that he was hurting him when he heard him whimper. He let go. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must know. Think, man! What was it, this Traitor’s Gate?”

“Please, Lord, it was… it was one of the places so dark I could not see it. But Master said something ...” Beck squinted his eyes, clearly trying hard to remember, all the while rubbing the arm Barrick had squeezed. “He said it was a hole.”

“A hole?” Barrick had to restrain the impulse to grab the small, dirty man again and shake him this time. “Is that all?”

“I know it sounds strange, but he called it a hole… what did he say? A hole that even the gods could not… could not ...” His face brightened. “That even the gods could not close.”

Barrick’s heart was beating fast. He had heard enough talk of Crooked’s roads to know this was something he could not ignore. “Show me how to find it.”

Beck’s look of satisfaction evaporated. “What? But… my lord, it’s in the heart of Sleep—in the district of Silence where only those who are called may go. Even my master would not have set foot there without being summoned by Spidersilk ...” He jumped at a loud clacking noise, but it was only Skurn cracking a snail shell against a rock.

“My master was very clever,” Beck said. “If he wouldn’t go there by himself, neither should we. You do not know these creatures, Prince Barrick—they’ve no souls, no kindness at all! They will skin us just to amuse themselves, with less concern than I gave to this coney!”

“I will not force you to go with me, but I cannot let the chance pass.” Barrick wiped his hands on his ragged clothes and began smoothing out a place to lie down. “I must see this place, Beck. I must find out if this… hole that even the gods can’t close is what I’m looking for. I have a task, as I said.” He reached into his shirt to touch the mirror in its bag. “You are free to do what you want.”

“But if you leave me, I will be caught! A runaway servant—and a Sunlander!” The man’s eyes filled with tears. “They will do terrible things to me!”

Some of the coldness had returned to his heart: Barrick was suddenly tired and did not want to listen to this weak fellow’s weeping—he could almost feel himself hardening like clay becoming brick. He lay back in the hollow between two pine roots and rolled the hood of Qu’arus’ cloak behind his head as a cushion. “I cannot make your decisions for you, trader. I have responsibilities beyond shepherding one man.” He closed his eyes.

It should not have been easy to fall asleep with Beck sobbing quietly only an arm’s length away, but Barrick had scarcely slept in the house of the Dreamless—would not have said he slept at all, but for the memories of that strange lizard-dream. The world quickly slipped away.

In his dream he stood on a hilltop, an oddly featureless place the color of ancient ivory. A crowd of people had gathered on the slope below him, their staring faces like a garden bed of unusual flowers. He could recognize some of them instantly—his father the king, Shaso, his brother Kendrick—but some of them were less familiar. One might be Ferras Vansen he realized after a moment, but at the same time it was an older man with a gray-shot beard and thinning hair—a Vansen who could never exist because the guard captain had died in Greatdeeps, falling into endless darkness. Most of the rest were strangers, some in antique-looking dress, others as weird and misshapen as any of the creatures he had met in the demigod Jikuyin’s slave cells: the only things the strange assembly seemed to share were their silence and attention.

Barrick tried to speak, to ask them what they wanted of him, but his mouth would not form the words. His face felt numb, and although the muscles of his jaw and tongue twitched, something kept them from moving freely. He reached his hand to his lips. To his horror, he felt nothing there but skin, stiff as old leather. His mouth was gone.

Barrick? Is that you?

Someone spoke from behind him, the achingly familiar voice of the dark-haired girl—Qinnitan, that was her name—but he could not answer her no matter how he tried. He struggled to turn toward her but could not move, either—his body had become as numb and hard as his face.

Why won’t you talk to me? she asked. I can see you! I have wanted to talk to you so long! What have I done to anger you?

Barrick strained until his vision swirled, trying to make his stony muscles move, but it was useless. He might as well have been a statue. The expectant faces still gazed up at him but some of them began to change, showing impatience and confusion. He stood looking down as the sky darkened and rain began to fall, cold drops that he barely felt, as though the very flesh of his body had become something thick and stiff as tree bark. He heard Qinnitan’s voice again but it grew fainter and fainter until at last it was gone. The crowd began to disperse, some clearly enraged by his inaction, others merely puzzled, until he stood by himself on the bare hilltop, dripping with rain that he could not wipe away.

“Prince Barrick, if you truly… ah!” Raemon Beck, who had only shaken Barrick once, was startled to feel Qu’arus’ blade pressing against his neck.

“What is it?”

Beck swallowed carefully. “Could you… could you please not kill me, my lord?”

Barrick withdrew the blade and slipped it back into its scabbard. “How long did I sleep?”

Beck rubbed his throat. “It’s always hard to tell here, but the quarter bell rang a short time ago. We do not have long before Repose is over and the Dreamless are out on the canals again.” Pale and with dark circles under his eyes, the young merchant looked as though he had not managed to sleep at all. “If you truly mean to look for this place, we should go.”

“We? Does that mean you are going with me?”

Beck nodded miserably. “What choice do I have, my lord? They’ll kill me either way.” His mouth pursed as he struggled with his composure. “For the first time in a long while I was thinking of my children and my wife… thinking of how I will likely never see them again ...”

“Enough. That does neither of us any good.” Barrick sat up, stretched. “How much longer will this Repose last?”

Beck shrugged miserably. “I told you, the quarter bell rang. That means three-quarters of it is gone. I do not even know how to judge time anymore, Prince Barrick. An hour? Two hours? That is all we have.”

“Then we must try to find the center of the city before then. What of these skrikers? Will they interfere with us on the river?”

“Interfere?” Beck laughed, the sound hollow as a rotten log. “You do not understand, my lord. The Lonely Ones are not sentries or reeves like we had back in Helmingsea. They will not ‘interfere’; they will turn the marrow in your bones to ice. They will pluck out your heart and swallow it whole. If you are on the water and you hear their voices calling to you, you will drown yourself to get away from them.”

“Stop talking in puzzles—what are they?”

“I don’t know! Even my master was afraid of them. He told me his people should never have brought them to Sleep. That’s what he said—‘brought them.’ I don’t know if they found them or bred them or summoned them like Xandian demons—even the Dreamless speak of the skrikers only in whispers. I heard one of Qu’arus’ sons tell his brother they were like white rags caught on the wind, but with the voices of women. The Dreamless also call them ‘the Eyes of the Empty Place.’ I don’t know what that means. May the gods help me, I never want to find out.” He was all but weeping again.

“Stop this blubbing. Here, look at your map.” Barrick squatted over the spiral the merchant had drawn. “We don’t dare go straight down the big canal, especially if Repose is ending soon, as you say. You must help me find our way to the center by smaller waterways.”

“The small canals—it’s all darklight,” Beck said. “You can’t see anything. Some of them are blocked with water gates—we’re blind, they’ll still be able to see us ...”

Barrick groaned in frustration. “Still, there must be a way to get there, even if we have to go right down the middle of the biggest canal ...”

“Like a snail shell,” Skurn said suddenly. The bird lifted his head from where he had been pecking through the fractured, sticky remains of just such an object. “Seen that, us has. From above.”

“Yes. We want to get to the center, but Beck says we can’t go down the smallest waterways without being noticed.”

“Us could find a way,” Skurn said. “Island to island, where the dark don’t reach.”

“Then do it,” Barrick told him. “Do it, and I promise I will catch you the biggest, fattest rabbit you ever saw and I won’t take even a bite myself.”

The bird tipped his head sideways to look at him, black eyes alive with reflected firelight. “Done,” he said and spread his wings. “Keep up best as can, then.”

Before getting back into the skiff Barrick stopped to extinguish the fire, but before he kicked the sandy dirt over it he took a pine bough, sticky with sap, and held it in the flames until it caught.

“That’s real fire!” Beck said when he saw it. “Put it out!”

“It’s dark as night out there. I’m not going to feel my way through this cursed city on hands and knees. Besides, if the Dreamless don’t like twilight, maybe they’ll be scared of actual fire.”

“They hate light, but they’re not afraid of it. And they’ll see it from far away. If we carry that, we might as well go shouting at the top of our voices for the skrikers to come and find us.”

Barrick stared at him, trying to sift the man’s sense from his fearfulness. At last he threw the torch into the river; a wisp of smoke drifted after them as they slid away from the island.

Barrick had not liked the gloomy city before, but as they worked their way deeper and deeper into the heart of Sleep he liked it even less. It might be a less forbidding place when Repose had ended and the streets were full again, but it was hard to imagine it ever being cheerful, or even ordinary. The waterways, with their high, leaning sides, docks like crooked teeth, and bridges hanging close overhead, seemed almost intestinal—as though the city were some great, mindless creature like a starfish, absorbing them slowly into itself. The houses, even the largest, seemed cramped and secretive, with small windows like the foggy eyes of blind men. Barrick also saw little in the way of public places, at least that he could recognize as such, only the jagged bridges and occasional barren open spaces which looked less like squares or markets and more as if the buildings that had once stood there had vanished without being replaced. Worst of all, though, was the aura of brooding silence that hung over the dark maze. Its residents might be called Dreamless, but instead of perpetual wakefulness every building Barrick and Raemon Beck passed seemed a sort of nightmare construct, a hard shell hiding a seed of slumbering malice in its depths, as though Sleep were not a city at all but a mausoleum for the uneasy dead.

They had just slipped out of the security of one of the midcanal islands and were rowing across an open space toward another skerry of rocks, trees, and twilight when the last bell of Repose rang, a dull reverberation that Barrick felt in his bones more than heard in his ears.

“They will be coming out now,” Beck said quietly, but he was struggling to stay calm. “Someone will see us.”

“If you keep twitching and jumping that way someone will certainly notice. Sit still. Look as though you belong here.” Barrick pulled his own hood farther down over his face. “If you don’t have something to cover your head with, lie down.”

Beck found a piece of patched sailcloth and wrapped it around himself. “It is just that I know these folk. They are cruel, the Dreamless—cruel for no reason! They are like boys pulling the legs off flies.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t get hold of our legs, won’t we? Now where did that cursed raven get to… ?”

Barrick was still looking for Skurn as they passed beneath a place where several ancient bridges seemed to cross over and under each other at different heights, like the thorny branches of a rose bush, connecting a series of crumbling ivied, tile-covered towers on either side of the shadowy canal. A smear of grayish movement along one of the bridges caught Barrick’s eye, as if someone up there was waving a handkerchief at him. He glanced up. Something looked back down at him. He could barely see it through the guttering darklights but he felt its gaze like a claw of ice tightening around his heart.

“What are you doing?” Beck whispered urgently. “You dropped the oar!”

Barrick heard his companion splashing as he dragged the oar back into the boat, but it might have been happening on the far bank. “Where… where did it go?” he said at last, barely able to speak the words. “Is it still up there?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Its eyes—they were red. I think it was alive, but… but it… wasn’t ...” His mouth was dry as sand, dry as dust, but he swallowed anyway. “It looked at me ...”

“Gods help us,” Beck moaned. “Was it a skriker? Oh, Heaven save us, I don’t want to see it… !” He pressed his face into his hands like a frightened child.

At last, his heart rabbiting, Barrick worked up the courage to look again. The tangle of bridges was falling away behind them, and although for one chill moment he thought he saw something pale fluttering on the highest bridge, when he blinked and looked again it was gone. Still, he could not push the memory of it from his mind, although he could not say exactly what had frightened him so.

Like white rags caught on the wind…

The city seemed to be stirring back into a hushed, morbid sort of wakefulness. Barrick saw shapes moving in the darklit shadows, but they were all so heavily cloaked and wrapped that it was hard to make out anything more than their movement. Most of them were solitary, walking slowly along the sides of the canals or occasionally crossing overhead on one of the curiously high bridges, often bearing darklight torches so that they traveled in a small cloud of moving blackness. Barrick now wanted nothing more dearly than to escape this place as quickly as possible. What kind of unnatural things were these Dreamless? Did they truly hate the light so much, or was there something more to the practice? He was suddenly grateful that Beck had talked him out of carrying real fire.

Following Skurn’s slow-flapping lead, they crossed the widest part of the Fade and slipped into a narrow waterway that curled in on itself like a dead centipede, twisting through a seemingly forgotten section of town that, despite its proximity to the center of Sleep, seemed almost completely empty and abandoned, half the buildings in ruins, several of them nothing but charred rubble. Raemon Beck sat up in the bow of the boat, his face tense with attention and fear. “This is it,” he said. “Master took us here—I remember that tree.” He pointed to a gnarled and ancient alder growing on its own small, stony island, its trunk deformed by wind and time, branches reaching up and spreading over the center of the canal like the hand of a drowning giant. “I think Traitor’s Gate was nearby.”

“I hope so,” Barrick said, squinting. There were fewer darklights in this area, only an occasional brand spreading inky darkness from a canal-side sconce, but they still cast enough shadow to make it hard to see details of what was on the shore. A moment later he sat up and pointed. “Is that it?”

Whatever it had been once, the stone structure was now little more than a ruin, its outer buildings collapsed and the remaining high walls overgrown with trees and creepers. It looked like one of the tombs in the cemetery outside the Throne hall back in Southmarch, except that this tomb would have sufficed for a dead giant.

“I… I think that’s it,” said Beck, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Oh, Heaven protect us, I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now—what my master said of the curse frightened me.”

“What are you talking about? You might have told me before.” Hills, ruins—was there nothing in these benighted shadowlands that wasn’t cursed?

“I didn’t remember.” Beck’s eyes were wide and staring; his hand, which he held up as if to shield his eyes from the nonexistent sun, shook badly. “Master said that this place was forbidden ground—and that all the people of these lands, Dreamless and Dreaming, were cursed too because of what Crooked did to the gods.” He pawed at his face. “I can’t remember anymore—I was new here then. Everything was so strange ...”

Barrick felt a cold contempt wash over him. Words—words! What use were they to anyone? “I’m going in. You may stay here if you wish.”

Raemon Beck looked around wildly. “Please don’t, my lord! Can’t you see how bad it is? I won’t go in there!”

“That is your choice.” As the boat grounded softly against the rotting wooden dock, Barrick stood up, making the boat pitch so that Beck had to grab the rails. Skurn was nowhere in sight, but he would surely see the boat and know where Barrick had gone.

Beck didn’t say anymore, but when Barrick climbed carefully onto the pier, which quivered but held, Beck got up to follow him, face pinched with misery and fear.

“Be sure to tie up the boat so it doesn’t float away.” Barrick had an ugly feeling they might want to leave suddenly.

When he stepped into the trees, away from the single darklight torch that burned on a post near the edge of the canal, Barrick could see the building better. It was larger than it looked from the canal and the land around it was wider and deeper than it had first appeared. The place seemed measurelessly old, its pale, vine-latticed walls scratched with deep gouges—writing, or mystical incantations perhaps, but as crude as if they had been made by an immense child. Every soft step they took across the leaves and fallen branches seemed to rattle like a drumroll. As Barrick picked his way through the undergrowth toward the great stone ruin, past gigantic blocks of stone that had broken loose and tumbled from the walls, he was coldly satisfied to hear Beck scuffling along behind him, whispering miserably to himself.

A black something came rushing through the trees toward him.

“Run!” shrieked Skurn as he dove past. “Coming!”

Barrick stood for a confused moment after the bird was gone. Then he saw a pair of pale shapes coming toward him from the ruins, sweeping over the uneven ground like windblown leaves.

“Skrikers!” choked Raemon Beck. He turned to run back toward the boat, but tripped and fell face first into a clot of brambles.

The creatures moved with terrible swiftness, loose garments rippling and flowing like mist, faces invisible in the depths of their hoods as they leaped or slithered over obstacles they barely seemed to touch. They crossed a hundred paces of distance so quickly that Barrick only had time to yank Raemon Beck to his feet before the first of the things was upon them. Without thinking, he swung Qu’arus’ sword at the thing’s head, or at least where its head should be. It leaned back, hissing like a startled snake, and he caught a glimpse of a face—red eyes and a cobweb of dull scarlet veins on corpse-white skin. Then the thing laughed. It was a terribly, lonely wheeze of sound, but worst of all was that the inhuman voice was unmistakably female.

Barrick’s legs felt stiff and weak as wax candles, as if any moment they would break beneath his weight. The other pale thing floated to the side, trying to get behind him. Barrick staggered back a step and let go of Raemon Beck, who crumpled to the ground with a whimper of resignation. The boat was several dozen paces behind them but it might as well have been miles. The billowing shapes moved closer, their ragged voices twining in a cracked chant of hunger and triumph.

The skrikers were singing.

29. Every Reason to Hate

The sun had almost sunk to the horizon and the lamps were being lit all over Broadhall Palace. Briony was on her way back from visiting Ivvie, who was feeling better, if not quite well—the girl’s hands still shook badly, and she could take nothing into her stomach stronger than clear broth—when she was met in the hall outside her rooms by two armed and helmeted soldiers wearing the royal Syannese crest. The guards’ air of tense expectancy was such that for a moment she feared they meant to kill her. She was relieved, but only a little, when one of them announced, “Princess Briony Eddon, you have been summoned by the king.”

“I would like to go and change my clothes, first,” she said.

The guard shook his head. His expression gave her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I am sorry, Highness, but it is not permitted.”

She ran through all the possibilities as they escorted her toward the throne room. Could it be her meddling with the Kallikans? Or had something about Jenkin Crowel’s injuries been whispered in the king’s ears? That would be easy enough to deny—Dawet was too clever to leave any loose ends.

As she walked across the great throne room between the two tall men she could not help wondering if the covert glances from the courtiers betrayed the same squeamish sort of fascination they might have felt for a famous criminal.

Oh, sweet mistress Zoria, what trouble have I caused now?

King Enander and his advisers were waiting for her in the Perin Chapel, a high-ceilinged room much longer than it was wide. The king sat on a chair with the great altar behind him, at the feet of Perin Skylord’s monstrous marble statue. The god held his great hammer Crackbolt, its massive head resting on the floor just behind the chair occupied by the Lady Ananka, the king’s mistress, who was one of the last people Briony wanted to see. Equally loathsome was the presence of Jenkin Crowel, the Tollys’ envoy at the Syannese court, although it suggested she had guessed right: one of the bully-boys had probably talked. Crowel smirked at her; his giant white neck ruff made him look like a particularly ugly flower. It was all she could do not to go to him and slap his pink, insolent face, but she struggled for calm and found it. She had learned a few lessons since Hendon Tolly had provoked her almost to madness at her own table.

She dropped to her knee in front of King Enander and looked down at the floor. “Your Majesty,” she said. “You summoned me and I have come.”

“Not hastily,” said Ananka. “The king has waited for you here a long time.”

Briony bit her lip. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was with Mistress Ivgenia e’Doursos and your messengers only just found me. I came as soon as I heard.” She looked up to the king, trying to gauge his mood, but the expression on Enander’s face was a disinterested mask that could have augured anything at all. “How may I serve you?”

“You claim to serve King Enander?” said Ananka. “That is strange, since none of your actions show anything like it.”

Whatever was happening here, it was obviously bad. If Lady Ananka was to serve as her inquisitor the cause would be lost before Briony even knew what was at stake.

“We welcomed you to our court.” She saw now that Enander’s face was flushed as though he had been drinking heavily for this early hour of the day. “Did we not? Did we not open our arms to you as Olin’s daughter? ”

“Yes, you did, Majesty, and I am most grateful ...”

“And all I asked of you was that you not bring the intrigues of your… troubled homeland into our house.” The king frowned, but it seemed as much in puzzlement as anger. Briony felt a moment of hope. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding—something she could explain. She would be contrite, grateful. She would apologize for her youth and headstrong ways, trot out whatever nonsense the king wanted to hear like Feival performing a soliloquy of girlish innocence, and then she could go back to her chambers for some blessed, necessary sleep…

A movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was Feival himself, who had come so quietly into the great chapel that Briony had not even heard him. She was relieved to see at least one familiar face.

“You were extremely generous to her, my lord,” said Ananka. Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman’s tongue? What good was beauty—a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless—if it cloaked such a viperous soul?

Please, merciful Zoria, Briony prayed, help me to keep my temper. Help me to swallow my pride, which has landed me in trouble so many times.

“So if all that is true,” said Enander suddenly, “why have you betrayed my hospitality and betrayed me, Briony Eddon? Why? Common intrigues I could understand, but this—you have struck at my very heart!” The pain in his voice was real.

Betrayed? Briony suddenly felt icy fear envelop her. She looked up at Enander but the king would not meet her eye. “Majesty, I ...” She found it hard to form words. “What have I done? May I know? I swear I have never ...”

“The list of your crimes is long, girl.” The high collar of Ananka’s elaborately beaded dress made her look like a Xandian hood snake. “If you were of common blood, any one of them would have you in the House of Tears. Lord Jenkin, tell the king again what she did to you.”

Jenkin Crowel, still with a thin purple shadow beneath one eye, cleared his throat. “Within a few short days of arriving in your gracious court as a legitimate envoy, King Enander, I was set upon by thugs in the public street and beaten almost to death. As I lay in the dirt in a pool of my own blood one of the ruffians leaned down and told me, “That is what happens to those who stand against the Eddons.”

“That’s a lie!” Briony shouted. It was, at least in part. After she had become convinced that Crowel had poisoned her little maid in an effort to kill Briony herself, she had instructed Dawet to hire some bully-boys to give Crowel a taste of his own cruelty, and then say to him that next time he tried any dangerous tricks his payment would be worse. No mention could have been made of the Eddons because Dawet would never even have hinted to those men who they were actually serving.

“I know what I heard,” Crowel said, doing his best to look both suffering and noble. “I thought I was dying. I thought they were the last words I would ever hear.”

“You are as much a liar as your master.” Briony forced herself to take a breath. “Even if I were behind such a terrible thing, would I have them use my name?” Just the sight of Crowel’s doughy, self-satisfied face fanned the rage inside her until its flames billowed. “If I was taking revenge for the treachery your master has shown my family, then the name Eddon would be the last thing you would hear all right, you pig, but you would never have got to your feet again!” Enander and the others were staring at her, Briony realized. She swallowed. “I am innocent of this charge, King Enander. Would you take the word of this… this upstart over the daughter of a brother king?”

The king narrowed his eyes. “Were this the only accusation against you, and the only witness, you would have some case to make, Princess. But there is more.”

“I am innocent of any wrongdoing, Majesty. I swear. Call on your witnesses.”

“Is it not as I told you, Enander?” said Ananka in a tone of triumph. “She plays the innocent so well. And yet she plotted nothing less than to steal your son and your throne!”

Enander’s throne? Oh, gods, that was treason. Even princesses might be put to death for treason, and not quickly. It was all she could do to force out the words. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Lady Ananka—I swear my innocence in front of Perin and all the gods!”

“You tried to entrap Prince Eneas, girl. Everybody knows. You made up to him, played the blushing virgin, all the while trying to lure him to your bed and bend him to your will! And that was only the beginning of your plot!”

“This is a dreadful lie!” Briony cried out. “Where is the prince? Ask him yourself. Our dealings were always honorable—which is more than I can say for what you do to me here!”

“He is beyond your reach,” Ananka said with obvious satisfaction. “Beyond your lies and cozening. Eneas has been sent away from Tessis this very hour, with his soldiers. The glamour you have drawn over him will do you no good.”

Briony was struggling so hard against her anger the room seemed to have gone dark except for the figures of the king and his consort. She stumbled a little as she turned to Enander. “Majesty, your son has done nothing wrong and neither have I. We have a friendship—nothing more. And I want nothing from him or you except help for my people, my country… your allies!”

Enander looked troubled. “That… that is not what I have heard.”

“Heard from whom?” Briony demanded. “With respect, King Enander, Lady Ananka does not like me, that is clear, although I have no idea why ...” But even as she said it she saw a look of amused complicity speed between Ananka and Jenkin Crowel and realized that the king’s consort had more than a stepmother’s interest in the proceedings. She has made some bargain with the Tollys, Briony thought. The bitch has some plan of her own. Even her flaring rage could not melt the chill settling deeper inside her as she realized how thoroughly matters were set against her here in Syan. “But… but that is hardly enough for judgment,” she finished. “Call back your son. Ask him.”

“My son has the care of the realm to think of,” said Enander. “But as I said, there are other witnesses. Feival Ulian, step forth and tell us what you know.”

“Feival… ?” Briony stared, astounded. “What does that mean?”

The young player at least had the grace, or skill, to look troubled as he stepped out and kneeled before the king. “It… it is difficult for me, Majesty. She is the daughter of my king, and for a long time we traveled together and were friends ...”

“Were? I am your friend! What are you saying?”

“… But the things she has done will not stay locked inside me any longer. It is all true—she has spoken of it often in front of me. She has had one thought, and that was to make Prince Eneas love her so that through him she would eventually gain control of the throne of Syan. First she brought me in, and also put the other players to work as her spies—I can show you the accounts. And then she set her cap at the prince. She did her best to make love to him at every opportunity, full of sweet promises, leading him on while all the while confessing in private that she did not care for him, but only the throne of Syan.”

Briony gaped, then clambered to her feet. One of the soldiers caught her arm and held her in place. “Sweet Zoria, Feival, how can you do this to me? How can you tell such terrible, baldfaced lies… ?” But then she saw as if for the first time the rich clothes Feival wore, the jewelry she had not given him but had not bothered to wonder about, and realized that she had been outmaneuvered since she had first set foot in the court of Tessis. Ananka had found a weak reed and bent it to her own purposes. “It is none of it true, King Enander!” Briony said, turning to the throne. “It is… it is a conspiracy, and I do not understand the reason for it—but I am innocent! Ask Eneas! Bring him back!”

The king shook his head. “He is beyond your reach, girl, as my lady said.”

“But why would I do such things—why would I need to trick Eneas? Your son cares for me! He has said so himself ...”

“See? ” In her triumph Ananka almost rose from her chair, but thought better of it. “She as much as admits her plan.”

“But I turned him down, even though his representations to me were all honorable! Ask him! Do not condemn me on the word of a single treacherous servant without hearing what your own son has to say! My maid and my friend have both been poisoned in this castle—do you not see that someone here is trying to destroy me?”

“Tell the rest, Ulian,” Ananka said loudly, interrupting her. “Tell the king what this scheming creature said she would do after she tricked the king’s son into marriage.”

Briony started to object again, but the king held up his hand for silence “Let the servant speak.”

Feival could not meet Briony’s eye. “She said… she said that she would do whatever she must to see Eneas put on the throne in his father’s place.” He sighed, and although it might only have been at the guilt of telling such a gross lie, the young player seemed to be growing increasingly uncomfortable with his role.

Briony could only shake her head helplessly. “This is all madness!”

“And the rest,” Ananka commanded. “Be not afraid. Tell the king what you told me. Did she not say that she would use witchcraft to hasten the succession if necessary?”

Briony’s legs seemed to turn to water. One of the soldiers had to catch her to keep her from falling to the floor of the chapel. Witchcraft—against the king’s life? Ananka did not simply want her banished, she wanted her dead. “Lies… !” she said, but her voice sounded feeble.

Even Feival seemed stunned, as though this was a depth of treachery even he had not expected. “Witchcraft?”

“Tell him! Tell the king!” Ananka seemed ready to shake it out of him.

Feival swallowed. “I… to be honest, my lady… I do not… remember that ...”

“He is no doubt frightened to talk about it, Majesty.” Ananka said to Enander. “Frightened to say it in front of the girl herself—afraid she will put some curse on him.” The king’s mistress settled back into her seat, but the look she gave Feival suggested that his new mistress was less than happy with his performance. “But you can see what sort of plot we have uncovered—what danger you and your son were in!”

Enander shook his head. Was it drink that made him flush so, or something else? Was Ananka poisoning him as well?

“These are terrible things you are accused of, Briony Eddon,” the king said slowly, “and were your father not also a friend to us I would be tempted to pass sentence this moment.” He paused for a moment as a quiet hiss of frustration escaped the woman beside him. “But because of the long years of brotherhood between our nations I will deal with you as carefully as if you were one of my own. You will be confined to your chambers until I can investigate this matter in the depth it deserves.” He took a shaky breath. “This is as hard for us as it is for you, Princess, but you have brought it on yourself.”

“No!” Briony was shaking with fury, barely able to contain herself. Treacherous Feival, cruel Ananka, even the swine Jenkin Crowel—behind those careful masks, they must all be laughing at her! “Will you again let Jellon betray my family, King Enander? Are you so blind to what goes on in your own court?”

Many of the others gasped at Briony’s words, but the king only looked puzzled. “Jellon? What nonsense is this? Have you forgotten what country you are in?”

“Jellon! Where Hesper sold my father to the Hierosoline usurper, Ludis Drakava! And now this woman has come from there, schooled in treachery by her lover to bring down my kingdom—and perhaps yours as well! Can you not see? Nothing comes from Jellon but lies and betrayal!”

“You are distraught, young woman.” Enander looked old and tired. “Jellon is our ally, too, and they bring much to the world. The Jellonians are very good at weaving, you know.”

Briony stared at him. The king’s thoughts were more than slow, they were hopelessly muddled—there was no point in further arguing. She struggled to keep the misery from her face—at least she would not let that cow Ananka see her weep. “You wrong me,” was all she said, then turned and walked out of the chapel, praying that her legs would bear her. Guards silently moved in on either side of her. She would not be walking alone anymore, that was clear.

In the throne room outside, the king’s counselor Erasmias Jino approached her. “I apologize, Princess,” he said quietly. “I was not aware any of this was planned.”

“Neither was I. Which of us do you think was most surprised?” She let the guards lead her away.

Sister Utta could not make herself stand, although the storm that raged in her thoughts demanded some physical release. She wanted to run as far and as fast as she could to escape this impossible talk, or to throw things clattering to the floor until the noise and chaos wiped away everything she had just been told. But still it went on, the tale of how the mortals of Southmarch had destroyed the Twilight People’s royal family.

“It cannot be.” She looked imploringly at Kayyin. “You only do this because your dark mistress wants to torment us. Such horrible tales—admit they are all lies!”

“Of course they are lies,” Merolanna said angrily. She would no longer meet the fairy’s gaze. “Wicked lies. Told by this… this evil changeling to make us fearful, to destroy our faith.”

Kayyin spread his hands in a gesture that looked like resignation or abandonment. “Faith does not enter into it, Duchess. My mistress Yasammez ordered me to tell you the truth and that is what I did. I owe her nothing but my death so I can assure you I would not lie on her behalf, especially about this, the greatest tragedy of my people.” His expression grew distinctly colder. “And now I recall some of the ways in which I am not one of you, no matter how many years I played the counterfeit. My people do not run from the truth. It is the only reason we have survived in this world… this world that your kind have made.”

He turned and walked out of the room. Utta heard his light footfalls for a moment on the stairs, then the house was silent again.

“Do you see?” There was an edge of triumph in Merolanna’s voice—a feverish edge, Utta thought. “He knows we have seen through him. By leaving he fairly admits it!”

After days and days of shared captivity, Utta no longer had the strength or even the inclination to argue. After all, if Merolanna needed to believe such things to keep up her spirits, who was Utta to take them from her? But even so, she couldn’t be entirely silent.

“As little as I wish to admit it, much of what he said… well, it does ring in accord with the history of my order ...” she ventured.

“But certainly!” Merolanna was briskly tidying up a room that needed no such efforts. “Don’t you see? That is the cleverness of it! They make their lies plausible—until you consider what they are actually saying. Oh, no, it was not those monsters that came out of their shadowy country and attacked us! All of the gods-fearing people of the March Kingdoms—we lured them out, then betrayed and slaughtered them! Can you not see how foolish it is, Utta? Really, I despair of you. My husband told me of such madnesses when he came back from the wars in Settland—you have been a prisoner so long you are beginning to believe your captors.”

Utta opened her mouth, then shut it again. Patience, she told herself. She is a good woman. She is frightened. And I am frightened, too. Because if what Kayyin had told them was a lie, as Merolanna so fervently believed, then the Qar were completely mad. But if it was the truth…

Then they have every reason to hate us, Utta thought. They have every reason to want to destroy us all.

The fury that was boiling inside Briony began to die down on her way back to her chambers, as if someone had taken a lid off a cooking pot. She did not have time for anger, she reminded herself: her life was at stake. At any moment they might put her in a cell, or remove her to some country estate to live as a prisoner. Ananka might even talk the besotted old king into believing that witchcraft nonsense if she had long enough to work at him. Briony’s own word—the word of a king’s daughter!—had meant nothing to Enander. Instead, he had sat back like the great fool he was and let his whore manipulate him…

Calm, she told herself. What was it Shaso used to say? Even as you are defending, you must be attacking. You cannot simply react to what is given you. A warrior must always act, even if only to plan the next move.

So what was the next move? What assets did she have? Dawet was gone on some errand of his own. The money Eneas had given her was mostly spent. Well, Zoria would provide for her, she told herself… but Zoria had to be given a proper chance. Briony had come to this city with nothing but her freedom. She would be happy to leave it in the same condition.

It was obvious by their embarrassed expressions that her ladies-in-waiting had heard the news. No surprise: gossip traveled fast in the Broadhall Palace. Still, it was painful to watch them try to decide how to treat her. Had they known about Feival’s treachery all along? And how many of them were also Ananka’s spies?

Of all her ladies-in-waiting, only Agnes, the tall, thin daughter of a country baron, even came to meet her when she entered. The girl looked Briony over carefully. “Are you well?” She sounded as though she truly cared about the answer. “Is there something I can get you, Princess?”

Briony glanced at the other young women, who turned away and busied themselves with a variety of aimless tasks. “Yes, Mistress Agnes, you can come and talk with me while I put on some other clothes. I have been in these all day.”

“Gladly, Princess.”

When they were in her retiring room Briony quickly began undoing the clothes she had been wearing. As Agnes helped her out of the dress and into a heavy night robe Briony watched the girl. She was a little younger than Briony but much the same height, and although she was thinner, she was fair-haired like Briony, too—which would count for a great deal.

“How much do you know of what happened to me this afternoon?” Briony asked.

Agnes colored. “More than I like, Princess. I hear that Master Feival has gone to the king and told him lies about you.” She shook her head. “If they would have asked me, I would have told them the truth—that you are blameless, that you acted only honorably with his highness, Prince Eneas.” She looked startled. “Do you want me to tell them, Princess? I will do it if you wish, but I fear for my family ...”

“No, Agnes. I would not ask that of you or the other girls.”

“The other girls are cowards, Princess Briony. I fear they would not tell the truth, anyway. They are afraid of Ananka.” She laughed ruefully. “I am afraid of Ananka. Some say she is a witch—that she has the king under a spell.”

Briony scowled. “Well, I can show her a little conjuration of my own—but only if you’ll help me.”

Agnes finished tying the belt of Briony’s robe and looked up at her solemnly. “I will help you, Princess, in any way the gods will allow. I think what they are doing to you is terrible.”

“Good. I believe we can manage this without any harm to your reputation here at the court. Now, listen ...”

The first time she sent Agnes out, Briony went to the door with the girl so that the guards could see her in her night-robe. Modesty be cursed, she thought. A warrior has no modesty.

“Hurry back,” she told Agnes loudly enough for all to hear. The soldiers turned to watch the girl hurry by, but Agnes was not the kind to draw much attention from men. She was carrying a note to the king full of the sort of pleading and vows of innocence that could be expected from someone in Briony’s position, but the guards did not even bother to ask her errand, let alone read the letter.

Idiots, Briony thought. Well, I suppose I should be glad they think so little of me here.

While Agnes was gone, Briony went through the chest that contained the few things she had brought to the court at Tessis. She made a bundle of what she wanted and wrapped it in a traveling cloak, the poorest one she could find, a simple, heavy, unembroidered length of dark wool left behind by some visitor and never claimed.

Perhaps it’s one of the prince’s, she thought. Yes, I can imagine Eneas in just such a modest garment, leading his soldiers. It was certainly long enough to belong to him.

Agnes soon returned and Briony sent her on another errand, this one taking a letter to Ivgenia e’Doursos. Briony wanted to let her friend know what happened, and had written to tell her she had been unjustly accused, but of course wrote nothing about what she was planning to do. She had learned she could not trust anyone, not even Ivvie—in fact, she was being forced to rely on young Agnes far more than she liked, but some things could not be helped.

Briony stood in the doorway again and made sure the guards saw her. “Push it under her door,” she told Agnes. “Don’t wake her.”

Agnes smiled. “I’ll be careful.”

The other ladies looked irritated that they were not being sent on these apparently important errands. Briony put them to work getting her some food.

“Bread and cheese from the common store,” she told them. “Lots of it. Let no one know it’s for me. And some dried fruit. Medlars, too—wrap them in a kerchief or they shall get on everything. And what else? Yes, I’d like some quince paste.”

“Are you very hungry, then, Princess?” one of the girls asked.

“Oh, famished. After all, it is hard work being betrayed.”

The ladies went off with wide eyes, whispering behind their hands before they were three steps out the door. Briony noticed that one of the guards had gone somewhere. The other soldier barely looked up as the two young women hurried past.

When the bread and cheese and the rest had been brought back, Briony took it to the retiring room where no one could see, unrolled her bundle, and hid the food in the center of it. “You may go to bed now,” she called to the women. “I am going to wait for Agnes. I am not yet sleepy.”

Disappointed in their hope to see more eccentricity—or perhaps to see Briony eat the entire mound of supplies they had brought back—the ladies-in-waiting went to the retiring room to prepare for bed. A short time later Agnes came back.

“Thank all the gods,” Briony said. “I was beginning to fear something had happened to you.”

“There were people in the hall and I did not know whether you wanted me to be seen or not,” Agnes told her, “so I waited until they were gone. Have I done wrong?”

“Merciful Zoria, you have done nothing of the kind! Why didn’t I discover you before?” She gave the girl a quick kiss on the cheek. “There is one more thing. Give me your dress.”

“My dress, Princess?”

“Quiet! Not so loud—the others are just in the retiring room. We must be quick. Then take this robe and put it on.”

To her credit, young Agnes did not waste time asking questions. With Briony’s help she got the dress off, and as she stood shivering in her shift Briony draped the night-robe around her.

“Now help me,” Briony told her.

When she was laced into the dress, Briony took Agnes to the chest. “It goes without saying that you may have any of my dresses you choose,” she said. “There are several in the big chest. But I want you to have something else. Here. The fool who gave this to me did not get what he wanted for it, but he gave it to me nevertheless, so it is mine to give to you.” She took out the expensive bracelet Lord Nikomakos had sent her as a love gift and clasped it around the girl’s wrist.

Agnes’ eyes grew wide, then a tear welled up in the corner of each. “You are too kind to me, Princess!”

“No. You still have one more job to do and it is not an easy one. You must convince the king’s men when they come for me—it may be tonight if something has made them wonder, or it may not be until sometime tomorrow—that you did not know what I was doing.” She frowned. “No, that will not work—you are too clever a girl. You must convince them that I frightened you into keeping quiet.”

Now it was Agnes who frowned and shook her head. “I will not blacken your name, Princess Briony. Leave it to me—I will think of something.”

“May the gods bless you, Agnes! Now, when we get to the door, come halfway out and no farther—and keep your face turned away from the guards.”

Just as they opened the door, Briony said loudly, “Hurry, girl! You must go to her and come back quickly. I want to go to sleep!”

There was only one guard, and as Briony hoped, he only straightened up long enough to see the two familiar shapes—the woman in the robe bidding her servant go out one last time—before leaning back on the wall again.

“Princess running you near to death, is she, my lady?” he called as Briony trotted past with the bundled cloak clasped to her breast.

“Oh, yes,” she said—but in a murmur only she could hear. “It’s true, I am quite beside myself tonight.” A moment later she had turned into the adjoining corridor.

She retraced the route she had traveled with Eneas, stopping in the stables long enough to don the boy’s clothes she’d worn as a player. She thanked Zoria and the other gods that the cloak she had picked was a warm one: it might have been spring in Syan, but it was a cold night. She was also grateful that it was a market night and the palace’s gates were open late as people went in and out. She buried the dress Agnes had given her in the straw and made her way out of the stables and through the gate to the town.

Briony headed straight for the tavern where the players had been staying. The Whale Horse was in a narrow street in a dark but active part of Tessis near the river docks; its sign depicted a strange sea creature with tusks curling from its mouth. Drunken men wandered past, singing or quarreling, some of them with women on their arms as drunk and quarrelsome as themselves. Briony was glad she was dressed as a man and she prayed that no one tried to make her talk. This looked like the kind of place where it might not go well for her even if she were thought a boy instead of a girl.

Nevin Hewney was sleeping with his head on a table in the tavern’s main room. Finn Teodoros, in somewhat better condition beside him, still did not recognize her for a long moment, even after she whispered his name.

He leaned back as if to see her whole, then leaned forward again. “Young Tim… I mean Prin—”

Briony smacked her hand over his mouth so sharply that a less drunken man would have cried out in pain. “Don’t say it! Is the company all here? ”

“I sink tho… I mean, I think so. Big Dowan has gone to bed hours ago. I believe I saw Makewell chatting up a local merchant ...” He goggled at her again, as if not sure he wasn’t dreaming. “What are you doing here? And dressed… like that?”

“I’m not going to talk about it here. Round up Hewney and meet me in your room.”

“Feival?” Teodoros went pale. “Is this true?”

“True? Do you think I would lie? He betrayed me!”

“I’m sorry, Highness, I just wouldn’t have… that is… by the Trickster, who could have guessed?”

“Any of us, if we’d had any sense.” Nevin Hewney sat up, dripping. He had been dousing his head in a basin of water. “Always had a taste for the better things, our Feival. I said he’d leave us someday for a rich man… or even a rich woman. Well, he found one. And he doesn’t even have to swive her.”

“Hewney!” said Teodoros, shocked. “Not in front of the princess.”

Briony rolled her eyes. “None of it is new to me, Finn, just because I went back to being a princess—only my clothes changed.” She laughed sourly. “And look! I’m back in my old clothes again.”

The fat playwright looked miserable. “What will you do now, Highness?”

“What will I do? No, it is what we will do—and what we’ll do is leave tonight. Feival has named you all as my spies—said it in front of the king of Syan himself. There may be soldiers on the way here already.”

Hewney grunted. “That little whoreson!”

Finn blinked. “The king’s men?”

“Yes, you great fool, and be grateful I thought of coming to you. This way, at least you have a chance to escape. We’ll make for Southmarch.”

“But how? We have no money, no supplies… How will we get out the gates?”

“That remains to be seen.” She took the last of the gold Eneas had loaned her from her pocket—a shiny dolphin—and tossed it to Teodoros, who for all his consternation caught it smoothly. “Take it and get on with things. I’ll wait here while you round up the others. Are they close?”

Finn looked around. “Most of them. Estir’s out somewhere. And tall Dowan went out, too. Bathed and shaved.” He goggled. “I think he might have a woman!”

“I don’t care, Finn, but we need them all back, and quickly.”

“Me, I’m going to get a jug of wine to take with us,” announced Nevin Hewney. “If I’m to die, may the gods forbid it’s sober.”

Finn Teodoros also stood. “May the gods watch over us all,” he said. “It seems the life of a princess is never dull, and almost always dangerous. For once I am glad my veins run thick with peasant blood.”

30. Light atthe Bottom of the Stairs

Even the open sky felt dangerous, but people were gathering again in the little square in front of the Throne hall, setting up stalls, haggling over what someone had discovered in their root cellar or the morning’s meager catch of small fish from the unguarded East Lagoon. Like everyone else, Matt Tinwright kept looking fearfully over his shoulder, but although the massive black trunks of the Twilight People’s thorn bridge still bent above the castle’s outer walls, the immense, bristling shadows throwing much of Market Square into darkness, the fairy folk themselves had truly left the outer keep.

Not left for good, though, Tinwright feared: from atop the walls they could still be seen through the smoke and mist, moving around in their camp on the mainland as though the slaughter of the last few days had never happened.

Nobody trusted this sudden peace because the retreat itself made no sense. The creatures had entirely overrun the castle’s walls, a swarm of horrors like demons out of a temple fresco; despite the best efforts of Avin Brone, Durstin Crowel, and even Hendon Tolly himself, the fairies had utterly routed the humans from the outer keep. Much of Market Square and the great Trigonate temple had been burned—parts of the neighborhood just southwest of the gate wall were still smoldering. The streets of the inner keep were now clogged with human wreckage, those without homes huddling against the walls in tents made from scraps of cloth, untreated wounded lying everywhere, so that it looked as though some great flood had crashed through the Raven Gate and broken against the throne hall, scattering flotsam on all sides. Tinwright had seen sights already this morning that would haunt his sleep for years—children still black with burns, beyond help but still pitifully crying, whole families ill or starving, slumped in a fevered pile outside shuttered houses, warmth and help only a few uncrossable yards away.

But then yesterday, after all this destruction, after bringing such horror to so many, the Twilight People had simply stopped their siege of the inner keep as though hearing a silent call and had begun an orderly retreat. They took nothing, not prisoners, not gold—the ruined but otherwise untouched Trigonate temple was now surrounded by Hendon Tolly’s men to keep out looters—and disappeared back into the mist as though the entire siege had been nothing more than a murderously bad dream.

But whatever the reason, Matt Tinwright, like his fellow Southmarch citizens, had been given some breathing space—he could not afford to spend it wondering about the fairies and their incomprehensible motives. He had a family to provide for now, of sorts: Elan and his mother were staying with Puzzle’s niece in Templeyard, a relatively quiet neighborhood in the southwestern part of the keep, but the pantries were bare and, in a household of women, the task of going out into the city for food had of course fallen to Tinwright. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to do the marketing, but even the narrow streets of Templeyard were so full of refugees he feared to send any of the women out on their own. He was also terrified that his mother, full of self-righteous prattle as always, might say something in public that would give away who the girl she was caring for truly was.

So, as seemed to be his lot these days, he had been left with two bad alternatives, sending his mother out for food or going himself, and had chosen the one that seemed least dangerous.

It was strange, Tinwright thought as he made his way through the unsettled crowds, stepping over the helpless and trying to harden his heart against the pleading of injured men or mothers with hungry children. The soldiers who only a scant day earlier had been fighting on the walls against creatures out of legend were now forced to break up scuffles between hungry Southmarch folk. Just in front of him now two men were wrestling in the mud over a scrawny marrow grown in someone’s window box. For a moment he considered making it the subject of a poem—how different from the usual matters!—but Matt Tinwright was serving so many masters that he had no time even to think these days, let alone write. Still, it was an interesting idea—a poem about people fighting over a vegetable. It certainly said more about the times he lived in than a love poem written for a courtier on the subject of a young woman’s white throat.

He was on his way back from Market Square with a slightly moldy heel of bread rolled in his cloak beside a small onion and his most exciting find, a length of dried eel that had taken most of his shopping money. The eel stews his mother had made were one of the few happy memories of his childhood. Anamesiya Tinwright had only bought eels on the days the boats came back with too many and the prices were low, so the meal had been a treat that would bring both Matt and his father to the table early, hands and faces washed, mouths watering in anticipation.

I should see if I can find some Marashi pepper pods somewhere in this wreckage of a city… he was thinking when he abruptly found himself face to face with Okros, the royal physician, who had just stepped out of the doorway of a chicken butcher’s yard.

“Oh! Good day, my lord,” said Tinwright, startled, his heart suddenly drumming. Does he know I know him? Have we ever actually spoken, or have I only spied on him?

Okros himself looked, if anything, more startled than the poet. He had something under his cloak—something alive, it quickly became clear. Even as the smaller man tried to step past Tinwright, a bright, desperate eye and yellow beak popped out where Okros was trying to hold the garment closed at his neck. It was a rooster, and quite a handsome one from its brief appearance, with a red comb and shiny black feathers.

Okros barely glanced at Tinwright, as if it might hurt to look someone directly in the eye. “Yes, yes,” he said, “good day.” A moment later he was gone, hurrying back toward the castle as though possessing a chicken might be a crime against the throne.

Perhaps he is afraid of being robbed, Tinwright thought. Some people here would kill for a smaller meal than that. But the whole encounter seemed strange. Surely there were more birds to be found in the castle residence than down here in the ruins of the outer keep—and why should the physician seem so furtive?

As he made his way back up the hill toward the Inner Keep a memory floated just beyond Tinwright’s reach—something from a book he had read, one of his father’s…

The love of reading might have been the only gift the old man had given him, he sometimes thought, but it had been a good one: a nearly endless supply of books, mostly borrowed (or perhaps stolen, Matt Tinwright suddenly thought now) from the houses where Kearn Tinwright had been a tutor—Clemon, Phelsas, all the classics, as well as lighter fare like the poetry of Vanderin Uegenios and the plays of the Hierosoline and Syannese masters. Reading Vanderin had inspired young Matt with visions of a courtly life, a career of being admired by fine ladies and rewarded with gold by fine gentlemen. Strange that he should finally be living that life and yet be so cursedly miserable…

The thing that had been tickling his memory came to him suddenly—some lines from Meno Strivolis, the Syannese master poet of two centuries earlier:

That was all—just a morsel from Meno about Vais, the infamous witch-queen of Krace, a few lines which spoke of a black cockerel like the one the physician had been hiding. Nothing else to it—but it was odd that Okros should come so far just to buy poultry. Better and fatter birds could be found in the residence henyard, surely…

But perhaps not birds of that particular color, Tinwright thought suddenly. More of the poem had come to him:

The fear that had seized him when he bumped into Okros came back to him threefold, so that for a moment Matt Tinwright couldn’t walk straight and had to stop in the middle of the narrow street. People shoved past him with angry words, but he barely heard them.

Could that be the reason? Had Okros walked all the way down from the safety of the residence to the outer keep because he needed a rooster of just the right color for some kind of ritual? Did it have something to do with the mirror Brone wanted to know about?

Full of confused, fearful thoughts, but also afire with excitement that felt a bit like a fever, Matt Tinwright hurried back across the crowded, brawling inner keep.

His mother was predictably furious. “What do you mean you are going out again? I need wood for the fire! It is all well for you to come in here like some petty lordling, calling for eel stew, demanding that I break my back cooking. What devilry are you up to?”

“Thank you, Mother, and a good day to you, too. But I am not going out quite yet.” He bent his head so he could go up the narrow stairwell without dashing out his brains.

Elan was sitting up in the large bed she was sharing with Puzzle’s grand-nieces, working at a bit of embroidery. He was glad to see her stronger, but she still had the haunted look he had hoped to see banished from her face forever.

“My lady, are you alone?”

She smiled grimly. “As you see. The girls are visiting the neighbors’, trying to cozen an extra blanket—their mother and yours are now sleeping on the couch downstairs, if you remember.”

He did. The whispered struggles of the two older women crammed together on the narrow couch like two bad-tempered skeletons in a single coffin were the reason he was back sleeping with Puzzle in the crowded royal residence, unsatisfying as that was. “I saw Brother Okros in the market place. Do you know anything of him?”

Elan gave him a strange look. “What do you mean? I know he is Hendon’s physician. I know he is full of odd ideas ...”

“Like what?”

“About the gods, I think. I never paid much attention when he was at table with us. He would talk on and on about alchemy and the holy oracles. Some of it seemed blasphemous to me ...” She curled her lip. “But blasphemy never bothered Hendon.”

“Does he… have you ever heard that he is a magic-worker?”

Elan shook her head. “No, but as I said, I scarcely know him. He and Hendon would often talk late at night, at strange hours, as if Okros were working at some important task for him that could not wait. Hendon once had a man beaten almost to death for interrupting him during an afternoon nap but he never lost his temper with Okros.”

“What did they talk about?”

Elan’s expression had become something painful to see, and Tinwright suddenly realized he was making her think about things she did not wish to remember. “I… I cannot remember,” she said at last. “They never spoke for long in front of me. Hendon would take him to another part of the residence. But I heard the physician say once that… what was it, it was so strange! Oh, yes, he told Hendon, ‘The perfection has begun to change—it is telling a different truth now.’ I could make no sense of it.”

Tinwright frowned, thinking. “Could it have been ‘reflection,’ not ‘perfection’?”

Elan shrugged. He could see the darkness in her eyes and wished he could have spared her this. “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “I could not hear them well.”

The reflection has begun to change, he thought. It is telling a different truth now. It made a sort of disturbing sense if they had been talking about the mirror Brone had mentioned. And Elan had mentioned the gods. Meno’s poem spoke of a heartless queen sacrificing a black cockerel to Kernios so she could curse her enemies. Was that what Okros planned to do? That would be no ordinary sacrifice, but some kind of witchcraft instead.

He had to tell Avin Brone. Then, duty discharged, Matt Tinwright could return to the somewhat flea-ridden bosom of his family and enjoy a well-earned bowl of eel stew.

Brone motioned to a spotty young man who was leaning against a threadbare tapestry, cutting his nails with a gleaming knife—Tinwright thought he was probably one of the count’s relatives from Landsend. “Bring me some wine, boy.” He turned back to Tinwright. “Very well. Here are some coppers for your new information, poet. Now find Okros again—he is probably in the herb garden this time of day, especially with so many wounded in need of physic. Follow him wherever he goes, but do not give yourself away.”

Matt Tinwright could only sit and stare, open-mouthed. “What?” he said at last, barely able to get the word out of his mouth. “What?”

“Don’t gawp at me, you knock-kneed pillock,” Brone growled. “You heard me. Follow him! See what he’s up to! See if he leads you to the mirror!”

“Are you mad? He’s a witch! He’s going to cast a spell on someone, or… or try to raise demons! If you want him followed so much do it yourself, or send that pimpled lad.”

Brone leaned forward across the writing desk on his lap, his doubleted belly spreading until it almost knocked over the inkwell. “Have you forgotten that I have your tiny little poet’s jewels cupped in my hand? And that I can have them snipped off any time I wish?”

Tinwright did his best not to appear terrified. “I don’t care. What are you going to do, report me to Hendon Tolly? I’ll just tell him that you’re spying on him. Your jewels will end up on a knacker’s table next to mine, Lord Brone. Then he’ll kill us both—but at least I’ll still have my soul. I won’t be carried off by demons!”

Brone stared at him hard for a long time, his mouth working in his bushy beard, which was now mostly gray. At last, something like a smile appeared in the hairy depths. “You’ve found a bit of courage after all, Tinwright. That’s good, I suppose—no man should remain an unmitigated coward all his life, even a wastrel like you. So what are we to do?” Brone suddenly reached out, far faster than Tinwright would have guessed possible, and grabbed the collar of the poet’s cloak so tightly that it threatened to strangle him. “If I can’t report you to Tolly, I suppose the only thing I can do is throttle you myself.” The smile had become something much more menacing.

“Nnnh! Dnnn’t!” It was really quite painfully tight around Tinwright’s throat. The Landsend relative returned with the wine and stopped in the doorway, watching the spectacle with interest.

“If you are no use to me, poet—even worse, if you have become a threat to me—then I have little choice ...”

“Buh umm nuh uh thrt!”

“I’d like to believe that, boy. But even if you’re not a threat, you’re still no help to me, and in such hard times—such dangerous times—there’s no need for you. Now, if you were to help me by doing what I ask, well, the crabs and starfish would keep coming—you must enjoy having a little money, eh, especially these days, with everything so dear and food so rare?—and I wouldn’t need to rip your head off.”

“Ull hlp! Ull hlp!”

“Good.” Brone turned loose of his cloak and he fell backward. The Landsend youth stepped politely out of the way to allow Tinwright to collapse onto the floor where he lay gasping.

“But why me? ” he asked when he had finally struggled back onto his feet, rubbing his aching neck. “I’m a poet!”

“And not a particularly good one,” Brone said. “But what choice do I have? Limp around the residence myself? Send my idiot nephew?” He gestured at the youth, who was paring his dirty fingernails again, but lifted the knife toward Tinwright in a sort of salute. “No, I need someone who is allowed and even expected to be in the residence—someone too foolish to be feared and too useless to be suspected. That’s you.”

Matt Tinwright rubbed his aching throat. “You do me too much honor, Count Avin.”

“There you go—a little spunk. That’s good. Now go find out what’s afoot and there’ll be more in it for you—perhaps even a jar of wine from my own store, eh? How would that be?”

The idea of being able to drink himself into oblivion for a day or two was the first real inducement he’d heard to keep serving Brone, although not dying was a close second. He made a cautious bow before leaving, half worrying that his head would fall off.

“Do you know what I think, Mother?” Kayyin spoke as if in continuation of a conversation briefly interrupted, instead of after an hour or more of silence.

Yasammez did not look at him and did not reply.

“I think you are beginning to feel something for these Sunlanders.”

“Other than to hasten your death,” she said, still not looking up, “why would you say such a preposterous thing?”

“Because I think it is true.”

“Have you any purpose other than irritating me? Remind me—why haven’t I killed you?”

“Perhaps you have discovered that you love your son after all.” He smiled, amused at this conceit. “That you have feelings as base and sentimental as the Sunlanders themselves. Perhaps after all these centuries of neglect and open scorn, you have found that you desire to make things right. Could that be, Mother?”

“No.”

“Ah. I thought not. But it was entertaining to consider.” He had been pacing; now he stopped. “Do you know what is truly strange? Having lived so long in the guise of a mortal—having lived as one—I find that in some ways I have become one. For instance, I am restless in a way none of our people ever has been. If I stay too long in one place it is as though I can feel myself dying the true death. I become impatient, discontented—as though the body itself commands my mind, instead of the other way around.”

“Perhaps that explains your foolish ideas,” Yasammez said. “It is not you, but this mortal guise you have taken on, that offers this nonsense. Interesting if so, but I would still rather have silence.”

He looked at her. She still did not look at him. “Why have you withdrawn from the Sunlander castle, my lady? It was all but yours, and you have also nearly conquered the tiny resistance in the caverns beneath it. Why pull back at such a time? Are you certain you have not begun to pity the mortals?”

For the first time her voice betrayed something, a descent into a deeper chill. “Do not speak foolishness. It offends me that a child of my loins should waste the air that way.”

“So you do not pity them at all. They mean less to you than the dirt beneath your feet.” He nodded. “Why, then, should you ask me to tell them the story of Janniya and his sister? What purpose could there have been for that, unless you wanted them to feel something of our pain… of your pain, to be more precise?”

“You tread on dangerous ground, Kayyin.”

“If I were a farmer pledged to destroy the rats that ate my crops, would I take the rats aside before passing sentence and explain to them what they had done?”

“Rats do not understand their crimes.” She turned her dark eyes on him then, at last. “If you say another word about the Sunlanders I will pull your living heart from your chest.”

He bowed. “As you wish, my lady. I will walk on the seashore instead and think about the enlightening conversation we have had today.” He rose, then moved toward the door. Yasammez could not help noticing that whatever was mortal in him now, or whatever feigned it, had not entirely diminished his grace. He still walked with the insolent silkiness of his younger days. She closed her eyes again.

Only moments after he had gone out she felt another presence—Aesi’uah, her chief eremite. Aesi’uah would stand silently for hours waiting for acknowledgment, Yasammez knew, but it was pointless to make her do so: the elusive point that Lady Porcupine had been chasing through the labyrinth of her own long memory was gone.

“Has the time come?” Yasammez asked.

Her adviser’s complexion, usually the soft, warm gray of a pigeon’s breast, was noticeably pale. “I fear it is so, my lady. Even with all the eremites mingling their thought and their song, he has withdrawn beyond our reach.” She hesitated. “We thought… I thought… perhaps if you ...”

“Of course I will come.” She rose from her chair, her thoughts heavier than her thick black armor. For the first time that she could remember she felt something of the vast weight of her age, the burden of her long-stretching life. “I must say farewell.”

The eremites had taken a cave for themselves high in the hills above an empty stretch of windswept beach a short distance east of the city. Quiet and solitude were the walls of their temple, and they had picked a good place for both things: as Yasammez followed Aesi’uah up the rocky trail she could hear only wind and the distant creaking of seabirds. For a moment she was almost at peace.

Aesi’uah’s sisters and brothers—it was not always easy to tell which was which—were all gathered in the dark cavern. Even Yasammez, who could stand on a hilltop on a moonless, starless night and see what a hunting owl could see, could make out no more than the dull glitter of eyes in their dark hoods. Some of Aesi’uah’s youngest comrades, born in the years of twilight, had never seen the full light of the sun and could not have survived its bright heat.

Yasammez joined the circle. Aesi’uah sat beside her. Nobody spoke. There was no need.

In the dreamlands, in the far places where only gods and adepts could travel, Yasammez felt herself take on a familiar shape. She wore it when she traveled outside herself, both in the waking world and here. In the waking world it was as insubstantial as air, but here it was something more—a fierce thing of claws and teeth, of bright eyes and silken fur. The eremites, given courage by her presence, streamed behind her in an immaterial host like a swarm of fireflies. The Firef lower did not burn inside them as it did in her; without protection, they could only travel so far.

Aesi’uah had spoken the truth, though—the god’s presence was weaker than it had ever been, faint as the sound of a mouse walking in new grass. Worse than that, she could feel the presence of others, not the other lost gods but the lesser things that had been driven out with their masters when her father had banished them all. These hungry things smelled change on the breeze of the dreamlands and sensed that the time might come when they could return to a world that had forgotten how to resist them.

Even now, one such thing sat in the middle of the path, waiting for them. The eremites flew up in distress, circling, but Yasammez paced forward until she stood before it. It was old, she could tell that by the way it shifted and changed, its form too alien to her understanding for her eyes and thoughts to order it properly.

“You are far from your home, child,” it said to one of the oldest creatures that still walked upon the earth. “What do you seek?”

“You know what I seek, old spider,” she told it. “And you know my time is short. Let me pass.”

“You are rude to a neighbor!” it said, chuckling.

“You are no neighbor of mine.”

“Ah, but soon I might be. He is dying, you know. When he is gone, who will hold me and my kind back?”

“Silence. I want no more of your poisonous words. Let me pass or I will destroy you.”

The thing shifted, bubbled, settled again. “You have not the strength. Only one of the old powers can do that.”

“Perhaps. But even if I cannot end you, it may be that I will hurt you so badly that you will be in no condition to cross over when the time comes.”

The thing stared at her, or seemed to, because in truth it had no eyes that Yasammez could see. At last it slithered aside. “I do not choose to contest with you today, child. But the day is coming. The Artificer will be gone. Who will protect you then?”

“I could ask you the same.” But she had wasted enough time already. She passed and the eremites followed her like a cloud of tiny flames.

Yasammez moved as swiftly as she could through places where the wind howled with the voices of lost children and through others where the sky itself did not seem to fit correctly, until she came at last to the hillside where the doorway stood, a solitary rectangle crowning the grassy peak like a book standing on its end. She climbed the slope and crouched before it, curling the tail of her dream-form around her, ears laid flat against her head. The eremites hovered, uncertain.

“He can no longer be heard on this side of the door, Lady,” they told her.

“I know. But he is not gone. I would know if he were.” She sent out a call but he did not answer. In the silence that followed she could feel the winds that blew through the icy, airless places beyond the door. “Help me,” she said to those who had followed her. “Lend me your voices.”

They were a long time then, singing into the endlessness. At last, when even the inhuman patience of Yasammez had nearly gone, she felt something stir on the edges of her understanding, a faint, small murmur like the dying breath of the Flower Maiden in the stream.

“… Yessss ...”

“Is that you, Artificer? Is that you… still?”

“I am… but I am… becoming nothing…”

She wanted to say something soothing, or even to deny it altogether, but it was not the way of her blood to try to bend what was real into what was not. “Yes. You are dying.”

“It is… long awaited. But those who have waited almost… as long as I have… are readying themselves. They will… come through ...”

“We, your children, will not let them.”

“You have… you have not the power.” He grew fainter then, small and quiet as a drop of rain on a distant hilltop. “They have waited too long, the sleeping… and the unsleeping ...”

“Tell me who we must fear. Tell me and I can fight them!”

“That is not the way, Daughter… you cannot defeat strength… that way…”

“Who is it? Tell me?”

“I cannot. I am… bound. Everything I am… is all that keeps the doorway closed ...” And now she could hear the immense weariness, the longing for the end of struggle that death would finally bring. “So I am bound… to keep the secret ...”

His voice fell silent—for a time she thought it was gone forever. Then something came to her, wafting like a feather in a night wind. “The oracle speaks of berries… white and red. So it shall be. So it must be.”

Surely there was nothing left of him now. “Father?” She tried to be strong. “Father?”

“Remember the oracle and what it says,” he said, his quiet voice now slipping away into nothingness. “Remember that each light… between sunrise… and sunset ...”

“Is worth dying for at least once,” she finished, but he was gone.

When she was herself again, the Yasammez that breathed, and felt, the Yasammez that had lived each painful moment of her people’s millennial defeat, she rose and walked out of the cave. None of the eremites followed her, not even Aesi’uah, her trusted counselor. Death was in her eyes and in her heart. No living thing could have walked with her then and every one of them knew it.

This was not how Matt Tinwright would have chosen to spend his evening.

He broke apart the last small piece of bread he had brought with him and soaked up the wine in his cup. Sops, when he could have had eel stew! Still, he was lucky he’d found the wine, and he did not feel the least bit sorry for whoever had set it down. He’d been hiding on the chapel balcony from the evening bell to what must now be almost midnight, keeping an eye on the door that led to Hendon Tolly’s chambers, which was where the physician’s apprentice said Okros Dioketian had gone. What could the man be doing in Tolly’s rooms so long? More important, when he finally came back out, would he return to his own chambers so Tinwright could go and sleep? Surely Avin Brone didn’t expect him to follow Okros into his bedchamber… !

He heard the creak of the door opening before he saw the movement. Tinwright crouched lower, his eyes just above the balcony rail, even though he was a stone’s throw away and hidden by the shadowed overhang of the small chapel.

As he had prayed, Brother Okros came out of the door, his slight frame and bald head instantly recognizable despite his voluminous robes, but to Tinwright’s surprise he was not alone: three burly men in quilted surcoats bearing the Tollys’ silver boar and spears walked behind the physician, and another man in a dark, hooded cloak went beside him. Just the cloaked man’s graceful movements were enough to tell him who this was. Tinwright’s heart was pounding. Okros and Hendon Tolly, going somewhere together—he would have to follow.

He felt quite ill at the thought.

He had expected them to head for the physician’s chambers, but any hope of remaining indoors was dashed when Okros led the little procession out of one of the residence’s side doors. Tinwright did his best to remain well behind, and when he followed them out he tarried a few moments in idle conversation with the door guards, speaking of his own sleeplessness and the need for some cool night air to cure it.

Cool night air, indeed, he thought as he hurried across the side garden, trying to find his quarry again by the light of the torches they had brought from the residence. In fact, it was bloody freezing. All he had was his woolen cloak over a thin shirt—no hat, no gloves, and not even a torch to keep himself from stumbling. Curse Brone and his wretched, bullying ways!

He found them again crossing the muddy main road that led to the armory and the guard barracks and began to follow them at a distance. One of the guards was carrying a large bundle wrapped in cloth, and another gingerly held a smaller package—could it be the cockerel? But why would they be carrying the rooster around at this time of the night, unless they planned to use it in some kind of sorcerous ritual? Tinwright felt his blood grow even colder than the night air had already made it.

A moment later, as the group of men turned away from the main road that led to the Throne hall and instead walked down a winding path beside the royal family’s chapel, the poet’s blood grew even chillier. Tolly and Okros were headed toward the graveyard.

It took everything he had to keep following. Tinwright had a horror of cemeteries and the overgrown temple-yard was one of the most fearful, with its strange old statues and its mausoleums like prisons for the restless dead. His fear of Avin Brone alone kept him moving—his fear, and a certain curiosity as well. What did Okros plan? Did he mean to invoke the gods here in this lonely place, at this haunted hour? But why?

The men stopped outside the door of the Eddon family crypt and Tinwright had to suppress a groan of horror. Hendon Tolly had a key around his neck. When the crypt door was open four of the men went down the stairs, leaving a single guard to stand sentry outside. The light of the torches dimmed as they disappeared below, but their sheen still glimmered in the doorway. Tinwright felt very glad that he was not in that house of death with them, watching the shadows jump and crawl along the walls.

The sentry, who at first stood erect and alert at the entrance to the tomb, after a while began to slump a little, and at last leaned back against the carved face of the tomb and propped his spear against the wall. Tinwright (who would never have imagined himself so bold) decided this would be a good time to creep closer and perhaps hear something of what was being said inside. Surely that would be worth a few extra starfish from Brone—maybe even a silver queen or two!

He moved in a wide semicircle beyond the torchglow spilling from the door of the crypt until he had almost reached the wall of the chapel. Tinwright could see the sentry’s back, and the man’s slack posture emboldened him to creep forward until he was only a few paces from the doorway. He crouched behind a monument that had been half-immured in ivy creeping down from the temple wall.

“… But not that way,” someone in the crypt was saying, the words thin but clearly audible—Tinwright thought it was Okros. “It is not the sacrifice here that matters, but the sacrifice there.”

“You are tiring me,” said another voice—one that Tinwright knew all too well. Suddenly his moment of foolish optimism was over. What was a poet doing here in the middle of the night, playing at being a spy? If Hendon Tolly caught him he would be flayed alive! Only the fear of making noise and alerting the sentry kept Matt Tinwright from turning and bolting back to the residence. He was shaking so badly now he could barely keep his balance where he crouched. “And boring me,” Tolly continued. “It is not my best mood, leech. I suggest you do something to make me interested again.”

“I… I am trying, my lord,” said Okros, plainly anxious. “It is just… we must… I must be cautious. These are great powers!”

“Yes, but at this moment I am the greatest power you know. Go ahead. Complete the sacrifice however you see fit—but complete it. We must find the location of the Godstone or we will have no hope of making the power serve us. If we fail this gamble, Okros, I will not suffer alone, I promise you ...”

“Please, my lord, please! See, I am doing as you ask ...”

“You are only poking, you fool. Have I promised you inconceivable riches just to see you poking at a reflection? Reach in, man! Make it happen!”

“Of course, my lord. But it is not so… so easy ...”

And then, even as the physician’s voice grew softer and Tinwright leaned forward to hear him better, a sudden shriek split the darkness, rising so swiftly and so terribly that it did not sound as if it could come from a human throat, then dropping just as quickly into a choking, gurgling noise for the length of a rabbiting heartbeat or two before it vanished beneath the sound of men scuffing and clattering up the stone stairs as they fled the tomb.

The first one out of the crypt was a guard who fell to his knees at the top of the stairs and began to vomit. The second ran past him, holding his own mouth with one hand and waving a torch in the other. The first got up, still spitting, and began to follow him across the temple-yard, the two of them running in awkward zigzags between the monuments.

The tall, hooded shape of Hendon Tolly appeared in the door of the crypt, the large cloth bundle in his arms. “Go back to the residence,” he told the sentry, who stood now gaping.

“But ... my lord ...”

“Shut your mouth, fool, and get moving. Follow that idiot with the torch. We dare not be caught here. Too much to explain.”

“But… the physician… ?”

“If I must tell you again to be silent I will quiet you for good and all with a slit throat. Go! ”

Within moments they had vanished into darkness, leaving Tinwright gasping and trembling, alone in the shadowed cemetery. The door to the tomb still gaped. Light still flickered there.

Matt Tinwright did not want to go down those stairs—no man with his right thoughts would do such a thing. But what had happened? Why was the torch still burning there in the depths, despite the silence? At the very least, he should go and pick it up—he did not want to cross the cemetery again without light.

Tinwright would never after be able to explain why he did what he did. It could not have been bravery: the poet was the first to admit he was not a brave man. And it was not ordinary curiosity—no mere curiosity could have overcome that terror—although it was something like it. The only way he could explain it was that somehow he had to know. At that moment, in the dark temple-yard, he felt sure that nothing would be more terrifying than to wonder ever afterward what had happened down there.

He put his foot on the first step and paused, listening. The light in the doorway below him was little more than a smear of yellow. Matt Tinwright went carefully and silently down the dark stairs until he reached the bottom. He could see the niches on either side, like dark honeycombs, and the torch lying on the stone floor. That was all he needed, really, he suddenly decided—let wondering be cursed. The burning brand was only a few steps away. He could crawl to it while staying close to the floor so he would not have to look at any of the empty stone faces atop the sarcophagi…

He saw Okros just as his fingers wrapped around the torch handle. The physician was just to one side, sprawled on his back with legs spread and left arm outflung, a piece of parchment still clutched in his hand. His eyes were impossibly wide and his mouth stretched in a silent scream, the face of a man so terrified that his heart had burst within the walls of his chest. But what was most frightening of all was his right arm—or, rather, the right arm he no longer had: all that remained was a short, shiny length of bone jutting from Okros’ shoulder like a broken flute, the flesh peeled back all the way to his neck, showing the red muscle beneath. Nothing else was left from his right shoulder down except little strings and wisps of flesh, like the torn threads of hemp that remained after a rope snapped.

Worst of all, there was no sign of pooling blood in that entire wreckage of flesh and bone—not a single red drop, as though whatever had torn his limb away had also sucked his flesh dry.

Tinwright was still on his hands and knees, heaving out the contents of his stomach, when he felt something cold and sharp against the back of his neck.

“Look, now,” a voice said, echoing against the walls of the crypt. “I come back for a scrap of parchment and find a spy. Stand up and let me have a look at you. Wipe the vomit from your chin first, there’s a good fellow.”

Tinwright climbed to his feet and turned around as slowly as he could. The cold, sharp thing traced its way up from his neck, bent his ear in passing, slicing the skin so that it was all he could do not to cry out, then was dragged ungently along his cheek until it stopped just below his eye.

By a trick of the light the blade of the sword was invisible: it seemed as though Hendon Tolly held him prisoner with a length of shadow. The Lord Protector looked feverish, his eyes bright, his skin glittering with sweat.

“Ah, my little poet!” Tolly grinned, but it did not look at all right. “And who is your true master, then? Princess Briony, pulling your puppet strings all the way from Tessis? Or is it someone closer—Avin Brone, perhaps?” For a moment, the sword threatened to slip higher. “It matters not. You are mine now, young Tinwright. Because, as you can see, I have lost one of my most important liegemen tonight and there is much still to be done—oh, much and much. I need a man who can read, you see.” He gestured toward the one-armed remains of Okros Dioketian. “Of course, I cannot promise the job is without dangers—but nothing half so dangerous as refusing me. Aye, poet?”

Tinwright had to nod very carefully with the sword blade so close to his eye. He felt numbed, helpless, like a trapped fly watching the spider step slowly down the web.

“Then take that parchment from Okros,” Tolly said. “Yes, pick it up. Now walk out ahead of me. Fortunate poet! You will sleep at the foot of my bed tonight—and every night from now on. Oh, the things you will see and learn!” He laughed; the sound was as bad as the sight of his smile had been. “A short time in my employ and you will never again mistake your empty, sickly sweet notions for truth.”

31. A Single Length of String

Barrick had only an instant to draw his sword before the first of the skrikers was upon him. It came out of the darklight as if carried on the wind, pale robe flapping, ragged arms stretching wide. When he slashed at it his blade tore through cloth that seemed no sturdier than a rotting shroud. The pitch of its song changed but the eerie crooning did not stop as he jabbed at it again and again. He could not damage it—his sword touched nothing that felt like a body. Were these Lonely Ones nothing but billowing robes? Were they ghosts?

He was almost too frightened to think. The silkins had at least been real creatures, whatever they were made of—he could cut them and burn them. But he could not cut these skrikers and he had no fire.

Again and again the thing swept toward him and then whirled away, its rhythmic song winding in counterpoint around a fainter tune—so where, he suddenly wondered, was the second skriker? Barrick spun just as another undulating shape closed on him from behind. He could hear Shaso’s voice shouting in his head as clearly as if the old man stood beside him: “Don’t let them fix you in place! Keep moving!”

As he skipped away from this new attack, desperate not to get caught between two enemies, the first skriker suddenly produced something like a horsewhip, although it looked as though it was made of nothing more substantial than mist and cobweb. When it snapped the whip at him he jumped back, but the lash grazed his calf in an icy swipe of pain.

Now the two skrikers began to circle, trying to catch him between them again. Terror had a grip on him now, getting stronger by the moment: the second creature had also produced one of the strange lashes, and their song rose again, this time with a hurrying tone of triumph. What were these things made of? Why could he see nothing of them but their eyes, like spots of blood on the pale rags of their faces? They had to be more than air—but what were they?

As if it meant to answer his question, one of the skrikers lunged at him and for a moment its hood rippled open to reveal a nightmare face, bloodlessly white but for crimson bruises around the red eyes and a mouth like an empty hole—a female face without humanity or kindness, stretched into a shrieking mask.

That horrifying moment was almost fatal: as Barrick stood transfixed, the other creature caught him with the tip of its lash in the middle of his back. Pain crashed through him like a thunderbolt and dropped him to his knees. His sword clattered away, he didn’t know where—the agony had all but blinded him. As he desperately sought the strength to stand the first of the skrikers slid toward him, raising its weapon. Instead of retreating toward the other creature Barrick threw himself forward and grabbed his attacker where its legs should have been. There was nothing there, or almost nothing—he felt rags and dampness and a crunching, brittle resistance like icy branches. Cold spread rapidly through Barrick’s arms and within a moment he could feel the chill crawling into his chest, freezing his heart; it was all he could do to pull his arms free and roll to the side. As his fingers closed on his sword the things swept in on him, piping like excited jays, their song clotted with rapid clicking and slurring that might have been words.

Howling with disgust and fear, Barrick slashed and slashed with his sword, forcing the skrikers back a little way so he could climb to his feet, but his legs were so weak he could barely stand. He swayed, gasping for breath, unable even to keep the blade of his sword level. The situation was hopeless but he was determined to sell his life as dearly as he could.

Then, as the two things closed on him, eyes narrowed to bloody pinpoints and inhuman voices skirling in cold joy, something black whirled through the air and struck the nearest of the skrikers in the back. For a moment Barrick thought it was Skurn trying to help, but then the creature that had been hit straightened up and let out a weird hoooo of pain or surprise and Barrick saw that small black waves were lapping at its robes—black flames.

The second skriker had frozen in surprise, as if they were not used to being resisted. Barrick leaped forward and grabbed at it with both hands. Despite its seeming fragility it resisted him with surprising strength, but before it pulled free he was able to force it back just far enough to bring it into contact with its hooting, flapping companion. A moment later a blaze of shadow ran up its sleeves and onto its hood.

The first skriker was completely engulfed in dark flames, not singing any more, its voice a discordant, almost inaudible shriek. The waves of cold that came from it were too painful for Barrick to approach so he turned to the second one and waded into the chill, slashing away with his sword over and over until he felt the cloth ripping beneath his blows, great shreds of it coming away and tangling his blade. Now his foe was covered in black flames as well, its wordless voice shrilling louder and louder in what sounded much like fear, until it abruptly lost shape and fell away before him. For a moment Barrick grasped at several dark tendrils of something as slick and runny as melting suet, then the blackness flowed away into the ground and was gone and he held only empty, rotting robes that fell apart and ran through his fingers as dust.

He turned in time to see the other skriker thrashing for an instant in a haze of flickering, leaping darkness, then it fell in on itself with a huge pop and fizzle of ice-cold sparks and was gone, leaving nothing but a smoldering pile of clothes that dwindled away in a last flutter of shadow. But for the charred stump of its handle, the torch itself had entirely burned away.

For long moments Barrick could only stare, unsure of what had happened, dazed and aching. Then Raemon Beck stepped toward him out of the shadows of the trees, looking almost shamefaced.

“I… I went and got one of the darklights. I threw it.”

Barrick let out his breath and sat down heavily. “You most certainly did.”

He would have liked nothing better at that moment than to curl up and sleep, but it seemed unlikely they could burn away two of the city’s guardians without anyone noticing. In truth, he realized, they might only have moments before more of the hideous things came. Groaning, Barrick struggled back onto his feet and led the reluctant Beck toward the massive stone wall and whatever lay beyond it.

They made their way cautiously through the wild tangle, following the wall until they found an arched gateway. The gate itself lay on the ground in lengths of rotted timber salted with bits of rusted metal: there was nothing to keep them out.

To Barrick’s surprise, the courtyard beyond the gate was nothing but an overgrown field of grass like a sward around a manor house, although this greenery had not known the teeth of any grazing animals for some time—it was almost knee high, dotted with wild shrubs and netted with black creepers like veins beneath a man’s skin. At the far end of this courtyard stood a wall with another archway and another collapsed gate.

“Let me go first and see what’s here,” Barrick said.

He had taken a few steps across the greensward when something grabbed at his ankles. He cursed and yanked his boot free, but when he put it down something clutched him again. The grass itself was twining around him, its blades probing the air like the lightning tongues of serpents, wrapping him in long stalks that continued to twist and climb up his legs.

“Stay back!” he called to Beck. “The grass—it lives!”

He hacked desperately at the stems, but for all the damage Qu’arus’ sword did to them it might have been made of parchment. Some strands of grass now reached up to snatch at his hand as if it were trying to pull the weapon from his grasp. Behind him he could hear Beck shouting but could not make out what the man was saying.

The grass blades that had curled around his legs began to tug him downward, contracting like strips of drying animal hide. Barrick knew that if they pulled him to the sward he would never get up again. He was still slashing but still accomplishing nothing—a few of the strands parted, but for every one he cut two more seized him.

Then, just at his moment of greatest despair, an idea came to him.

Barrick shucked off the gray cloak he had appropriated and threw it out full length on the grass before him, then fell onto it, twisting as he did so, to land on his back in the middle of the garment. He could feel the grass squirming like clutching fingers beneath the cloth but the strands could not reach him through the heavy wool, which was pressed down by the weight of his body. Momentarily protected, he began to saw away at the grass imprisoning his feet. Hard, breathless work finally released him. For several moments he could only lie panting like a shipwrecked sailor, his cloak a raft on an angry green sea; then, when he had a little of his strength back, Barrick began to crawl like a caterpillar across the length of the lawn. He moved the cloak with him, always keeping the heavy garment between him and the predatory grass. When he reached the far end and clambered off into the archway he took a swift look through it to make sure nothing else lay in wait for him there, then turned and threw the wadded cloak back to Beck. The cloak trick learned, Beck took less time to cross the greensward than Barrick had.

At last they huddled side by side in the archway, looking into the next courtyard. It was full of low-lying mist, but when Barrick looked closer he saw that the mist floated above a shallow pool of water that filled the courtyard as the other had been filled by grass.

“You will not try to walk through it, will you, my lord? ” asked Beck.

Barrick shook his head. “I don’t know what else we can do. But you don’t have to come—I told you that.”

The other man groaned. “What, turn back? After helping murder two of the Lonely Ones?”

“Ah, yes. That was clever,” Barrick said as he threw his cloak back over his shoulders. “Burning them with their own darklight torch.”

“No ‘clever’ about it, sire. I ran to grab something to fight with. The darklight was the first thing I saw.”

For a moment Barrick almost felt warmth toward the man, even something like kinship, but that was a weakness he could no longer afford. He turned to examine the waiting pool.

The mist curled lazily above the water, but now he could see that it hid a row of cracked, ancient stones that rose just above the surface and led toward yet another arched gate at the far end. It was plain that they were stepping stones, but just as plain to Barrick that even so, crossing would likely not be as easy as it looked. He stepped out onto the first stone and waited an anxious moment for something to happen. When nothing did, he stepped to the next, sword gripped tight in his hand, eyes roving across the water for whatever fearsome creature might strike at him from the deceptively placid shallows. Still no menace emerged, so Barrick stepped forward again and Raemon Beck slowly followed him.

It was only as he reached the halfway point, beginning to hope that whatever might have once inhabited the pool was gone, that Barrick began to feel a weakness in his lower body, as though his legs were grain sacks and something had gnawed a hole in them. When he looked down he saw that the thin mist above the pool had thickened around his ankles and calves, foggy tendrils moving in a way that seemed to have little to do with any air currents he could feel. As he stared, and as the feeling of weakness began to spread, he thought he could see shapes in the mist, grotesquely deformed faces and clutching fingers. Everywhere the mists touched him he was getting cold. He took another step but his legs had grown so weak that he tottered and almost fell. He looked back helplessly at Beck, who was swaying under the same attack.

“Hurts… !” Beck moaned. “Cold… !”

“Don’t fall!” Barrick was fighting to keep his balance; if he went into the water he knew he would not come out again, that the mist-faces would bleed his strength away.

That’s it—they are bleeding us empty, like leeches…

The cold patches on his skin were spreading. His clothing did not seem to protect him from the heat-eaters at all, as if fever chills crawled through him—but these were on the outside, working their way in…

Warmer on the inside, he thought blearily. We’re all warmer on the inside. They want warmth…

The idea was a mad one, but he knew he had only moments to do something. He lifted his left hand and slashed at it with Qu’arus’ short sword. He barely felt the blade cut, as though he had plunged the arm in snow first, but blood welled in the crease of his palm and began to drip down his wrist. Barrick stretched out his arm, struggling to stay upright, and let the blood drizzle into the water.

Immediately the mists began to swirl faster, circling around the place where his blood was spreading pinkly through the water. The fog above the pool thickened, then it too began to turn a subtle rosy shade, like low clouds refracting the coming dawn.

“Move!” Barrick cried, but his voice was so weak he found it hard to believe that Beck could even hear him. He let more blood drip, then took a staggering step to the next flat stone. The mists swirled for a moment around the blood before moving toward him again. Barrick shook out more blood, but already the flow from his palm was beginning to slow. He cut himself in a different spot and let it drip into the water. Even the mist clinging to Raemon Beck’s legs seemed to grow thinner as some of it wafted to the spot where Barrick’s blood stained the water. Beck’s first step was like a man waist-deep in mud, but the second came a little easier; after a few moments they were both lurching forward across the stepping stones toward the safety of the courtyard’s far end.

By the time they collapsed into the archway, wheezing and shivering, Barrick had cut his arm in three more places. His entire arm and hand below his elbow were streaked and smeared with red, the few patches of clean skin as startling as eyes in a dark forest.

When Beck had caught his breath he tore off the ends of his tattered sleeves and began to wrap them around Barrick’s wounds. The bandages he made were not the cleanest, but they stanched the blood well enough.

Barrick peered unhappily across the next courtyard. This one seemed even more innocuous than the others, a featureless stone close with steps at the far end leading up to what looked like a simple, closed door—but he knew better. “What’s waiting for us this time, do you think,” he asked sourly, “—a nest of adders?”

“You will defeat it, Highness, whatever it is.” Something in Raemon Beck’s tone made Barrick turn to look at him. Was that admiration he was seeing? Someone admiring the infamous cripple, Barrick Eddon? Or had the day’s terrors simply injured the man’s mind?

“I don’t want to defeat it.” Barrick could see Skurn circling high above their heads, far away from bewitched grasses and blood-drinking mists. One of them had some sense, anyway. “I want someone to come with a battering ram and knock it all down. I’m weary of all this.”

Raemon Beck shook his head. “We must go forward. More skrikers will come to avenge their sisters and we will not surprise them the same way again.”

“Sisters?” It made him feel ill. “They truly are women?”

“Not human women,” Beck said grimly. “She-demons, maybe.”

“Forward, then, as you say.” Barrick knew there was a certain inevitability to what was happening: of course he couldn’t go backward, anymore than he could go backward through life to repair the mistakes already made. He got to his feet, groaning. The numbness of the biting mist had worn off and he ached all over. What would the people of Southmarch think of their wretch of a prince if they saw him now?

Here I stand, he told himself, the Prince of Nothing. No subjects, no soldiers, no family, no friends.

Skurn dropped from the sky and fluttered down onto the paving stones on the far side of the archway. As the raven strutted back and forth only a few paces away, Barrick half expected something to reach up from between the stones and throttle the black bird, but either the lurking danger did not care about ravens or it was something more subtle.

“Happy now?” Skurn demanded. “Can’t help wondering, us.”

“Shut your snailhole, bird. I had to come to this wretched city. Now I have to do this as well. Nobody forced you to come along.”

“Oh, aye, cast us out, ’course. All us did was warn you. Fair payment.”

“Look, instead of scolding me like an old woman, tell me if you’ve seen anything. What’s beyond this next courtyard?”

The raven eyed him. “Naught.”

“Truly? Then what’s on the other side of that door?”

Skurn squinted across the courtyard toward the ancient wooden portal, which was unmarked except for a corroded metal boss in the middle—a handle, perhaps.

“On other side? There be no other side.”

“What are you talking about?” It was all Barrick could do to keep his temper. “Once we cross that courtyard and open that door, there has to be something on the other side—a building? Another courtyard? What?”

“Naught—us told you!” The raven fluffed his feathers in irritation. “Not even door. On far side be the outside of yon big wall. Then trees and whatnot. Same as the front, like. Nothing else.”

Repeated questioning finally established that what sounded like a misunderstanding was in fact the truth: according to Skurn, who had flown over the site several times, nothing stood on the other side of that final wall with the door in it, and on the outside there was no sign that the door even existed. It was all some elaborate trick. Barrick slumped down in the archway, defeated, but Raemon Beck tugged at his arm.

“Come, Highness. Do not despair. We are nearly at the end.” The man’s patchwork clothing was now almost as badly torn and dirtied as Barrick’s own clothes, which he had been wearing for months. Barrick suddenly wondered what he must look like to someone else—what he must smell like.

Prince of Nothing, he thought again, and began to laugh. It took him so hard that for long moments he could do nothing but sit, bent double, wheezing.

“Highness, are you hurt?” Beck tugged again. “Are you ill?”

Barrick shook his head. “Help me up,” he said at last, still struggling to catch his breath. He didn’t even know why he was laughing. “You’re right. We’re nearly at the end.” It was just that he had a different idea of what the end meant than Beck did.

Once on his feet Barrick did not pause—what use in waiting any longer?—but walked out of the arch and began to make his way across the cracked and crumbling stone flags of the empty courtyard. He did his best to hold his head up and walk forward bravely, although he knew that at any moment something would reach up from below or drop on them from the sky. But to Barrick’s weary astonishment, no reaching hands clutched at him, no menaces leaped out of the shadows. He and Beck marched slowly but steadily across the stone courtyard until they stood on the steps looking up at the great gray door and its crude metal handle.

Skurn dropped onto Barrick’s shoulder, clutching nervously with his claws so that Barrick squirmed in discomfort. He reached out toward the door, expecting that any moment something would happen to stop him—a noise, a sudden movement, an agonizing pain—but nothing like that occurred. His fingers closed on the rough, corroded metal of the handle, but when he pulled the door did not budge or even quiver. It might as well have been part of the wall.

Barrick wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled harder, ignoring the pain from his bandaged palm, but the door seemed as immovable as a mountain. He put his foot against the topmost step and leaned back, using his legs as well as his arms, but he might as well have been trying to heave the entire green earth onto his shoulders. Raemon Beck then put his arms around Barrick’s waist and added his own weight and strength, but it still made no difference.

“Didst think on pushing yon great door, ’stead of just pulling?” offered Skurn.

Barrick stared at him balefully, then stepped onto the threshold and shoved as hard as he could. The door did not budge. “Happy now?” he asked the bird, then turned his back to the door and slid down until he was sitting on the threshold looking back across the gloomy, twilit courtyard, here in this place where no darklights burned.

“Pushed hard, did you?” Skurn asked.

Barrick scowled at him. “Try it yourself if you don’t think so.”

Skurn made a throaty sound of disgust. “Got no hands, does us?”

The raven’s words poked at his memory. No hands. Barrick let his head fall back against the door—it felt as solid as the side of a granite cliff—and closed his eyes, but the thought remained elusive. He was so tired that the world seemed to tilt and pitch around him and he opened his eyes. Surely he had never been so tired in his life…

“Hands,” he said abruptly. “It was something about hands.”

“What?” Raemon Beck looked toward him, but the merchant’s gaze was dull and hopeless. Barrick felt sure he was seeing an army of skrikers making their way across the courtyard of grass, then the courtyard of water…

“Listen,” Barrick said. “The Sleepers told me something about this place—Crooked’s Hall, if this is truly it. They said no mortal hand could open the door.”

Beck barely seemed to have heard him. “We have to do something, my lord. More Lonely Ones will be coming soon!”

Barrick laughed, harshly, bleakly. What use was the knowledge even if it was correct? They were all mortal here, even Skurn. If it had been “no man’s hand,” perhaps the raven could have tugged the door open with his beak. Barrick snorted at the thought. Perhaps they should ask the skrikers to help them…

“Wait. No mortal hand, they said.” He reached into his shirt and took out Gyir’s mirror, then slipped its cord from around his neck. For a moment, feeling the mirror’s substantial weight in his hand he had the strange sensation that it was a living thing he held, but he had no time for such thoughts—the idea that had just come to him was little to do with the mirror, but everything to do with the slender piece of anchor cord on which it hung.

Raemon Beck looked up from his exhausted slouch at the base of the steps. “What is that… ?”

“Don’t say anything.” Barrick leaned closer and threw the cord over the door handle, grabbing it with his hands on either side of the pouch that held the mirror. Then he pulled. Nothing happened.

Skurn flapped up into the air, circling once near Barrick’s head.

“Them gray things. I see more by the river, coming this way,” the bird announced. “Fast, like… !”

Barrick’s fingers began to tingle. A moment later, a flicker of light ran the length of the string, so faint that only the dark shadows in the doorway made it visible. Without thinking he twisted his hands, one over the other, and pulled. The door swung outward with a deep rumble and an almost inaudible screech, as if the hinges were breaking free from centuries of rust. Barrick had to step back as the heavy door slowly swung past him, and Raemon Beck half-tumbled down the steps to the courtyard stones to avoid it. Skurn flapped his wings, hovering before the opening, but then suddenly spun in the air and vanished into the blackness beyond the door-frame as abruptly as if a great wind had caught him and swept him in.

“Hoy, bird!” Barrick flung out his hand toward the emptiness inside the door, but pulled back before his fingers passed into it. It was more than shadow, it was nothingness itself, like the black gulf that had taken Captain Vansen…

He felt a wind blowing past him, pulling at his hair, his clothes… Raemon Beck only had time to tell him, “My lord, I’m afraid… !” then everything seemed to tilt up on edge and they both fell out of the world. Barrick couldn’t scream, couldn’t weep, couldn’t think, could do nothing but tumble through the blackness, the cold nothing-at-all that already seemed to go on forever…

There was only void, without sound or light, without direction, even without meaning. Time itself had deserted this emptiness, if it had ever trespassed here at all. He waited a thousand, thousand years to breathe, and then a thousand more for his heart to beat. He was alive, but he was not living. He was nowhere, forever.

An age passed. He had forgotten everything. His name had gone long ago—his memories, too—and any purpose had vanished long before that. He floated in the between like a dead leaf in a river, without volition or concern and with no motion but what was given to him. The void itself might have rushed and surged like a cataract for all he knew, but because he was in it and of it, he felt nothing. He was a grain of sand on a deserted beach. He was a cold dead star in the farthest corner of the sky. He could barely even think anymore. He was… he was…

Barrick? Barrick, where are you?

The sounds fell upon his thoughts, stunning in their complexity. They were meaningless to him, of course—clumps of noise stopping and starting, artifacts of intent that could mean nothing to a leaf, a pebble, a cold spark whose light had guttered out. But still, the feeling of it tugged at him, quickened him. What did it mean?

Barrick, where have you gone? Why won’t you speak to me? Why have you left me alone?

He thought of something then, or felt it, a mote of brilliance dancing before his eyes, a bit of light… a smear of fire. The brightness finally gave the void shape and as it did it gave him direction as well, up and down, backward, forward… The light emanated from a small, slender figure with dark eyes and darker hair—hair almost as black as the void itself but for one gleaming streak, the fiery smear that had caught his attention through the endless nullity. It was a girl.

Barrick? I need you. Where have you gone?

And then it began to come back to him, but in confused pieces, so that for a moment the black-haired girl seemed to be his sister, or maybe his betrothed. Qinnitan? He tried to call to her with all his strength. Qinnitan!

I am so lonely, she cried. Why won’t you come to me anymore? Why have you deserted me?

I’m here! But although it seemed he was almost beside her, he could not make her hear him. I’m here! Qinnitan! She might as well have been on the far side of a thick, distorting window. They were alone in the void together, but they could not touch, could not speak…

Why? she cried. Why have you forsaken me… ?

Praise the ancestors. Another voice, another thought, suddenly intruded into the emptiness. I have searched and searched. I thought you lost in the Great Between…

Qinnitan clearly did not sense this presence any more than she heard or saw Barrick. Her voice was growing fainter. Oh, Barrick, why… ?

Come, the new voice said—a male voice. He had heard it before. I will help you, child, but you must cross the gap yourself. It is late now—you must go directly through a dark time… Then he could see it, a huge, pale shape on four legs, its head a complication of slender boughs like a young tree.

No, he realized, they were antlers: what stood before him in the endless dark, burning icily bright as a distant star, so that he could barely see Qinnitan beyond it, was a great white stag.

Follow me, it said. The very words seemed to glow with a pale lavender light of their own. Follow—or have you already fallen in love with nothingness? Something seemed to seize him then, a flash of white that lifted him loose from the void and pulled him away from the dark-haired girl.

No! He fought but could not overcome it. Qinnitan, no, I’m here! I’m here!

But she still could not hear him, and he could not fight this new force. A moment later she was slipping away, retreating into greater inclarity as though she sank beneath the surface of a muddy pond; the last he saw of her was a flicker of fire in the great black. Barrick felt as though his heart had been ripped from his breast and he was leaving it behind in the void.

Now he began to spin through alternations of heat and cold and flashes of light that pained and sickened him but did not entirely disperse the darkness. He was falling, he was flying, he was… he could not tell. The flashes of light came faster, the pulses of heat more frequently. Soon came sound as well—brief wordless hisses, groans, and then roars, as if the world of life and movement were crashing in on him like ocean waves and then receding just as swiftly.

I want to go back… ! But whoever had pulled him away from the dark-haired girl was no longer speaking to him, or at least Barrick could no longer hear his voice.

Qinnitan, I’m so sorry…

And then light and sound suddenly broke in like a river overflowing its banks, a flood of sensation that hammered at his thoughts until he could not think, only absorb. Madness surrounded him.

Faces big as mountains—faces that were mountains, vomiting out rockfalls—and faces like swollen thunderheads spitting lightning. Men that were storms and women that were fiery columns. Shadows riding horses that trampled tall trees beneath their hooves. The land itself riven and turned over, gouged into fresh valleys and mountains, the sky blazing with white light or popping and crackling as it filled with falling stars. Barrick could only cringe and whimper as it all thrust in upon him.

It was a war between gods, a war of giants and monsters, the maddest, strangest war that had ever been. The warriors became animals, became spinning winds or sheets of flame as they struggled with each other before the walls of a bizarre city, a rumpled hedgehog-hide of high, spiky crystalline towers that seemed to both loom and tremble, as though the sky itself pressed down on them. One moment the city seemed taller than any mountain, the next it was dwarfed by those who fought there, by both besiegers and besieged.

A battle was raging. Birds arrowed down from the sky in thousands, attacking a woman who seemed to be made of water, but who grew until she was a fountain higher than the black towers themselves. Bursts of blinding light revealed whole armies of skeletal soldiers that became invisible again when the light died. Stones swirled like windblown leaves, a snake made of bundled lightning squeezed the top from a mountain and set it tumbling down to shatter one of the castle walls. The hole was quickly patched by a swarm of insects all made from metal, huffing steam at every crack and joint.

In the center of everything three massive figures stared down upon the gates, their shapes indistinct even in the brightest glare except for the icy, star-bright gleam of their eyes. One of them held a massive hammer forged from some dull gray metal, but the other two held spears, one spear double-pronged and green as the ocean, the other as black as a hole in the ground.

Barrick knew those three, although it terrified him to admit it, even to himself.

The middle figure raised his hammer and what seemed like a storm of bright shadows rushed forward and flung itself against the walls of the great castle, fiery shapes, glowing shapes, changing shapes, their combined radiance so great that Barrick could scarcely make out what was happening. For a moment it seemed that the city, for all its size and magnificence, must simply burn away like a dry forest in a raging firestorm. Then an even brighter light began to burn like the rising sun and the attackers fell back from the walls in disarray.

Only two shapes came forward from the besieged city, but they drove back the attackers. One was a great sphere of blazing amber light, the other a chilly, blue-white glow that somehow remained visible even beside the greater golden brilliance. The shapes of two riders sitting proud and tall atop their mounts could be seen within these two powerful lights, each rider carrying a sword; it was impossible to tell whether the glow came from the figures themselves, from the blades they carried, or from the armor they wore, but faced with the bright radiance of the two the besieging army now scattered in all directions.

The roar in Barrick’s ears became louder, so that his skull boomed and echoed as though a storm beat inside it. He could scarcely see for the blazing light. The three shapes on the hill spurred their mounts forward, rushing down the slope, the hooves of their monstrous horses not even touching the ground. They raised their weapons and the very sky seemed to crack open to bring unending darkness stabbing down at them all.

And then, suddenly, they were all gone—the fire-women, the air-men, the beautiful figures in their terrible anger, all the fighting and all the fighters ended and vanished in an instant. Only the castle itself remained, its pale, shining towers now toppled like trees after a winter storm, broken and scattered so that the pieces gleamed in the muddy ashes like droplets of molten gold on the floor of a forge.

Barrick had only seen the mad beauty that had preceded this ruination for a short moment, but as he stared at the destruction he found himself mourning what had been lost with every nerve of his being.

Then, without warning, he found himself plunging downward. The ruins of the castle were changing even as he rushed toward them: what had been gleaming gold, pale blue-green, or creamy white now grew back black and twisted, and what had been translucent became full of shadow. The castle that had been so marvelous was now only a dusty, deserted cobweb where a shining, rain-shimmering spider’s net had once hung. The beauty was gone, but in some strange way it remained.

It was the same. It was completely different. And Barrick fell into it like wind blowing down a well.

He had only a moment to realize he was lying facedown on a floor of flat, polished, and carefully interlocked black stones. He heard strange skittering noises getting closer, and then, a moment later, the whisper of soft footfalls.

He opened his eyes to a nightmare. The faces pressing down on him were bestial, with rolling, idiot eyes and gaping fanged mouths. Only the shape of their heads was vaguely human. That was the worst part.

“Ah,” said a voice behind him—a cold, unfamiliar voice. “Very good, my dear ones. You have caught a trespasser.”

32. Mysteries and Evasions

“In truth, it is not so strange at all,” saidBrother Antimony, warming to his subject. “The tongue the prisoner speaks is much like the old language of the Feldspar Grammars. You may not know this, but the Grammars were written on perfect mica sheets, each one shaped from a single crystal, and they contain stories of the Eldest Days found nowhere else ...”

Vansen cleared his throat, interrupting the enthusiastic young monk. “That’s all very well, Antimony, but we need to know what this fellow is saying now.”

He flushed so deeply that Vansen could see it even in the dim light that Funderlings loved so much. “My apologies ...”

“Just go on, son,” Cinnabar told him. “Talk to the prisoner, if you can.”

The young monk turned to the trembling, scowling drow, who clearly thought he had been brought to the refectory to be tortured. Two Funderling warders stood behind the fierce little bearded creature, ready for trouble, but Vansen wasn’t worried. He had seen many men being questioned and this one showed signs of the false, blustery courage that would collapse quickly.

“Ask him why they have attacked us here in our home,” said Vansen.

Antimony uttered a halting string of deep, throaty sounds. Some of the other Funderlings looked bemused, as though it had a familiar ring, but to Vansen it was all noise. The shaggy-bearded drow looked up at the monk, resentment in every dirty line of his face, but did not answer.

“Ask him why they follow the dark lady.” He struggled for a moment to remember the name Gyir had given her. “Ask him why the drows follow Yasammez.”

This time Antimony’s question made the drow stare in surprise. After a moment, he said something—short and clearly reluctantly given, but something.

Antimony cleared his throat. “He says that… Lady Porcupine, I think that is the name… that she will crush you. That she will have revenge against the Sunlanders. I think that is right.”

Vansen suppressed a smile. Slogans—that was what you got from prisoners who did not actually know why they had been fighting. “I’m going to step to the back of the room, Antimony,” he told the monk. “You and Cinnabar ask him some questions about why drows would take up arms against their brothers—against Funderlings.”

He gestured as if in frustration and walked away. Cinnabar leaned in and began to ask questions, Antimony carefully translating. Vansen noticed that every now and then Cinnabar recognized one of the foreign words and repeated it. Vansen could not help being impressed by the magister’s wits.

Thus he underscores the connection between them—see, drow, he is practically speaking your tongue now!

Vansen stood quietly in the background as Cinnabar continued asking questions, leaning heavily on the idea that the Funderlings were closer relatives to the drows than the Qar leaders they served, but still the prisoner would not tell them anything.

Ah, but if we have created even the smallest bit of sympathy or shame… Vansen thought. “Ask him what his name is.”

Antimony looked surprised, but asked. The drow looked shamefaced, but grunted a reply.

“Kronyuul, he says—that is ‘Browncoal’ in the old tongue, I think.”

“Good,” said Vansen, still speaking quietly so as not to draw attention to himself. “Then ask Master Coal why exactly his Lady Porcupine wants our castle. What will she do with it if she gains it? Why does she waste so many drow lives to take this castle?”

After Antimony had translated the drow stared back at him, apparently at a loss for words. At last he began to murmur. It went on for some time. The young monk leaned close to hear, then straightened up.

“He says the dark lady is angry. The king of the Qar would not let her simply slaughter us wicked folk—he calls us something like ‘sun-land-dwellers’—but forced her instead into some kind of a pact. The dark lady did her best to honor that pact, but it failed. Her… I do not understand the word he uses… her relative, her friend, something—it is a little like our word ‘clansman’… was killed, and so now she says the pact is broken. She blames the fairy-king, but she is also angry because of her kins-man.” Antimony sat back. “That seems to be all he knows—he is only a petty officer of the belowground army ...”

Vansen’s heart was suddenly beating fast. “Perin’s hammer, I don’t believe it. The pact? Did he say pact?”

Antimony shrugged. “Bargain, pact, treaty—the word is not precisely the same as ...”

“Silence! No, I beg your pardon, but do not say anything for a moment, Antimony.” Vansen did his best to remember. Yes, he thought, it all seemed to fit. “Ask him if he knows the name of the lady’s kinsman—the one who was killed. The one whose death ended the pact.”

The young monk, surprised by Vansen’s vehemence, turned and passed the question along to the drow, who was looking less frightened and more puzzled every moment. “He wants to know if you are going to kill him,” Antimony said after listening to the man’s reply. “And he says that he thinks the kinsman’s name was Storm Lantern.”

“I knew it!” Vansen slapped his hand on the stone table, making the prisoner jump. “Tell him no, Antimony—no, we are not going to kill him. In fact, he is going to be set free to lead me back to his mistress. Yes, I will go and speak to her. I will tell her the truth about the Storm Lantern and the pact. Because I was there.”

Haltingly, the monk translated Ferras Vansen’s words to the prisoner. The small room fell silent. Vansen looked around. Cinnabar, Brother Antimony, Malachite Copper, even the drow—all were staring at him as though he had utterly lost his mind.

Chaven’s bed still hadn’t been slept in. In fact, there was no sign the physician had even been in his cell.

“He’s not here,” Flint said in his solemn, high-pitched voice.

“I know he’s not,” Chert growled. “We haven’t seen him for days—not since he let you run off when he was supposed to be watching you. But I want to talk to him. Did he say anything to you about going somewhere? ”

“He’s not here,” Flint said again.

“You’re going to make my head cave in, boy.” Chert led him out of the room.

“Captain Vansen isn’t here,” Cinnabar said. “He’s preparing for a trip where he’ll risk his life to do something I don’t quite understand and which seems to have no chance of succeeding in any case.” He sighed. “I hope you have some better news for us.”

“I’m afraid not,” Chert told him. “I found no sign of Chaven anywhere in the temple.”

Cinnabar frowned. “That is very strange and worrying. He is under threat of death from Hendon Tolly, so why would he go upground into the castle, or even into Funderling Town?”

“Let us hope he has not gone off on his own somewhere and fallen,” said Malachite Copper. “So much is dark down here, especially beyond Five Arches—we might never even find his body.”

Brother Nickel was furious. “I told you it would make trouble—a stranger who is not even of our tribe wandering willy-nilly in the temple grounds and beyond! Bad enough that Chert Blue Quartz’s child found his way into the Mysteries. What if this… upgrounder, this magician-priest, should do the same? What kind of misfortune might he bring down on us all?”

“Why should Chaven want to enter the Mysteries?” asked Chert.

“Why shouldn’t he?” Nickel was so angry he could barely control himself. “It seems everyone thinks they have business in our most sacred places these days! Upgrounders, children, even the fairies!”

“Fairies?” Chert turned to Cinnabar and Heliotrope Jasper in confusion. “What does that mean? I’ve heard nothing of this.”

“Jasper and his warders have stopped a few attempts to dig into tunnels beneath the temple levels,” said Malachite Copper. “But that proves nothing—likely the fairies were only trying to find a way to take us unaware. Then after beating us, they could surprise the castle’s defenders by appearing from the gates of Funderling Town, already well inside the castle walls.”

“You are deluding yourself,” said Nickel. “They seek the power in the depths.” He glared at Chert as though the Blue Quartz family were somehow complicit in this vile plan. “They seek to control the Mysteries.”

“Why? Why would the fairies want such a thing? What could that even mean?” Chert looked at Nickel’s angry face and saw a flash of sudden fright there, like a child caught in an obvious lie. “Hold a moment. There is something going on here that I don’t understand. What is it?”

“Tell him, or I will,” said Cinnabar. “Chert’s earned our trust.”

“But Magister!” Nickel looked distraught. “Soon everyone will know the secrets ...”

“The Guild granted me authority and I will decide, Brother. Besides, perhaps the time for secrecy is over.” The magister sighed and slumped back in his chair. “Still, may the Earth Elders forgive me, but I wish this burden had passed to another generation.”

Chert looked from face to face. “I don’t understand any of this. Can someone please tell me what it’s about?”

Despite his comparative youth, Nickel had the face of a much older man, and just now he looked as though he had bitten into the sourest radish in a harsh crop. “This is… this is not the first time… that the Qar have tried to get into the Mysteries. They have been there many times.”

Chert could only stare. “What?”

“As I said,” snapped Nickel. “They had been coming for as long as the Metamorphic Brothers have kept records. The elders of the brothers and of the Guild knew it and permitted it, more or less—it is a complicated story. But then it ended, and it has been a long time since they last came. Two hundred years and more.”

Chert shook his head. “I still don’t understand. What did they do in the Mysteries?”

“We don’t know,” said Cinnbar. “There is an old tale of some monks who snuck down into the Mysteries and tried to spy on the fairies—or the Qar, as the fairies call themselves—but the tale says that those men lost their minds. The fairies came only seldom—perhaps once a century at most—and always in small groups, which may be why it was permitted. The tradition was old when the first Stonecutter’s Guild was formed seven centuries ago. They always came through the Limestone Gate from Stormstone’s longest road, the one that leads to the mainland. They stayed only a few days and never took anything of value or harmed anything or anyone. For a long time our ancestors did not interfere, or so the story goes. Then, after the battle at Coldgray Moor, the Qar stopped coming.”

“But if they had a way to gain entry, why didn’t they just use it again this time?” Chert asked.

“Because we sealed the Limestone Gate after the second war with the fairies,” said Brother Nickel with an angry sniff. “They proved themselves untrustworthy. That is why they’ve had to dig their way in from the surface. And that is why they try so hard to reach our holy Mysteries!”

Chert rubbed his forehead, as if to knead what he had just heard into a more sensible shape. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain the why at all, Nickel. Does nobody know what they did down there, or why they were permitted in the mysteries in the first place?”

Cinnabar nodded. “In truth, it seems that in a past age the Qar helped to build the Mysteries—no, my apologies, Nickel, I do not mean to blaspheme. I meant to say they helped build the tunnels and halls in the depths, not the Mysteries themselves.”

“Fracture and fissure!” Chert felt as though he had been struck by a rockslide, as though he were being carried down and away from everything he knew. “And I only learn this now? Am I the only person in Funderling Town who didn’t know?”

“This is new to me, also,” said Copper. “I do not know what to say.”

“It is new to all of us, even me,” Cinnabar said. “Highwardens Sard and Caprock called me to them before they sent me here and told me. Only the highwardens themselves and a select few chosen by the innermost circle of the Guild have known this. For Nickel it was the same.”

“It’s true,” said Brother Nickel. “The abbot told me when he became ill. ‘This is a young man’s time,’ he said to me. ‘I am too old to keep these secrets to myself any longer.’ ” The monk scowled. “I have been given more generous gifts.”

“ ‘We do not keep Grandfather’s ax because it looks handsome in the hall,’ as the old saying goes,” Cinnabar told him. “We are carrying the trust of all who came before us and all who come after. We must do what is right.”

“Then we must pray to the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone that your Captain Vansen has not lost his mind,” said Brother Nickel. “That he can achieve something more than getting himself killed. Otherwise, we may throw back another attack, perhaps two, but eventually we will fall and the Mysteries will be theirs.”

“Not just the Mysteries,” said Malachite Copper. “If we fall, then Funderling Town will fall, and then the castle above will be theirs, too.”

“What are we doing, Father?”

It still seemed strange for the boy to call him that, almost as if the child were playing the part of a dutiful son in one of the Mystery Plays. “I am frightened for Chaven and I want to look for him,” Chert explained. “But I am not going to make the mistake of leaving you alone again. By the Elders, I miss your mother!”

Flint looked back with calm eyes. “I miss her, too.”

“Maybe I should send you to her in Funderling Town. It would keep you out of trouble—or at least keep you out of trouble in the temple.”

“No!” For the first time the boy seemed agitated. “Do not send me away, Father. I have things to do here. I need to be here.”

“What nonsense is that, child? What could you need to do?” Flint’s certainty made Chert uneasy. “You’re not going to go rummaging in the library anymore, do you hear me? Nor make any surprise excursions down into the Mysteries. As it is, the brothers have barely forgiven you or me.”

“I need to stay in the temple,” the boy said stubbornly. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

“Well, we can talk of it more later,” Chert said. “For now you can come with me. But you stick by my side, is that understood?”

In truth, he was just as glad to have the boy’s company. Chert was growing more and more worried about the physician, increasingly certain that Chaven had not simply wandered off somewhere. Either he had been taken by the Qar, which was a frightening thought, or he was in the grip of his mirror-madness again, which might lead to something even worse. Chert didn’t plan to search anywhere very dangerous, although nowhere beneath Funderling Town would ever feel completely safe again after the last year’s madness, but if several uneventful days had not passed since the last Qar attack he would not have dared bring the boy out of the temple. Even so, he had slipped both a stone pick and hand ax into his belt, and carried a greater than ordinary amount of the lamp coral.

Elders protect us both, he thought. The boy from any harm, and me from Opal should anything happen to him.

He missed his wife. Never in his life since the days he was apprenticing under old man Iron Quartz and had traveled with him as far as Settland had he been separated from her so long. It was not that he missed her in the same way he had when they were newly married, when to be apart from her felt like a bodily ache, when he could not be near her without touching her, teasing her, kissing her, and to be denied those things was torment; rather he missed her now as he would have missed a part of himself if it had been taken from him. He was incomplete.

Ah, old girl, I really do ache for you! I’ll have to tell you that as soon as I see you, instead of being silly. I can’t wait until I can give you the squeezes I’ve been saving. And I want to hear your voice, even if you’re calling me foolish. I’d rather be mocked by you than praised by the Guild.

“She’s a good woman, your mother,” he said out loud.

Flint cocked his head. “She’s not my real mother. But she is a good woman.”

“Do you remember your real mother?” Chert asked.

Flint kept walking, but Chert had learned the boy had different kinds of silences. This was the kind that meant he was thinking.

“My mother is dead,” he said at last, his voice as flat as a split slate. “She died trying to save me.”

But despite this sudden, surprising assertion, when pressed Flint could not remember anything else. After a while, concerned that they were far enough from the temple now that quiet was better than unnecessary talk, Chert let the matter drop.

They searched the dark areas at the sides of the Cascade Stair and up as far as the tunnels on the level below the Salt Pool, then stopped to eat mushrooms and some smoked mole Chert had brought for a treat. They were thirsty when they’d finished so they walked a little way farther up the great stair to a spot where the sloping cavern was pierced by a natural sinkhole, a phenomenon the Funderlings called an “Elders’ Well.” Unlike the Salt Pool, which seeped in from the bay and whose surface was never any higher or lower than the sea itself, the Elders’ Wells were full of fresh, sweet water that soaked down from rainfall on Midlan’s Mount. In fact, it was these sinkholes that made life on the great rock possible for both the Funderlings and the Big Folk, who dug their own wells into these aquifers from the surface.

As he watched Flint kneeling at the edge of the pool, filling his hands and drinking with his usual fierce concentration, as though experiencing something he had never done before, Chert wondered at how the simplest things in life could be so complicated. Here, fresh water. Only a few hundred cubits above was the saltwater of Brenn’s Bay. Only the limestone of Midlan’s Mount kept the two apart, and if that ever changed—say, perhaps because of an earth tremor like the ones that occurred frequently in the southern islands, but never in Chert’s memory here—then everything else would change, too: the bay would flood in and drown everything lower than the Salt Pool, killing all the monks and everyone else in the temple. Many of the deeper sweet water springs would become undrinkable.

And yet despite this precarious balance, life had gone on here, hardly changing, for century upon century. Chert, with the help of the Blue Quartz family tablets, could track his own line back nearly ten generations; some of the richer and more powerful families claimed they could name a line of a hundred ancestors.

But would the next generation be able to say the same? Or would they be reciting their Funderling history in some kind of poor scrape or burrow after a Qar victory had destroyed their ancient home? Would the Funderlings of days to come live wild in unshaped caves, as some of their more eccentric philosophers claimed their ancestors once had?

Chert realized with a little start that Flint had finished drinking and was standing just in front of him, staring with those calm, wide eyes. “Did you hear that?” he asked. “I thought I heard someone moaning.”

“Could it be Chaven?”

The boy shook his head. “Too big. Too deep.”

“Likely just earth sounds, then. Sorry, lad. I was thinking about water and stone—the kind of things an old guildsman like me tends to think about.”

“This is shellstone,” the boy told him solemnly, holding up a pale, irregular rock. “The kind of limestone with shells in it.”

Chert laughed and stood up. “I’m glad to see you’ve been paying attention. Good lad.”

Having found no sign of Chaven or anything else out of the ordinary in the halls around the Cascade Stair, Chert and Flint made their way down past the temple again and through the Five Arches gateway, then into the complicated web of tunnels that led down to the Maze. He was not going to go any closer to the Mysteries, of course—the last thing he wanted to do was run the risk of somehow losing track of the boy in those confusing depths—but if Chaven was lost somewhere in the deeps below the temple, this seemed the most likely place to look. The Maze was even more confusing, of course, but if the physician had made his way that far down Chert would need the help of the Brothers themselves to search it properly: he had not forgotten his own disturbing experiences in that benighted place.

Something like an hour later, Chert was standing at the fork of two tunnels and thinking it was probably time to give up and head back to the temple if they wanted to have a hope of supper when he noticed that Flint was no longer standing behind him.

He ran back down the tunnel, fear swelling inside him. “Flint!” he shouted. “Boy! Where are you? ” Chert cursed himself over and over again as he searched every cross-track he had passed: everything Opal had ever said about him, even at her most uncharitable, was clearly true—he was an utter dunderhead. Bringing the boy right back to the place where he had already vanished once, a place where he had suffered through the Elders only knew what kind of terrifying times!

As he was exploring perhaps the sixth or seventh cross-track he found himself in a long corridor that dipped and twisted several times. After he had run for some time Chert began to feel he was wasting too much time down this one rabbit hole. He was just about to turn and make his way back to the main hall when the corridor opened in front of him. This wider space ended in a great crevice as wide as the Funderling’s arm and three or four times his height, but he had only a moment to notice that before he saw the pale-haired figure lying crumpled in the shadows a short distance away.

“Elders preserve us all!” he cried and threw himself down on his knees beside Flint. To his immeasurable relief, the boy was breathing, and even began to stir as Chert pulled him a little way off the ground and awkwardly cradled him against his chest.

“Oh, child, what have I done?” Chert said. The boy twitched in his arms, just a little at first, but then harder. A moment later Chert felt something wet and warm against his neck and leaned back, searching desperately for a bleeding wound… but it was not blood that had run from the boy’s face and splattered on him but something else. Flint was weeping.

“Boy?” Chert said. “Boy, what is it? Are you well? Can you hear me?”

“Dying ...” he said. “Dying.”

“You are not! Don’t say such things—you will draw the Elders’ attention!” He pulled the boy close to him again. “Don’t tempt them—they must fill their hods with souls each day.”

Flint groaned. “But I feel… Oh, Papa Chert, it hurts so!”

“Don’t fear, boy. I’ll get you back.”

“No, it’s not me. That is ...” The boy struggled in Chert’s arms so that he could barely hold him. “It’s there. I felt it. There!” He pointed to the crevice at the end of the passage. “Dying!” he said, and moaned as if caught in the claws of some agonizing disease.

Chert let the boy down gently and crawled closer, letting the fragile beam of his lantern play over the crevice. “What do you mean? Is there something in there?”

“Something… something I do not ...” Flint shook his head. He was pale, and in the lantern light Chert could see that beads of sweat covered his face. “It frightens me. It hurts. Oh, please, Papa, I’m dying… !”

“You’re not dying.” A shiver ran up Chert’s back and neck. Long ago, in the Eddon family tomb, the boy had acted the same way, even before he had disappeared into the Mysteries. “It’s a hole, boy, or rather it’s a crevice where two big slabs come together. Why does it frighten you?”

Flint could only shake his head, his expression sullen and a little trapped. “Don’t know.”

Chert moved forward until he could look inside the crevice, but saw nothing by the pale, yellow-green light except more stone. The crevice was no wider than his two hands flattened side by side. “It seems ordinary enough to me ...” he began, but then realized something about it did seem familiar. But how could that be? It was nothing but two great pieces of stone and the narrow space between them…

“That smell,” he said suddenly. It was faint, but now that he’d noticed it the scent was as clear as the sound of a tap hammer ringing on crystal. “I’ve smelled it before ...”

The memory when it came was as powerful as a blow—the dark, massive cavern of the Mysteries, the lake of gleaming metal and the Shining Man itself…

“By the Hot Lord,” he swore, and did not even realize he had voiced such a fierce oath in front of the child. “That’s where… that smell… ! In the cavern. The quicksilver pool. The Sea in the Depths!” He remembered that he had wondered at the time where the air escaped to, because quicksilver vapors were poisonous, but he and the boy—and, presumably, many monks over the years—had all come away from the Sea in the Depths alive. Also, now that he thought about it, quicksilver itself had no scent.

He leaned back to the crevice, sniffing. He could detect another smell as well—something of the sea, which must be air drifting down from the surface above—but it was the scent he identified with the silvery pool that was most noticeable. He would have to ask Cinnabar what it could be.

“Come on,” he said to the boy. “Up now and let’s go back to the temple.”

Flint did his best, but he was weak and could hardly stand. He was too big to be carried on Chert’s back, but Chert found that if he let the boy lean on him they could make slow but steady time. They would be late for supper, though. At another time that would have made him very bitter indeed, but the fright the boy had given him, coupled with the strange smell of the Sea in the Depths, had largely taken away Chert’s appetite.

It made him think again about the strangeness of this little world beneath Southmarch—a world not only vaster and more complicated than the Big Folk living on the surface dreamed, but clearly more than even Chert and the other Funderlings realized. If the Sea in the Depths vented to the surface, as it must then the opening should be somewhere within the walls of Southmarch Castle. Nothing strange about that—the limestone of Midlan’s Mount was full of holes, and there were many such cracks that kept air moving through Funderling Town and the depths, otherwise so many people could not have made their home there—but for reasons he could not even begin to guess, the knowledge that there was only air between the Shining Man and the surface of the world now troubled Chert’s thoughts like an ache.

Getting past Five Arches seemed to do much for Flint’s strength: by the time they were making their way up the lower Cascade Stair he was able to walk unsupported, although he was still short of breath and had to stop often to rest.

“I’m sorry, Father,” he said during one such pause, “I was… I thought I was dying. But it also felt like someone I loved was leaving me—as if you or Mama Opal were going away.”

“Never mind, Son. You’ll feel better with some soup in you. No shame in any case—those are strange passages down there, everyone knows it.”

As they approached the temple along the path through the ceremonial fungus gardens they saw a bulky shape standing at a point where two paths crossed, looking down at a lacework of white fungal strings that had been induced to grow over a frame in the shape of the sacred mattock. As they drew closer, Chert began to think he recognized who stood there.

“Chaven? Is that you? Chaven!” He hurried forward. “Praise the Elders, you’re back!”

The physician turned, his face mild and smiling. “Yes, I am,” he said, but with the air of someone who has only been out for a short walk.

“Where did you go?”

Chaven looked past him to the place where Flint had stopped in the middle of the path. The boy seemed in no hurry to come closer. “Hello, lad. Hmm, where did I go?” He nodded as though the question was a wise one, one that required proper thought instead of a rushed answer. “Out to the passages beyond Five Arches. Yes.”

“We just came back from there. How did we miss you? Have you been back long?”

Still the mild, surprised look. “I was… you know, I cannot completely recall. I was looking into some ideas… some… thoughts… that I had.” He frowned a little, in the way of someone who has just remembered an undone errand. “Yes, I had some thinking to do, and I just… wandered.”

Chert was going to question him further, determined to get some better answers than this unsatisfying fare, when one of the monks suddenly appeared at the top of the path, waving both arms and clearly excited.

“Blue Quartz, is that you? Come quickly! We are invaded.”

“Invaded?” Chert felt terror rise inside him. Would there never be any peace? Did this mean Vansen had failed?

“Yes,” the monk said. “It is dreadful. There are women everywhere!”

“What? Women? What are you talking about?”

“Women from Funderling Town. The magister’s wife and all, they just arrived. Dozens of them! The temple isn’t meant for all these women!”

Chert laughed in relief. “Yes, you brothers are in for it now, you poor scrapers!” He turned to Flint. “That means our Opal’s come back, too. Come on, boy.”

As they followed the anxious monk, Chaven fell a few steps behind them as if still pleasantly distracted by his thoughts.

Flint leaned close to Chert. “He’s not telling the truth,” the boy whispered. He did not sound as if he disapproved, but instead simply reported dry fact. “Not all of it. He’s hiding something important from us.”

“I had the same feeling,” murmured Chert. Up ahead, monks swarmed the colonnade in front of the temple like mice escaping a cat. “The same feeling. And I do not like it at all.”

So I’m back in armor again, thought Ferras Vansen with weary amusement as he adjusted the byrnie the Funderlings had given him, a chain-mail shirt made from a surprisingly delicate series of barred links that was so light it scarcely needed any underpadding. Ah, well, at least I didn’t have enough time to grow used to freedom.

“I packed some food, as you asked, Captain,” said Brother Antimony. “Some bread and cheese and a couple of onions. Oh, and we are lucky—look!” The monk held out an open sack. “Old Man’s Ears!”

For a moment Vansen’s stomach threatened to crawl up his throat and leap out of his mouth. Then he realized that although the things in Antimony’s bag did look like fleshy, shriveled ears, they were in fact some kind of mushroom. Still, they smelled very strange, dark and damp and musty; Vansen found it difficult to muster much enthusiasm. “Yes. Splendid.”

“I still don’t think this is a good idea, Captain,” Cinnabar told him. “Let us at least send a dozen men with you. Jasper is up and around.”

“Yes, take me, Captain.” Sledge Jasper’s bald head was so cut and bruised it looked like it had been carved from marble. “I’ll do for some of those meadow-dancers. Yes, I wouldn’t mind killing a few more at all.”

“Which is why this isn’t the mission for you,” Vansen said. “I wouldn’t waste our best fighter when I don’t want a fight. They need you more here.”

“But we need you here, Vansen,” said Malachite Copper. “That is the most important truth.”

“You must trust me, gentlemen—I can do more good this way. Would you rather have me here waiting to defend against another attack, or out making sure there are no more attacks?”

Cinnabar shook his head. “That is chop-logic—those are not the only two possible outcomes. You might be killed without any bargain made. Then we have neither a defender nor a peacemaker.”

“Not a very cheerful thought, Magister, but I must chance the odds. I am the only person who can do this, you must believe me. And if I take too many men with me, I will not only leave your defenses compromised, but increase the chance my mission will be seen as an attack. My only hope is to speak to their leader, face to face.” He turned to Antimony. “I admire the rope around the prisoner, Brother—we must certainly keep him tied to us—but I would rather see it around his ankle than his waist. If he tries to get away I want to be able to jerk him off his feet.” He looked sternly at the drow, who, although he could not understand Vansen’s words, could certainly understand his tone. The bearded little man cringed in fear, baring his snaggy yellow teeth.

They did not linger in the leavetaking: Vansen knew Cinnabar and the others did not agree with him, and he felt bad himself that he had to take Antimony, a very well-liked fellow. It was possible another of the Funderling monks might be able to translate, but he trusted young Antimony to keep his head in a crisis, and despite his own show of confidence he knew he had only a very small chance of achieving his goal without something going wrong.

The drow, who still seemed to fear some kind of treachery by his captors, trudged ahead on his short length of rope, leading them up into the Festival Halls, back to the spot where the Qar had broken through. Cinnabar’s men had almost finished filling the space where the Qar had dug their way in, stacking rock so expertly that it was impossible to get past. Vansen was taken aback—he had forgotten that the breach was being repaired. How would they get to the Qar? Not by any surface route, that was certain: if the confused bits of news that had trickled down to Funderling Town and thence to the temple were true, aboveground the siege had turned into a full-bore invasion. He and Antimony would never survive an attempt to reach the Qar that way.

It would take hours to shift the stone again here—hours these Funderlings should be spending improving the defenses elsewhere instead of undoing and redoing their work. Ferras Vansen leaned against the wall, suddenly weary beyond words. Commander? General? He wasn’t even fit for his old post as guard captain.

The drow looked the repairs up and down, then looked at Vansen. He said something in his harsh, gulping tongue.

“He says… I think he says there is another way to reach his camp from here,” Antimony told Vansen.

“Another way? The Qar have another way into our caverns?” He stared at the little bearded man. “Why would he surrender that secret to us?”

“He is afraid if we turn back now the rest of my people will lose patience with him and kill him. He says the hairless one—Jasper, of course—was… making gestures.” Antimony suppressed a smile. “Making it clear that he would be happy to wring this one’s neck… or worse.”

“I’ll wager he was.” Vansen nodded. “Yes, tell him we will let him show us the way.”

“He asks only one thing. He begs you not to tell Lady Porcupine that he showed you a path you did not already know. He says that would mean an ending for him more terrible than anything even the hairless one could imagine.”

33. Caged Children

It was not that Pinimmon Vash disliked children. He had always kept dozens of them as slaves, especially for his closest needs. All boys, of course—he found girls unsatisfying and inadequate. Still, he had young female slaves among his household as well. No one could claim he had anything against children. But it was the strange pointlessness of these particular children he found disconcerting.

Not to mention all the work it had caused him. It was one thing to deal with the autarch’s ordinary moods, his sudden urges to eat bizarre foods or to hear some exotic style of music or experiment with some ancient, near-forgotten form of interrogation. That was well within the ordinary scope of Vash’s job; he had performed such services for other autarchs before this one. In fact, he prided himself on his skill at foreseeing such requests and having at least the beginnings of fulfilling them at all times. But Sulepis made even his grandfather Parak, a man of wild appetites and fancies, seem as staid as the oldest and most constipated priest in the great temple. And now…

“Go ashore with a troop of soldiers,” the autarch had told him when they made land at Orms, a city in the marshy Helobine country south of Brenland, and began trading with the locals to refresh the ship’s supplies of fresh food and water. “Go some miles outside the walls—I do not wish to waste my time fighting with these people, and if I set my men on the city I will have to let them off the leash and then we will be here days and days. So take your men out to the countryside and bring me back children. Alive. A hundred should do ...”

There had been no further explanation, of course, nor instruction: there seldom was with this autarch.

Seize one hundred children from their homes. Bring them back to the ship. House them, feed them—keep them alive and more or less well. But am I told why? No, of course not. Ask no questions, Vash. You may be the autarch’s oldest and must trusted adviser, but you deserve no courtesies, he told himself sourly. Just do as you are told.

The paramount minister walked one last time around the section of the hold that had been boxed in with lashed staves to make a cage for the young prisoners. A dozen were housed here, the rest scattered out over several other ships. Feeding them was not the problem, Vash thought as he examined their pale faces, so confused, sullen, or blankly terrified. But keeping them alive—how was he supposed to do that? Already several of them were running at the nose and coughing. A cage in the hold was not a very warm place to house a dozen half-naked children, but would the autarch understand that if a sudden fever ran them through them and took them all? He would not.

No, then it’ll be my head, Vash thought gloomily. He stared at a weeping boy and wished he could reach through the bars and hit the child to make it stop crying. And even if I am lucky and manage to keep them alive for whatever madness he plans, what next? What next, Pinimmon?

The autarch’s parade of strange whims continued. They had started off from Hierosol in a single ship, but many more ships from the Xixian navy had caught up and joined them during the voyage, all loaded with soldiers. Now, after the fleet had skirted Brenland and passed through the Connord Straits, they landed in a shallow bay in the wild lands along the eastern border of Helmingsea. This was as much of a surprise to Pinimmon Vash as the order to capture one hundred children. He was increasingly convinced that his master was deliberately leaving him in the dark about the most important parts of this weird venture.

Stranger still, a troop of the autarch’s fierce White Hound soldiers and their horses now went ashore in boats. They rode off west into the forest and had not returned when the autarch told the captain to weigh anchor. The fleet was still many leagues from Southmarch, their apparent destination, so Vash could not even guess at what mission the White Hounds had been left behind to fulfill.

“Let us be honest with each other, Olin,” Sulepis said, “as men of learning and brother monarchs, if nothing else.” Now that they were at sea again, sweeping along the coast toward their destination, the autarch was in an expansive mood. He was standing so near the railing—and the condemned northern king—that Vash could almost feel the anxiety of his Leopard bodyguards, who were watching the situation with the fixed, predatory stares of their namesakes. “Most of what we are told of the gods by priests, by the sacred books, is nonsense,” he continued. “These are tales for children.”

“Perhaps that is true for the tales of your god,” Olin said stiffly, “but that does not mean I so lightly throw away the wisdom of our church ...”

“So you believe everything your Book of the Trigon tells you? About women turned to lizards for spurning the gods’ advances? About Volos Longbeard drinking the ocean?”

“The intentions of gods are not for us to judge, nor what they can accomplish if they choose.”

“Ah, yes. On this we are agreed, King Olin.” The autarch smiled. “You do not find the subject interesting? Then let me speak of more specific things. Your family has a certain invisible… deformity. A stain, as it were. I think you know what I mean.”

Olin was clearly furious but he kept his voice even. “Stain? There is no stain on the Eddons. Just because you have the power to kill me, sir, does not mean you have the right to insult my family and my blood. We were kings in Connord before we came to the March Kingdoms, and we were chieftains before we were kings.”

The autarch looked amused. “No stain, is it? Not of character or of body? Very well, then, let me tell you a little of what I have learned. If you still say I am wrong when I’ve finished—why, on my oath, I might even apologize. That would be entertaining, wouldn’t it, Vash?”

The paramount minister had no idea what Sulepis wanted him to say, but his master was clearly waiting for an answer. “Very entertaining, Golden One. But astonishingly unlikely.”

“But let me tell you a little of my own journey first, Olin. Perhaps that will give you some idea of what I mean. You will be interested too, Lord Vash. No one else in all Xis has heard this tale, except for Panhyssir.”

His rival’s name was like a hot coal dropped down his collar, but Vash did his best to smile and look gratified. At least the high priest was elsewhere; otherwise, the humiliation would have been even more excruciating. “I listen eagerly for whatever wisdom my lord wishes to share.”

“Of course you do.” Sulepis seemed to be enjoying himself: his long-boned face kept creasing in wide, crocodilian smiles and his unusual eyes seemed even more lively than usual. “Of course you do.

“I have know that I was not as other children since I was very young. Not simply that I was the son of an autarch, because I was raised with dozens of others who could claim the same thing. But ever since I was a small boy I have heard and seen things that others could not see. After a while I came to realize that I, of all my brothers, could actually sense the presence of the gods themselves. Truly, every autarch claims to hear the speech of the gods, but I could tell that even for my father Parnad these were empty words.

“Not so for me.

“But here was a strange thing! All of the other royal sons and I were the children of the god-on-earth—yet only I could sense the presence of the gods! Stranger still, I had no greater power than this one small gift. The gods had given me no greater strength than other mortals, no longer life, nothing! And clearly the same was true of my father as well, and all his other heirs. The autarch of Xis was nothing but an ordinary man! His blood was ordinary blood. All that we had been taught was a lie, but only I had the courage to acknowledge it.”

Vash had never heard so much blasphemy spoken—and it was being spoken by the autarch himself! What did that mean? How was he supposed to react? Indifferent as he largely was to religion, except insofar as it was the steady heartbeat of Xixian court etiquette, still Vash could not help cringing, wondering if any moment the great god himself might not strike them all down with his fiery rays. Clearly, every worry he had entertained about the autarch’s sanity had been justified!

“So I took it upon myself to learn more about it,” Sulepis continued, “both about the blood of the gods and the history of my own family.

“At first I spent my days exhausting the great libraries of the Orchard Palace. I learned that before my ancestors swept out of the desert to take the throne of Xis the city had been ruled by other families who claimed kinship with other gods. The farther back I went, the more these ancestors were described as being close to godlike themselves. Was this because they were closer to their godly ancestors than we moderns are, so that the holy blood ran thicker in their veins? Or had the stories around them simply grown over the years? What if these ancient monarchs, self-proclaimed descendants of Argal or Xergal, had been no less mortal than the dull creatures being raised around me in the palace—no less mortal than my father? Parnad might be fierce and cunning, but I had long since learned that he had no wit for and no interest in matters of religion and philosophy.

“Some of the priests recognized in me what they thought of as a kindred spirit. They were wrong, of course—I have never been interested in esoteric knowledge simply for its own sake. A single mortal lifetime is too short for such untrammeled, undisciplined study. I had only one thought in mind. Without the truth I had no tool, and without a tool I could not reshape the world into something I liked better.

“In any case, the library priests began to tell me of books they had heard of but never read—for the first time I came to understand that there were writings that the libraries of the Orchard Palace did not possess, writings in languages other than our own, some of which had not even been translated into Xixian! Do you wonder why my Hierosoline is so good, King Olin? Now you know. I learned it so that I could read what the ancient scholars of the north had to say about the gods and their doings. Phayallos, Kofas of Mindan, Rhantys—especially Rhantys—I read them all, and searched for the forbidden books of the southern continent as well. I finally located a copy of Annals of the War in Heaven in a temple near Yist, where my several-times-great-grandfather had destroyed the last of the fairy cities in our land.”

“There were Qar in your land?” It was the first time Olin had spoken for a while, and he sounded, Vash thought, as though he were interested despite himself.

“Were, yes. My ancestors took care of that.” Sulepis laughed. “The Falcon Kings are not such sentimentalists as you northern rulers—we did not wait for a plague to destroy half our kingdoms before driving out the fairy vermin.

“My search for truth took me to many strange places in my youth. I unearthed cylinder-books from the serpent tombs of the Hayyids that cover the plains like the castings of desert ground-cats. I bargained with the golya at their desert fires, eaters of man-flesh who are also said to be shape shifters—they become hyenas under the full moon’s light. They told me tales of the earliest days and showed me the stone carvings they had carried since the gods walked the earth. From them I learned the secret of the Curse of Zhafaris, the curse of mortality that the great god of all laid on humanity when his children turned against him.

“I even plundered the resting place of my own kin, the Eyrie of the Bishakh, where my desert chieftain ancestors had been laid to rest atop high Mount Gowkha, their mummified bodies resting on nests made from the bones of slaves, their fleshless faces looking east to where the Sun of Resurrection will rise. As the moon climbed overhead and the howls of the golya rose from the desert canyons below, I pried stone tablets from my forefathers’ crabbed, dead hands in search of heaven’s secrets even as my guards fled in terror down the mountain.

“But all I learned confirmed only what I already knew. The gods might be real, but their power was gone and no man had it, not even the autarchs of Xis. My line may have been fathered by holy Nushash, the lord of the sun himself, but I cannot make a light in a dark room without a lamp, nor light that lamp without a flint.

“But as I followed the ancient scholars down paths so dark and forbidding that even the library priests finally began to shun me, I learned that what was true of my own ancestors was not necessarily true of all people. Some families, I learned, had been said since the eldest days to carry the blood of the gods in truth, often through the Pariki, the fairies—the ones you know as Qar.”

“I do not wish to hear any more of this story,” Olin said abruptly. “I am weary and ill and I beg your leave to go back to my cabin.”

“You may beg all you like,” said the autarch with a look of annoyance. “It will not do you any good. You will hear this story, even if I must bind and gag you to obtain your collaboration, because it amuses me to tell you and I am the autarch.” His expression changed into a smile. “No, I will make it simpler. If you do not agree to listen I will have one of our child captives brought to me and I will strangle it in front of you, Olin of Southmarch. What do you say to that?”

“Curse you. I will hear you out.” The northern king’s voice was so quiet that Vash almost couldn’t hear him over the noise of the sea.

“Oh, you will do more than that, Olin Eddon,” said the autarch. “You see, you have such blood in you—the blood that bestows the power of a god. To you it is worthless, a curse, but it means everything to me. And in only a few days now, when the final bell of Midsummer’s Day tolls, I will take it for my own.”

The last few hours of darkness before the Tessis city gates opened were terrible. Briony huddled on the floor of the company’s wagon and tried to sleep, but despite her great weariness sleep would not come. Feival’s treachery, the cruelty of Lady Ananka, and the mistaken, unfair, and foolish judgment of King Enander would not leave her head, the words these enemies had spoken buzzing in her head like blackflies.

And now I am a fugitive again, she thought. What have I accomplished here in all this time? Nothing—no, less than nothing. Another city is barred to me and I have lost all hope of bringing any help to Southmarch from Syan.

Finn Teodoros came quietly into the wagon. “Your pardon,” he said when he saw she was awake, “just looking for my pens. Did Zakkas nip you, Princess? You look full of deep thoughts.”

She frowned at the casual blasphemy. The oracle was the patron of both prophecy and madness and fits of either were sometimes called “Zakkas bites.” “I’m fretful and I can’t sleep. I’ve spoiled everything.”

The playwright sat down beside her. “Ah, how many times have I said that myself ? ” He laughed. “Not as many times as I should have, I suppose—I seldom see what I’ve done wrong until much later. It’s good you see it immediately, but don’t let it carry you away.”

“I wish I could sleep but I can’t keep my eyes closed. What if they’re waiting for us at the gate?”

“Waiting for us? Not likely. For you… perhaps. Which is why you will stay in the wagon.”

“But someone may have remembered you. That Lord Jino is a clever man. He said he was sorry for what happened to me, but that won’t keep him from doing his job. He’ll have noted the name of the troupe.”

“Then we will call ourselves something else,” said Finn. “Now try to rest, Princess.”

He went out, his weight on the small steps making the wagon bounce and sway, leaving her alone with the voices of her many failures.

By the time they rolled up to the city gates, Makewell’s Men no longer looked much like a company of traveling players. The masks and ribbons and all other displays that had served as a flag of their profession had been hidden, and the players themselves were dressed in unexceptional traveling clothes. Still, for some reason they had attracted the attention of one of the guards and Briony was beginning to feel anxious. Had someone in the castle remembered the players after all?

“Where did you say you were going?” the man asked Finn for what must have been the third or fourth time. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“The well of Oracle Finneth, in Brenland.” Finn told him as calmly as he could.

“And these are all pilgrims… ?”

“By the Three!” Pedder Makewell had little patience at the best of times. “This is outrageous… !”

“Shut your mouth, Pedder,” Teodoros warned him.

“You don’t know of Finneth’s Well?” Nevin Hewney stepped in front of Makewell. “Ah, that’s a pity, a true pity.” Hewney was better known for his writing than his acting, but here he stepped smoothly into the scene and began to improvise. “Young Finneth was a miller’s daughter, you see, a chaste, pure girl. Her father was an unbeliever—this was back in the days when Brenland and Connord were mostly heathen, counting the Three Holy Brothers no different from the other gods.” Hewney put on the rapt look of a believer—for a moment, even Briony, peering through a crack in the boards of the wagon, found herself believing his fervor. “And her father was ashamed that she went around preaching the sacred word of the Trigon, and denouncing him because he was living with a lewd woman without marriage in the temple, as is proper,” Hewney went on, seizing the guard’s elbow and leaning so close that the man flinched back. “So he and his lewd woman seized Finneth in her sleep and threw her between the stones of the mill, but the stones would not turn, you see, would not harm her. Then they dragged her to the well at night and threw her in to drown, but in the morning ...”

“What are you babbling about?” The guard pulled his arm away.

“I am telling you of the Oracle Finneth,” said Hewney patiently. “And of how in the morning the women of the village came to the well to draw water, but Finneth rose up from the waters, shining like one of the gods themselves, and spoke to them of the truth of the Three Brothers, of the Sixfold Way and the Doctrine of Civility to Domesticated Animals ...”

“Enough, man!” groaned the guard, but just as it seemed he was about to send them on their way Briony felt the wagon bounce and heard the wagon’s door rattle. She threw herself back on the ground and pulled the blanket up to her neck.

“And who is this? ” It was one of the other gatehouse guards. He climbed into the wagon and stood over her. Briony moaned but did not open her eyes. “Why is this girl here?” he demanded. “Let me see you.”

Briony felt his rough hand close on the blanket and pull it away. She brought her hands up to shield her belly and the bundle of rags stuffed under her threadbare dress.

“Please, sir, please!” said Finn. “That is my wife. We are taking her to the oracle’s well to ask for a safe birth. None of our other children survived ...”

“Yes,” said Hewney from behind him. “My brother-in-law has suffered terribly. There is something wrong with his wife, the poor, corrupted woman—we think she is diseased. The last birth, a noxious black discharge came out of her with a stink like rotting fish ...”

Despite her fear, Briony almost laughed as the guard backed hurriedly out of the wagon.

When the gates of the city were at last out of sight behind them, Briony emerged to sit on the steps of the wagon as it bumped down the Royal Highway, the broad river Ester shimmering beside it in the early morning sun.

“Civility to Domestic Animals?” she asked. “And rotting fish ... ? ”

Hewney gave her a superior look. “I knew a woman in Greater Stell who smelled like rotting fish all the time. She had her share of suitors, too, believe me.”

“Not to mention a clutter of cats that followed her everywhere she went,” laughed Finn. “Well done, Princess. I see you have not forgotten what we taught you.” He clasped his ample stomach. “ ‘Oh, my poor baby! Oh, poor me!’ Most convincing.”

Briony could not help laughing. It was the first time she had done so in a while. “Rogues, all of you.”

“Which still makes players more honest than most noblemen,” said Hewney.

Briony lost her smile. “Except for Feival.”

Hewney’s face turned grim as well. “Yes, except for him.”

They made it all the way to Doros Eco that night, a walled town nestled in the foothills above the river. It was a cool, windy evening. As Briony huddled in her cloak and watched Estir Makewell tending the cook pot, she realized that for the first time in months she felt… free. No, not precisely free, but the heaviness that had seemed to press down on her every day in Broadhall Palace, the weight of other people’s suspicions or expectations, was now gone. She was still worried, even terrified, by what had happened to her life and the people she loved, but here beneath the open sky, surrounded by people who didn’t want anything of her she wasn’t happy to give, she certainly felt a little more hopeful about things.

“Can I help, Estir?” she asked.

The woman looked at her with more than a little suspicion. “Why would you, Princess?”

“Because I want to. Because I don’t want to sit and watch someone else do it. I’ve had that all my life.”

Pedder Makewell’s sister snorted. “And that’s such a bad thing?” She pointed at a couple of carrots and a whiskery onion. “Make yourself happy, then. The other knife’s over there. Chop those for me.”

Briony spread a kerchief in her lap and began to cut up the vegetables. “Why are you here, Estir?”

The woman did not look at her. “What sort of question is that? Where else would I be?”

“I mean why do you travel with the players? You are a comely woman. Surely there have been men who have… who have favored you. Did none of them ever ask you to marry?”

The look of distrust returned. “As it happens, yes, though it’s no business of yours…” She suddenly went a little pale. “Forgive me, Highness, I forgot ...”

“Please, Estir, forget all you want. We were… we were almost friends, once. Can’t we be that way again?”

Estir Makewell sniffed. “Easy to say. You could have me killed, my lady. One word from you to the proper folks and I’d be bunged up in a tower, waiting for the headsman. Or whipped in the town square.” She shook her head, worried again. “Not that I think you’d do that, of course. You’re a kind girl… a proper princess, that’s what I mean ...”

It was impossible to have an ordinary conversation with the woman. Briony gave up and concentrated on chopping carrots.

As the days went by Briony began to fall back into the rhythms of life on the road. The players had the last of her money so they did not have to give performances, but they prepared sets and props and costumes for the plays Finn, Hewney, and Makewell intended to perform when they were back in the March Kingdoms again. To everyone’s astonishment young Pilney, Briony’s onetime stage husband, had fallen in love with the daughter of an innkeeper—not the treacherous Bedoyas, but the master of the Whale Horse—and had stayed behind in Tessis to marry and help his new father-in-law. Between this loss and the less charming defection of Feival Ulian, Briony found herself called on to stand in for most of the girls and youth parts. It was amusing and even enjoyable, but this time she could never quite rid herself of the knowledge that it was a temporary thing, that the world was much closer to her now than it had been on their trip into Tessis.

One obvious proof of that was the news they got in towns and from other travelers. On the trip south people had been talking about the events in the March Kingdoms, rumors about the fairy-war and the change of regime in Southmarch and about the autarch’s siege of Hierosol. Now they still talked about the autarch, but the rumors were both more fearful and more confused. Some said he’d razed Hierosol to the ground and was marching north toward Syan. Others suggested that for some reason he’d gone to Jellon and attacked that nation. Still others had him sailing toward Southmarch, a tale that made no sense at all to Briony, but still filled her with dread. What would a monster like that want with her tiny little country? Could it be true? Was she hurrying toward an even worse situation than she already feared? Of course, the other rumors were just as troubling, if not more so: if Hierosol had truly fallen, where was her father? Was Olin even alive?

It was not surprising that Briony couldn’t find as much joy in playing a part as she once had.

Hewney and Pedder Makewell came back from the town looking very discouraged.

“The king’s soldiers have already been here as well,” Makewell said, washing the dust of the road from his mouth with a gulp of sour ale. “We dare not go into town except in ones and twos.”

Briony felt her heart sink. It was not that she had particularly wanted to walk into the small town—what would there be for her, anyway, an inn’s common room where she would have to keep her face mostly hidden? A few market stalls where she might shop for some trinkets if she had any money to spare, which she did not?—but the knowledge that King Enander was hunting her so seriously, so soon, was disturbing. Worse still was the knowledge that if she were captured, Finn and the players would suffer badly for her sake.

A long shadow fell over her. “You look sad, Princess.” It was Dowan Birch, the company’s tallest member, doomed to play every ogre and cannibal giant in defiance of his true, sweet nature. Briony did not want to trouble him or the others with her fears—they all knew well enough what was going on.

“It is nothing. Why didn’t you go into town with Pedder and the others? ”

He raised his thin shoulders in a shrug. “If somebody is looking for Makewell’s Men, they are more apt to remember me than any of the others.”

She lifted her hand to her mouth in surprise. “Oh, Dowan, I am so sorry! I didn’t even think of that. I have trapped you here, skulking in camp, just like I have trapped myself.”

He smiled sadly. “It’s just as well, truly. People always stare at me wherever I go and I am weary of it. I’m happy to sit here,” he gestured around their camp with his impossibly long arm, “where nobody notices me.”

“That’s a very small dream, Dowan.”

“Oh, I have bigger ones than that. I dream of a day when I can have a farm of my own… settle down with a good woman ...” He blushed suddenly and looked away. “And children, of course ...”

“Birch!” called Pedder Makewell. “Why are you idling when there is mending to do?”

He rolled his eyes and Briony laughed. “Coming, Pedder.”

“I meant to ask you,” she said, “how is it that you learned to sew so well?”

“Before I became a player I studied to be a priest, and lived with other acolytes in the temple of Onir Iaris. There were no women, of course, and we all had tasks. Some discovered themselves to be cooks. Some didn’t, but thought they were,” he said, laughing a little. “Me, I found myself to be reasonably skilled with a needle and thread.”

“I wish I could say the same. My father used to say that I stitched like a woman killing spiders with a broom—poke, poke, poke ...” Now Briony laughed, too, although it hurt to think of Olin. “Gods, how I miss him!”

“He still lives, you said. You shall see each other again.” Birch slowly nodded. “Trust me. I often have such feelings and they are usually right ...”

“You are going to have the feeling of losing your place in the world and having to beg for your meals,” called Pedder Makewell loudly. “Get on with your work, you great stilting stork!”

“We had one like him in the temple, too,” Birch whispered to Briony as he stood. “We poured a bucket of water over him one night when he slept, then swore that he pissed his own bed.”

As she laughed the tall man started to walk away, then turned. A strange, distracted look had come over his face.

“Do not forget, Princess,” he told her. “You will see him again. Be ready to say what you need to say.”

Qinnitan finally learned her captor’s first name, but largely by chance. She also learned something else that she hoped she could put to better use than any name.

Half a tennight or more had passed since she had dreamed of Barrick turning his back to her on the hilltop, and although she had dreamed of the red-haired boy again he never responded and each time he seemed farther away. The helplessness of her situation had begun to wear away at her resolve. She sat for hours each day watching the distant coastline slide past, struggling to think of some plan for escape. Sometimes other boats passed nearby, but she knew that even if she called to them no one would try to help her, and that even if someone did they couldn’t outfight the demon Vo, so she kept her mouth shut. She had already cost poor Pigeon his fingers—why cause the death of an innocent fisherman?

On the night she learned Vo’s first name she had lain brooding for a long time before falling asleep. Padding footfalls woke her in the thin, cold hours after midnight; she could tell by the step that it was Vo who paced the deck. She lay listening to him as he walked back and forth in a tight pattern of which her own position might have been the midway point. She wondered at the muttering that every now and then rose above the continuous slap and slosh of the waves against the boat until she realized it was her captor talking to himself in Xixian.

The thought of such an iron-willed man talking to himself was frightening enough: it betokened madness and loss of control, and although Vo terrified her, Qinnitan knew that if he remained in his right mind she would at least live until he handed her to the autarch. But Sulepis had put something inside him, and if that were hurting him badly, or if the drops of poison he took each day were somehow sickening his mind, anything could happen. So Qinnitan lay trembling in the dark, listening as he paced around the deck.

He seemed to be having a conversation with someone, or at least was speaking as though someone was listening. Much of his talk seemed a list of grievances, many of which meant nothing to Qinnitan—some woman who had looked at him mockingly, a man who had thought himself superior, another man who had fancied himself clever. All had been proved wrong, it seemed, at least in her captor’s fevered mind, and now he was explaining this to some imagined auditor.

“Skinless, now, every one of them.” His hissing, triumphant voice was so chilling that it was all she could do not to cry out. “Skinless and eyeless and weeping blood in the dust of the afterlife. Because Daikonas Vo will not be mocked ...”

A few moments later he stopped a little distance away. She risked opening her eyes a little, but could not quite make out what he was doing: Vo’s head was thrown back, as if he downed a cup of wine, but the movement lasted a moment only.

The poison, she realized. Whatever was in the black bottle, he was taking it at night and not just in the morning as she’d thought. Did he always do that? Or was this something new?

When Daikonas Vo had finished he staggered a little and almost fell, which was the strangest thing yet: she had never seen him anything less than dangerously graceful. He sat down on the deck with his back against the mast and let his chin sag to his chest, then fell silent, as though he had dropped into a deep slumber.

Learning his first name brought Qinnitan nothing. Hearing him talking angrily to himself merely left her even more frightened than she had been—he truly did seem to be going mad. But what stuck in her thoughts was the way his body so quickly grew slack and heavy after he put the poison to his lips.

That was indeed something worth thinking about.

34. Son of the First Stone

A figure in a pale robe stepped forward out of the confusing shadows. The three beast-things retreated to swarm around it like a huntsman’s hounds, but these crouching, apish creatures were nothing like hounds.

Barrick drew himself up so that he could defend himself but the stranger only stood looking down at him with an expression that might have been bemusement. At first glance Barrick had thought the newcomer a man, but now he was not so certain: the stranger’s ears were an odd shape and set too low on his hairless skull, and the shape of his face was also unusual, with very high cheekbones, a long jaw, and a nose that was little more than a low bump above two slits.

“What are… ?” Barrick hesitated. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“I am Harsar, a servant. You are in the House of the People, of course.” The stranger was speaking—his lips even moved—but Barrick heard the voice in the bones of his head. “Was that not your destination?”

“I… I suppose it was. The king. The king told me to come here ...”

“Just so.” The stranger reached out a hand as cold and dry as a lizard’s claw and helped Barrick to his feet. The three creatures capered around him for a moment and then went scampering out the door into the blue-lit hallway beyond where they stood, crouched and waiting. Barrick looked at his surroundings for the first time and saw that he was in a room decorated with intense but somber intricacy, surrounded by a forest of striped columns, far too many for any mere structural purpose. Set into the otherwise featureless black stone floor beneath him, a great disk of some glowing pearlescent material provided the only light in the large chamber.

“Am I still… ?” Barrick shook his head. “I must be. Behind the Shadowline?”

The hairless one cocked his head as if he had to consider the question. “You are still in the People’s lands, yes, of course—and this is the People’s greatest house.”

“The king. Is the king here? I have to give him ...” He hesitated. Who knew what intrigues existed among the Twilight People? “I need to speak with him.”

“Just so,” Harsar said again. He might have smiled—it passed like the flicking of a snake’s tongue. “But the king is resting. Come with me.”

The strange little creatures gamboled around their feet as they left the room with the glowing floor and stepped out into a high hallway, dark but for shimmers of weak turquoise light. Barrick was exhausted, breathless. He had reached his destination at last, he realized—Qul-na-Qar, as Gyir the Storm Lantern had named it. Even the compulsion that the dark woman had put upon him, which had subsided over time into a sort of dull, constant ache, was now satisfied. He had done it!

But what exactly have I done? With the need at last satisfied, uncertainty began to blossom. What will happen to me here?

Everything about the place was strange to Barrick’s eyes. Its architecture seemed shapeless, every right angle subverted by another less explicable shape; even the dimensions of the passages shifted between one end and the other for no reason he could see.

The light was odd as well. At times they stepped into utter darkness, but then flagstones down the center of the floor gleamed beneath their feet. Most other places were lit by candles, but the flames were not all the ordinary yellow-white: some burned pale blue or even green, which gave the long halls the watery appearance of submarine caverns.

Barrick was also beginning to notice that everywhere he went he seemed to be surrounded by quiet noises—not just the breathy sounds of the little creatures scampering around Harsar’s legs, but sighs, whispers, voices quietly singing, even the gentle fluting or sounding of invisible instruments, as though a host of ghostly courtiers hung in the air above their heads and followed wherever they went. Barrick could not help remembering an old Orphan’s Day tale from his childhood, Sir Caylor with the bag of winds that had swallowed all the voices in the world, and how some of them leaked out as he rode and almost drove him mad.

“And only he returned to tell the tale ...” Barrick thought. That’s how it ended.

Remembering that famous tale of a lonely escape brought another thought. “Wait,” he said. “Where are they? The others who came with e… !”

His slender guide stopped and gave him a mild but disapproving look. “No. You were alone.”

“I mean they came through Crooked’s Gate with me. From the city of Sleep. A man named… named Beck—and a black bird.” For a moment he hadn’t been able to remember the merchant’s name: the last moments in Sleep seemed far away not just in distance but in time.

“I’m afraid I cannot help you,” the hairless one said. “You must ask the Son of the First Stone.”

“Who?”

The disapproval became a shade less mild. “The king.”

They continued through the empty halls. Barrick was finding it hard to keep up with his guide’s deceptively rapid pace, but was determined not to complain.

It was perhaps the strangest hour of his life, he would think later—this first time in Qul-na-Qar, this last time of seeing it with his old eyes, his old way of looking and understanding. The shapes of the place were like nothing he had experienced: the building was clearly orderly and logical, but it was a logic he had never encountered before, with walls abruptly bending inward or ending in the middle of a room for no clear reason, and stairs that led up to the high ceilings and then back down again on the other side of the room, as though built solely on the chance that someone might wish to walk high above the room. Some doors opened onto apparent nothingness or flickering light, others stood in isolation with no wall on either side of them, disconnected portals in the middle of chambers. Even the building materials seemed bizarre to Barrick’s eyes: in many places dark, heavy stone was coupled with living wood that seemed to grow within the substance of the walls, complete with roots and branches. The builders also seemed to have exchanged random sections of wall for colorful streaks of gemlike, brilliantly glowing stuff as clear as glass but thick as slabs of granite, allowing views of what was outside but never clearly enough for him to make out more than a blur of shapes and shadows. And everywhere they went seemed deserted.

“Why isn’t anyone here?” he asked Harsar.

“This part of the People’s House belongs to the king and queen,” the servant answered, giving his little pack of straying followers a stern glance until they trotted back to him. “The king himself has few servitors and the queen is… elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere? ”

Harsar began walking again. “Come. We still have far to go.”

The empty halls and the chambers they traversed to get from one hallway to another were furnished, some of it quite ordinary to his eyes, some almost incomprehensible, but Barrick could detect a similarity between every piece, from the simplest to the most complex, a unifying vision behind them all that he could not fail to notice because it was so different from anything he had known, as if cats had made clothes for themselves or snakes had choreographed an intricate dance. Chairs, tables, chests, reliquaries—no matter how simple or ornate the pieces, they all had an obvious similarity he could not quite grasp, a disturbing shared subtlety. From a distance the carpets on the dark, polished floors and the tapestries hung on the walls seemed familiar enough objects, but when he looked more closely their dense, complex designs made him dizzy and reminded him uncomfortably of the living lawn that had guarded Crooked’s Hall. And though some chambers had tall windows opening onto the twilight sky, and some were windowless, though some sparkled with a thousand candles and others had no candles or lamps at all, the light was much the same in all of them—that muted, watery, inconstant glow. Traveling through Qul-na-Qar was a little like swimming, Barrick thought.

No, he decided a moment later, it was more like dreaming. Like dreaming with his eyes wide open.

But of all the unusual feelings that swept through him as he walked this first time in the House of the People, the strangest was that Barrick Eddon felt as if he had at last, after a lifetime of exile, come home.

At last, just when he was beginning to stumble from weariness, his guide showed him into a small, dark room that was built to a more human scale than many of the others, a sort of retiring chamber with polished wooden chairs of smooth and simple (but still undeniably alien) shape. Its walls were filled with niches like a beehive. Each of these small compartments held what looked like a single statue carved from shiny stone or cast in metal, but Barrick saw nothing familiar in any of their shapes; he thought they looked chance-made, like slops left over from the construction of more sensible objects, lovingly collected from the forge floor and displayed here.

Harsar pointed to a bed, a simple thing in a simple wooden frame. “You may rest. The king will see you when he is ready. I will bring you food and drink.”

Before Barrick could ask any questions, his guide had turned and walked out the door, his strange little troop leaping and capering around him.

At another time he might have explored the room, so homey and yet so strange, but he did not have the strength to stay upright another moment. He stretched himself on the bed and sank into its welcome softness like a shivering man climbing into a hot bath. Within a few moments sleep came and claimed him.

When he woke Barrick at first lay quietly, trying to remember where he was. His dreams had been subdued and sweetly peaceful, like distant music. He rolled over and sat up before he realized he was not alone in the room.

A man sat in a tall-backed chair a short distance away—at least he looked like a man, but of course he was not, Barrick realized, not in this place. The stranger’s long, lank white hair was pulled close to his head by the blindfold over his eyes. He wore no other emblems, no crown or scepter or medallion of state on his breast—in fact his gray clothes were as tattered as Raemon Beck’s patchwork had been—but something in his posture and solemnity told Barrick who this was.

Have you rested? The blind king’s words sounded in Barrick’s head, tuneful as water splashing in a pool. Here, Harsar has left food for you.

Barrick had already smelled the enticing scent of the bread and was scrambling off the bed. A plate filled with many lovely things was waiting on a small table—a round loaf, a pot of honey, fat purple grapes and other small fruits he did not recognize, as well as a wedge of pale, creamy cheese. He had already begun stuffing himself—everything tasted glorious after a diet of mostly roots and sour berries—when he suddenly wondered if it had been meant to share.

No, the king said when Barrick began to ask. I scarcely eat at all these days—it would be like throwing an entire pine trunk onto a few dying coals and expecting it to burn. The king let out a small laugh that Barrick actually heard with his ears, a gust wintery as snow tossed by a breeze, then did not speak again until Barrick had gobbled even the rind of the cheese and was wiping the plate with the last bit of bread.

So, he said. I am Ynnir din’at sen-Qin. Welcome to the House of the People, Barrick Eddon.

Barrick realized that he had never bowed or made any kind of obeisance to this strange, impressive figure, but instead had thought only of filling his stomach. Wiping his sticky fingers on his clothing, he lowered himself to his knees. “Thank you. I saw you in my dreams, your Majesty.”

Such titles are not for me. And those my own people use would not be appropriate to you. Call me Ynnir.

“I… I couldn’t.” And it was true. It would be like calling his own father by his first name, to his face.

The king smiled again, a ghost of amusement. Then you may call me “Lord,” I suppose, as Harsar does. You have slept and eaten. One thing remains before our duties as hosts are complete.

“What do you mean?”

If you step into the next chamber, you will find hot water and a tub. It does not take any great power of observation to know you have not bathed in some time. The king lifted his slender fingers, gesturing. Go. I will wait here. I am still weary and we have far to walk.

Barrick found the door set in the far wall and was just about to open it when he remembered something.

“By the gods, I almost forgot!” He hesitated, wondering if he had blasphemed by mentioning the gods in this place, but the king seemed not to notice. “I have brought something for you, Lord, a gift from Gyir Storm Lantern—something very important… !”

Ynnir raised his hand again. I know. And you will complete your task, child of men—but not this moment. We have waited so long that another hour will mean nothing. Go and wash the dust of the road from yourself.

The chamber beyond the door was not like anything Barrick had seen before, steamy and windowless but lit by glowing amber stones set into the wall. A stone tub full of water sat in the center of a floor of dark tile, and when he tested the water with his hand it was gloriously hot. He shucked off his ancient, tattered clothes for the first time in longer than he could remember and almost leaped in.

When he climbed out again some time later even his bones and blood seemed to glow with renewed warmth. He was startled to discover that his ruined clothes were gone and that other garments had been left in their place. How had that happened? Barrick was certain no one had come in or out of the room while he had bathed. He held up the new clothing to inspect it before putting it on—breeches and a long shirt of some silky pale material and slippers of soft leather, all beautiful but simply made.

As he left the bathing room he realized that if such fine things were freely available for strangers, the king’s own tattered raiment was even more inexplicable.

Ynnir still waited in the same place, his chin on his chest as if he slept. It was doubtless a trick of the place’s strange lights, but Barrick thought he saw a lavender glow flickering above the king’s head, faint as foxfire.

As Barrick approached Ynnir stirred and the glow vanished, if it had been there at all.

Come with me now, the king told Barrick, turning his blind face toward him. It is time to set our feet to the narrowing way, as my people say.

Ynnir rose from his chair. He was taller than Barrick had expected, taller than most men, but his obvious natural grace was inhibited by what Barrick realized after a moment must be age or weariness, because he swayed for a moment and had to reach out and steady himself on the back of his chair.

Somehow blind Ynnir knew what Barrick was seeing and what he was thinking. Yes, I am weary. I thought I had lost you in the Between, and I expended much strength helping you find your way here—strength I could ill afford. But none of that matters now. We have waited long enough. Now we must go to the Deathwatch Chamber.

As he walked with the tall king Barrick finally began to see some of the great castle’s other inhabitants. It was hard to make out anything for certain in the dark, dreamy halls—the figures moved too quickly, or were visible only for instants before fading back into obscurity again, and what little of them he saw was often more confusing than if he had seen only shadows—but it was clear now that the castle was occupied.

“How many of your people live here, Lord?” he asked.

Ynnir walked a few more slow paces before answering. He lifted a hand and brought fingers and thumbs together as though holding something small. Most have gone with Yasammez, but we were already far fewer than once lived here. A few stayed to serve me and to serve Qul-na-Qar itself, and some like the tenders of the Deep Library would never leave—could never leave. There are others like that, too—you saw Harsar’s sons…

“Sons? ” For a moment Barrick didn’t know what the blind king meant. Then he thought of the grotesque little monstrosities that had scampered around the servant’s feet. “Those things?”

The First Gift does not always yield helpful changes, said the king, explaining nothing. But all the children of the Gift are nurtured. He made another gesture that had the resignation of a sigh. All together I would suppose there are fewer than two thousand of my people left in all these many, many rooms…

Barrick was distracted by the view from the hallway’s high windows—his first clear view of what lay outside the halls. Qul-na-Qar stretched across the visible distance, a forest of towers in dozens of shades of shiny black stone that seemed to stretched on and on toward the horizon until the edges disappeared in mist. The spires themselves were a hundred different shapes and heights, but all seemed built to the same idea, simple shapes repeated over and over again until in aggregate they became somber starbursts of complex black and dark gray.

“Only a thousand or two… in all this?” Barrick was astonished—Tessis or Hierosol alone must be able to count a hundred times that number.

Most of them have gone to war, Ynnir told him. Against your people, to be precise. I doubt any of those will return. The bitterness of Yasammez is too old, too deep…

The name, and the sudden memory of the frightening, awesome woman in black, made Barrick stop and fumble in his shirt. “I have it… !” he said, trying to pull it free. “The mirror ...”

Ynnir held up a thin hand. I know. I can feel it like a burning brand. And that is what we are going to do—use it to restore the heat of the Fireflower. But do not give it to me yet.

Thoughts were cascading through Barrick’s mind, the newest dislodging the previous ones before he had a chance to examine them. “Why are we… why are you… ?” He paused, confused: for a moment, he had forgotten who he was—even what he was. “Why are the Qar at war with Southmarch? ”

Because your family destroyed my family, the king answered with no discernible malice. Although it could also be said that our family is destroying itself. Now please be silent, child. We have reached the antechamber.

Before Barrick could even begin to make sense of what the tattered king had just said, he found himself stepping out of the dim but almost ordinary light of the passage and into a room that seemed carved from raw stone, with long streamers of pale rock stretching between ceiling and floor like cobwebs—this despite the fact that they were in the midst of the great palace. “What is this place?” he asked.

The king raised a hand. No questions for now, child of men. I must go ahead of you and tend to the rituals alone—the Celebrants especially do not much like mortals. In any case, you are not yet ready to see such things—not with your own eyes and thoughts. Stay here and I will come back for you.

The king stepped into a dark place along the wall and was gone. Barrick took a few steps forward to examine the spot Ynnir had disappeared. Was it a doorway? It looked like nothing but a shadow.

He waited in the stony chamber for what seemed like a terribly long time, listening to the quiet, empty voices that were everywhere in this place. The king had all but called him a murderer, or at least called his family murderers, yet he had treated Barrick like a welcome guest. How could that be? And the mirror that he had carried so far and through so many dangers—why hadn’t the king simply taken it from him? If humans were Ynnir’s enemies, why did he continue to trust Barrick with a prize for which the warrior Gyir had sacrificed his life?

Confusion and boredom at last overcame patience. Barrick went back to the place the king had disappeared and stood, listening, but heard nothing: if it was an open doorway then only silence was on the other side. He put out his arm and felt it go chill for a moment, but nothing impeded it, so he stepped forward himself into the cold shadow.

For an instant—just an instant—it was like falling into the doorway at Crooked’s Hall again and he was terrified that he had done something fatally stupid. Then the light warmed to swirling gray and he could make out a white shape, fluttering and ragged, surrounded by a whirl of shadows like a man beset by angry birds. The white figure was Ynnir, who had his hands raised in the air and his mouth open, as though he were calling for help, or… or singing. The black shapes whirled and darted. Barrick caught a snatch of the wailing, otherworldly melody before he realized some of the flitting shadows had left the king and were moving toward him instead. Heart hammering, he stepped back into the cold darkness once more, retreating into the empty stone chamber; by the time he had reached it he was shivering and covered with clammy sweat.

You must bow to Zsan-san-sis, Ynnir told him when he returned. If he had noticed Barrick’s intrusion he had not mentioned it. He is much older than me, at least in one sense, and his loyalty to the Fireflower is unquestioned. The king laid a cold hand on Barrick’s shoulder and guided him toward the dark door.

The room on the far side seemed different this time, not a confusion of grays but a shadowy depth, the only source of light a yellow-green glow on the far side of the chamber. As the king led him forward Barrick realized with a shock that the glow came from inside the hood of a dark, robed figure waiting there like a statue. Then the hooded head lifted and for a moment Barrick caught a glimpse of stark, silvery features—a mask, Barrick thought, it must be some kind of mask—that leaked green light from nostrils, eyes, and mouth. The thing raised its arm toward them as if in greeting, and for a moment a six-pointed green star of light bloomed at the end of its sleeve.

“This is Zsan-san-sis,” said Ynnir, needlessly.

Barrick bowed as low as he could. It was much preferable to having to look again into that weird, sickly gleam.

Words were spoken, or at least Barrick thought he heard whispers, not words but hisses and quiet bubblings. Then the glowing, hooded thing seemed to fold up into itself and disappear. The walls dissolved around them, then the king led him forward once more into a place whose walls and floor and ceiling were covered with faint but constantly moving specks of colored light, so that the darkness seemed lit by a thousand minute candles.

Despite the dazzle of it all, Barrick’s eye was drawn immediately to the figure at the center of the small, low-ceilinged room, a woman stretched on an oval bed as if asleep. At first he thought by her paleness and stillness that she was a statue, but as the king led him nearer Barrick’s heart grew heavy and cold. She must be dead, this dark-haired woman with her strangely angular features, and his own arrival too late after all. The figure was a corpse, a beautiful, stern corpse, a queen lying in state.

“I am so sorry, Lord ...” He took the mirror from its leather bag and held it out to the blind king.

She still lives. The king’s thoughts were soft as snowfall. His long fingers closed on the mirror and he held it up before his face as though he examined it with his blind eyes through the strip of cloth that covered them. A small frown crossed his face.

Something is wrong, he said quietly. Something is missing.

Barrick’s insides went cold. “My lord?”

The king sighed. I expected more, manchild, even with the Artificer so close to his ending. Still, it does not matter. This age of the world comes down to what we hold here, whatever essence he has given us. We have no other choice but to use it and pray the flaw is not too great.

The blind king breathed on the mirror and then laid it against the queen’s breast.

For a stretching moment nothing seemed to change. The chamber’s inconstant light flickered silently; the very air seemed drawn tight like a held breath. Then the queen’s face contorted in what seemed a grimace of pain and she gasped as she pulled in air. Her eyes—black eyes, startlingly dark and deep—sprang open for a moment and her gaze slid from Barrick to Ynnir, where it rested. Then, like a drowning swimmer who has come to the surface for one last breath before surrendering forever, she seemed to fall back. Her eyes fluttered and slid closed once more; her hand, which had moved toward her breast as if to touch the mirror, fell back on the bed.

Barrick felt as if he might weep, but the pain was too cold, too stony for tears. He had failed. Why had he or anyone else thought it might end differently?

The king bowed his head and for long moments knelt in silence beside the queen. Then he reached out a hand that shook only a little and lifted the mirror from her bosom. He held it up as if to examine it, then, shockingly, tossed away the thing that first Gyir, then Barrick had carried for so long. As it clattered across the room the walls erupted into movement, and for the first time Barrick saw that the gleaming scales that covered walls and ceiling were shimmering beetles, each wingcase flashing rainbows like a puddle of oil.

It has given her a few more hours, perhaps days, but there was not enough of our ancestor in the mirror to wake her, Ynnir said heavily. There is only one way left to me. Come, child of men. I must tell you of true and terrible things, then you must make a decision no creature of your race has ever been asked to make.

Whether the gods were always here, or whether they came to these lands from somewhere else entirely, we cannot know. Even Ynnir’s thoughts came slowly, as if with great effort.

The two of them had returned to the room where Barrick had slept, and Barrick realized for the first time that with all these miles of castle to choose from, the humble little chamber was the king’s own retiring room.

They say they always existed. Ynnir paused to drink from a cup of water, a strangely ordinary thing to do. None of us were alive so we cannot dispute what they say…

“The gods say they always existed?” Barrick was not sure that he had understood Ynnir.

That is what they told our ancestors. In fact, that is what Crooked himself, the father of my line, told the first generation of the Fireflower, although even Crooked could not have known for certain. He was born here, of course, during the Godwar.

Born here? What did the king mean, Barrick wondered. And why was Ynnir bothering to tell him all this if the mirror had failed—if Barrick himself had failed?

But whatever their birth, their source, the king went on, the gods were already here when the Firstborn arrived.

“The Firstborn—is that what you call your ancestors?”

And yours, child. Because once we were all the same people—the Firstborn. But one part of that race had the First Gift—the Changing, as some called it. The part that would become our people came from a trick of nature and our blood that allowed us many different shapes, many ways of living and being, while the rest of our Firstborn fellows—those were your people—were immutable in their bones and skin. So as time passed the two tribes began to grow apart until they were quite separate, my people and yours, and in some cases did not even remember their shared root. But shared it was, and is—that is why some of us, especially of my family, look so much like your kind. We have changed, but mostly on the inside. On the outside we have kept much of our original seeming.

Barrick thought he understood, at least enough to nod—but what astounding sacrilege the Trigonate church back home would name it!

Forgive me for sending this all to you on the wings of thought, Ynnir said, but it tires me less than speaking the way your kind does. He sighed. By the time that the Moonlord and Pale Daughter ran away together to his great house, beginning the Godwar, our two peoples were no longer separated simply by the First Gift. Most of your ancestors were in the southern continent, living near Mount Xandos, worshipping Thunderer and his brothers. Most of my people had settled here in the north around Moonlord’s stronghold, and as a result, when Moonlord and his kin were besieged by the Thunderer’s clan, we took the side of Moonlord and Whitefire…

“Moonlord, Pale Daughter… I… I don’t know who these people are, Lord ...” Barrick said.

Not people—gods. And you know them well, just not by our names. Call them Khors and Zoria, then, and Zoria’s father Perin the Thunderer, who angrily laid siege to the lovers’ moon-castle. So Khors called for help from his brother and sister, Zmeos and Zuriyal, who came to his defense. My people cast their lot with them, and even those of my ancestors who were far away came to join them here.

For a long moment, as Ynnir sat gathering his thoughts, Barrick did not understand the meaning of what he had heard. “Hold, please, my lord. Your ancestors came… here?”

Yes, this place is far older than my people, Ynnir said. The castle in which you sit, or rather the castle that lies beneath and behind the castle in which you sit, was once the domain of the god of the moon himself, Khors Silvergleam. When next you see the walls and the tall, proud towers, look not to the black stone we have built with, but look for the gleam of the moonstone beneath. A careful eye will see it.

Barrick could only stare around him. This strange castle—was it truly Everfrost, the dark fortress of all the stories?

Even the most ignorant of your people knows how that battle ended, although they do not know all the reasons, Ynnir continued. Khors was killed, his brother and sister banished from the earth. His wife—Perin’s daughter, Zoria—escaped and wandered lost until at last she was found by Perin’s brother Kernios, the dark master of the earth. He took her into his house and made her his wife—whether she wished it or not.

But she had a child during the war, of course—clever Kupilas, fathered by the Moonlord—and as he grew his gift for making things was such that although they mocked him and treated him brutally, Perin and the other Xandian gods took Kupilas back with them so they could have his skills at their service. He made many wonderful things for them ...

“Like Earthstar, the spear of Kernios,” said Barrick, remembering Skurn’s tale.

Yes, and that particular weapon was both Crooked’s glory and his doom, Ynnir said. But we do not speak of that yet. Still, the doom of the Fireflower—that which overwhelms us even now—was built in the ruins of the Godwar. Crooked escaped his captors at last. He traveled the world, teaching both your people and mine, learning more than any other man or god ever learned about the art of making things. And during those years he also learned how to walk the roads of the Void.

Barrick nodded, remembering another of the raven’s strange stories. “His great-grandmother’s roads.”

Yes. And so he came at last and lived for a while among my people, here in the ruins of the moon-castle, and while he lived among us he fell in love with one of my ancestors, the maiden Summu. Those were days when gods and mortals shared the earth, and even had children together. But unlike most of his kind, Crooked—Kupilas—did not leave his offspring with only tales as a legacy. Summu had three children, two girls and one boy, and all of them were born with the gift we call the Fireflower. When Kupilas had gone on to fulfill his great and terrible destiny, it was discovered that his offspring were not as others of their tribe—life ran stronger in them. One of those children was Yasammez, the great dark lady you have met, who has lived all the ages since then, a life almost as long as that granted the gods themselves. Her brother and sister, Ayann and Yasudra, used the gift in a different way, although they did not at first know they had any gift to give. Although they lived no longer than those of our families usually do, a span that can be counted in a few centuries, their gift was not granted to them, but to their offspring.

Summu had been of the highest blood of our kind, so her eldest boy and girl, as was the tradition then and now, were married to each other to keep the line pure and strong. But these two, Ayann and Yasudra, passed the Fireflower along to their own children, and the gift it bestowed was that when Ayann and Yasudra were dead and their children ruled the People, their children had the parents’ essence in them—not just their spirit or their blood, but their living essence and all their memories. The children then birthed children of their own, Ayann and Yasudra’s grandchildren, and one day those two married and received the wisdom and thoughts of both their parents and grandparents. So it has gone ever since, the king and queen of our people each passing down all that he or she is to the next born. We are a living Deep Library, and so we have what we need to guard our children through the pain of the Long Defeat. The king nodded slowly. You do not know what that means, do you, manchild? We call it the Long Defeat because we Qar are too few ever to contest our once-cousins the mortal men for ownership of this world, so we know it is our fate to diminish and eventually be supplanted by your folk—although, again, I speak too simply of complicated things.

But here is where we come to the hard truths.

The Fireflower runs forever in Yassamez because she has not shared it. She has never taken one of her own blood for a lover, so she has not diminished the gift. Some say it is because she is selfish. Others call it the opposite, a sacrifice—they say she has accepted a painfully long life so that she may watch over the generations of her brother and sister’s bloodline. But whatever the truth, Yasammez is what she is.

Those of us who received the Fireflower from our parents, and must pass it along in turn to our own offspring, have a more complicated path to walk. For one thing, each passing of the Fireflower, each passing of the memories of all the previous generations to the next, takes great strength. We cannot find such strength in ourselves alone—the cost is too great. There is only one place we can go to gain it. To Crooked himself—or rather, to the last trace of him remaining in this world.

This ultimate trace of the god stands beneath the castle your people call Southmarch, but which was once a doorway into the home of the Earthlord Kernios. It is the last true vestige of the terrible old days when all the gods walked the earth.

Most of your folk do not even know of it, but some who live in the depths beneath the castle do. They call it the Shining Man.

“I haven’t… I do not know it, Lord.”

But the drows of your family’s castle do. They have worshipped and protected it for years without every knowing what it truly was.

“Drows? ”

He waved his hand. You call them “Funderlings,” I think. It matters not, because now we are at the crux of things.

For years the place you call Southmarch was occupied by men—warlords and petty nobles ruled it at the behest of other kings, and although we of the People’s ruling family could not come there openly, we knew other ways to reach the Shining Man and gain the strength we needed to keep the Firef lower alive in our blood. My sister Saqri and I made the pilgrimage in the days of the empire in Syan. Our grandparents had been there when Hierosol ruled mankind. But then came the plague years and the humans drove us out of all their lands—lands which had been ours once, but in which we were now interlopers, objects of fear and hatred—and the most painful loss of all was the place you call Southmarch, where Crooked waited in the depths for us. We fought to keep our way to him open but were defeated, in large part by your ancestor Anglin, and forced to fall back to our lands in the north, where humans seldom walked.

Thus, when Saqri and I began to sicken with age, we could not pass the Fireflower to our son and daughter. A century went by and our plight became desperate. Yassamez, the elder sister of our entire line, counseled that we should make war on mankind to win back the castle, but I feared that we would lose such a contest and things would only be worse. My wife sided with our ancestress. For a long time our family was locked in dispute, until all of Qul-na-Qar was riven by it. At last, hiding their thoughts from their mother and from me, my son Janniya and his sister Sanasu set out themselves for Southmarch with only a small troop of household guards and retainers.

They were captured, though, and brought before Kellick, Anglin’s heir, the ruler of the March Kingdom. Your ancestor Kellick saw Sanasu, my beautiful Sanasu… Here Ynnir stopped, and although his face did not change, the cessation of his quiet, calm thoughts in Barrick’s head was as shocking as if the king had burst into tears.… And he wanted her for his own, he continued at last. A mortal man coveted the one who would have become immortal queen of her entire people! And he took her, as a wolf takes a graceful deer, little caring what beauty is destroyed as long as his appetites are slaked…

This time the pause was more deliberate. Barrick, in a sort of helpless dream, watched the king’s pale face harden into something even stonier than before.

He took her. Janniya, her brother, her intended—my son!—fought for her, but Kellick Eddon had many men. Janniya was… killed. Sanasu was taken. The Fireflower could not be passed to the son and daughter. The end of the people was at hand.

Queen Sanasu… ! Barrick thought of her picture in the portrait hall, a face he knew well, strange, haunted eyes, fiery hair, and pale skin. But she… was married to the king of Southmarch! Could she truly have been one of the Qar?

In the wake of that terrible day, the king resumed, Yassamez and others of course brought war to the humans, and for a while even recaptured the place where Crooked had destroyed the last of the gods, but Kellick took my daughter Sanasu and retreated farther into the domains of men until he could find enough allies to fight back. While we owned the castle again, Saqri and I did what we could to strengthen our inner flames, but we knew that without heirs we only delayed the inevitable. Eventually the humans overwhelmed us and forced us back out again, slaughtering so many of our folk that we gave a great deal of our remaining strength to creating the Mantle, a cloak of twilight that would discourage men from following us into our lands. And so we have lived these last years.

Now the queen and I are both dying. I have loaned her what strength I could while we waited to see how this… he lifted up the mirror… gamble called the Pact of the Glass played out. But it is not enough. She will not wake again. Unless I give her what little I have left of myself. Unless I give her my life.

Barrick sat, shocked. “You would have to give your life for her? But that wouldn’t help anything.”

In any other situation that would be true, but the ways of the Fireflower are complicated and subtle. There might yet be a way to stave off the inevitable end of our line—at least for a little while longer. Perhaps that is what Yasammez thought when she sent you to me. I would like to think she had some intention other than to mock me.

“I… I don’t understand, my lord.”

Of course not—how could you? Your people have hidden the truth of what happened. But still, at times in your young life you must have wondered, perhaps sensed that something was… wrong…

Barrick was beginning to feel a chill now, as if fever was rolling through him. “Wrong with me? Are you talking about me?”

You, your father, and anyone else who has ever carried the painful, confusing legacy of the Fireflower as it burns in human veins. Yes, my child, I am talking about you. You are a descendant of my daughter, Sanasu, and the blood runs strong in you. In a way, you are my grandson.

Barrick stared at him. His heart was pounding so swiftly that he felt dizzy. “I’m… one of the Twilight People?”

No, you are less than that… and also more. You have the blood of the Highest in you, but to this hour it has brought you only sorrow. Now, however, it might make you the last hope of our ancient people—but only if you make a great sacrifice. You can let me pass the Fireflower itself along to you.

Barrick could not make sense of it. He stared. The king’s calm face looked just as it had looked an hour earlier, before he had said these things which turned all the world upside down. “You… you want to give this Fireflower to ... to me? ”

To keep the queen alive a little longer, I will need to lend her my last strength. If I can pass the Fireflower along to you—and it may not be possible—that legacy at least will survive. But even if you survive it, Barrick Eddon, you will never be remotely the same again.

“But if you do that, what… what will happen to you?”

For the first time in a long while, Ynnir smiled—a thin, weary tightening of the lips. Oh, child, of course I will die.

35. Rings, Clubs, and Knives

They had to stop at the outskirts of Ugenion because the Royal Highway was blocked by a funeral procession bound for the temple in the city. It was clearly a rich man’s leavetaking: four horses pulled a wagon bearing the black-draped coffin, and so many mourners followed it that Briony climbed out of the wagon and joined the other players by the roadside.

“But who has died?” Briony asked one of the mourners at the back of the procession, a woman carrying a long willow branch.

“Our good baron, Lord Favoros,” the woman told her. “Not before his time—he had threescore years and more—but he lost his son to the autarch’s cannibals and so he leaves a sickly wife and too young an heir, may the Brothers bless his line.” She made the sign of the Three.

Briony found herself doing the same thing as she turned away.

“I have never heard of him,” she told Finn Teodoros quietly as they stood watching the mourners file past. “But from the sorrow I see on these people’s faces, he must have been a good man.”

“Either that or you see sorrow because they have lost a known quantity for an unknown, in very uncertain times.” Finn shrugged. “Still, I suspect you are right. I do not see too many herring-weepers in the crowd.”

“Herring-weepers?” The picture it made in Briony’s thoughts made her laugh. “What in the name of goodness are those?”

“Those who will walk in a funeral parade and cry loudly for a copper crab or two, or who can be hired in a group for a single silver herring. It would be a much-loved man indeed whose family did not have to hire at least a few herring-weepers.”

They watched the end of the line as it moved slowly past, the children bearing candles, the wagons carrying bread, wine, and dried fish for the temple where the body would lie in state and the priests would pray night and day to ensure the deceased’s rapid progress to heaven. When the last mourners had passed and the last interested onlookers had trailed after the slow parade, Briony and Finn climbed back into the wagon. Dowan Birch snapped the horses’ reins and the wagon rolled up to the city gates with the rest of Makewell’s Men following close behind.

Once they had negotiated a small but adequate bribe with the guards in the gatehouse they were allowed into Ugenion. They followed the funeral as it wound up the hilly main road toward the temple at the center of the town.

“He was a wealthy man, too, from the look of all this,” said Finn as they had their first look at the entire procession spread out on the road before them. “But I have heard no word of funeral games, which is usual here even after the deaths of lesser men. Perhaps it is the fear of what is happening in the north.”

“And the south,” said Briony sadly. “Poor Hierosol.” The jolting of the wagon sent her away from the window to sit on the floor. Where was her father this moment? Alive? A prisoner, still? If Hierosol collapsed, would the autarch be willing to ransom him? And what difference would that make if neither she nor Barrick had access to the Southmarch treasury?

Could it really be true that her twin had come back to Southmarch? That alone would make something good out of the darkest spring Briony Eddon had ever known.

“You look solemn, Princess,” said Finn. “As if you knew the poor soul who is being carried to the temple.”

“I’m just… it’s all so uncertain. Everything. What will I do when I get to Southmarch? What if the fairies have already taken the castle?”

Finn turned away from the window. “Then things will be very different from when we left. You cannot try to outthink the Qar, my lady, because they are not like men. Please indulge me in believing this one thing to be true—I know a little of them, after all.”

“Why? Did you… did you write a play about them?” She tried to make it a light remark, but her sadness and bitterness spilled through. “About their charming elfin magic and how they use it to kidnap and murder innocent folk?”

Finn raised his eyebrows. “I have of course used the Twilight folk as characters in my plays, and in many different ways. If I have erred in portraying them, I suspect it was on the side of making them more mysterious and fearful than they are, rather than using them as quaint purveyors of magic rings and reassuring rewarders of blockheaded virgins. But in fact, I gained my knowledge of them in a very odd and unusual way for a playwright—I studied them.”

“What do you mean?

“What I have said, Highness. No disrespect, but perhaps you would rather rest a little rather than talk. You seem to me a bit out of sorts.”

She closed her eyes and tried to calm the anger that was bubbling in her, but she was not entirely successful. “I’m sorry, Finn. Don’t go. I have good reason to be angry, though and so would you. Leaving out all of my innocent subjects they have harmed, my brother—my own twin!—is missing or dead and it is those creatures’ fault. And they also took someone ...” She hesitated, then wondered what she would have said about Vansen. “Someone I considered a friend. Like my brother, he never came back from Kolkan’s Field. So I am not disposed to hear much good of these Qar.”

“Fear not—I said I studied them, Highness, not that I became one. Lord Brone set me to finding out all that I could about the Peaceful Ones, as they are euphemistically termed. Paid me well for my work, too—more than I’ve made for any of my plays so far, whether they had fairies in them or not.”

She laughed a little in spite of herself. “Tell me, then, Finn. What do you know about them?”

“I know that I do not understand them, Princess Briony. I also know that they have some great interest in Southmarch, but not why that is so.”

“Because it stands in their way, does it not? Anglin, the founder of our line, was given the castle to be the first bastion against the Twilight People’s return. We have held that a sacred trust ever since.”

“And where did they first attack this time, Highness?”

She remembered pathetic young Raemon Beck. “Somewhere on the road to Settland. They destroyed a trader’s caravan.”

“And if that was where they began, why would they then travel a hundred leagues east from there to attack Southmarch? They could have gone west to Settland, a much weaker target, or if they wanted spoils they could have headed south into the Esterian Valley, full of fat merchant towns far from King Enander’s protection. The northern end of that valley is twice as far from Tessis as the place they took the caravan is from Southmarch.”

“What are you saying, Finn?”

“That what they have done makes little sense but for two possibilities. They came against us for revenge, pure and simple, or there is some other advantage they see to conquering Southmarch—and not the entire country, but only the castle itself. They destroyed everything they encountered on their march toward your family’s stronghold, but they left Daler’s Troth, Kertewall, and Silverside untouched.”

“But why?” It was a moan: Briony did not need any new mysteries. As it was, she struggled just to live day to day with so many unanswered questions about her nearest and dearest. “Why do they bear us such hatred?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Highness.”

“Then find out. That is your calling from now on.”

The fat playwright looked startled. “Princess… ?”

“If my father does not return—Zoria grant mercy that he does, but if he does not—then I must have help. I must understand the things my father and even my oldest brother spent years learning. It is obvious that the Qar will be one of the things I must try to understand. I know of no one else who knows even as much as you do, Finn. Are you my subject? ”

“Princess Briony, of course I honor you and your family ...”

“Are you my subject?”

He blinked once, twice, taken aback by her ferocity. “Certainly I am, Highness. I am a loyal Marchman and you are the king’s daughter.”

“Yes, and until something changes, I am the Princess Regent. Remember, Finn, I count you a friend, but we cannot have things both ways. I cannot ever go back to being ‘Tim’ again. I will never be a mere player, even if for this moment I hide among you. My people need me, and I will do whatever I must to serve them… and to lead them.”

His smile was weak. “Of course, Highness. I shall count myself honored indeed to be the Royal… what shall we call it? Historian?”

“You shall be a Royal Historian, Teodoros, that is certain.” She was satisfied to see him wince, not because she disliked the round man, but because she needed him to understand how things stood now. “Whether there are others will depend on how well you do your job.”

The wagon rolled to a halt and Briony heard raised voices. Worried, she patted at her knives, which she had taken to carrying in a bundle in her sleeve. A fair amount of time passed and still they sat unmoving; at last, Estir Makewell stuck her head inside the wagon.

“Why have we stopped?” Finn asked.

“Pedder and Hewney are talking to a reeve and two or three bully-boys,” she said. “It seems the king’s guards have been here twice in the last tennight, asking questions about certain travelers ...” she cast a worried look at Briony, “… and so the reeves are stopping all the strangers they meet and asking their business, where they have been, and suchlike.”

“Shall I come out?” asked Finn.

“You can, but I think my brother is managing fairly. Still, they may ask to look into the wagon. What will we say if they ask to see inside?”

“Let them, of course,” Briony said. “Finn, give me your knife so I don’t have to unwrap mine.”

Both Estir and the playwright goggled at her.

“Oh, come! I’m not going to fight the reeves with it! I’m going to cut off my hair again.” She took a hank in her hand and sadly examined it. “Just when it was beginning to look as it used to. But such vanity is of no help. I played the boy before, I will do it again.”

By the time a red-faced man stuck his head into the wagon, Briony was wearing one of Pilney’s old shepherd outfits, squatting on the floor at the feet of Finn Teodoros and mending the strap of one of the playwright’s shoes.

“Who are you,” said the reeve to Finn, “and why do you ride when the owner walks?”

“I might as well ask, who are you, sir?”

“I am Puntar, the king’s reeve—you can ask any man hereabouts.” He squinted at Briony for a moment, then let his eyes rove around the crowded wagon stuffed with costumes, taking in the wooden props and hats hanging from every open place. “Players… ?”

“Of a sort,” said Finn quickly. “But if my friend told you he was the owner, he was lying—drunk, most likely.” He gave Estir Makewell a stern glance before she could utter any outraged defense of her brother. “Poor man. He owned this enterprise once, but long ago gambled it away. Lucky for him that I kept him on when I bought it.”

“And who are you?” the reeve demanded.

“Why, Brother Doros of the Order of the Oracle Sembla, at your service.”

“You are a priest? Traveling with women? ”

For a moment Finn faltered, but then he saw that the reeve was pointing at Estir Makewell, not Briony. “Oh, her. She is a cook and seamstress. Don’t worry for her somewhat shopworn virtue, sir. The brothers are a pious, sympathetic lot—if you don’t believe me, ask the bearded one we call Nevin to tell you something about the dreadful martyrdom of Oni Pouta, raped over and over by Kracian barbarians. The man weeps as he describes it, so carefully has he studied this and other lessons the gods give us.”

The reeve now looked thoroughly confused. “But what… what are all these costumes? How can you be priests and yet be players?”

“We are not players, not truly,” Finn said. “We are in truth on a pilgrimage to Blueshore in the north, but it is the work of our order to put on shows for the unwashed, acting out pious lessons from the lives of the oracles and the Book of the Trigon so that the unlettered can understand what might otherwise be too subtle for them. Would you like to see us portray the flaying of Zakkas? He screams most beautifully, then is saved by a winged avatar of the gods ...”

But the reeve was already making his excuses. Estir Makewell led him back out of the wagon, pausing to glare back at Finn before she went down the steep, tiny stairs.

“Did you make all that up?” Briony asked quietly when he was gone. “I have never heard such nonsense!”

“Then, like the oracles themselves, I was speaking with the tongues of the gods,” said Finn in a self-satisfied manner, “because as you can see, he is gone and we are safe. Now, let us find a place to stop tonight and discover what pleasure this city has to offer.”

“They are in mourning for their baron here,” Briony pointed out.

“All the more reason, you will discover as you grow older, to celebrate the fact that the rest of us are alive.”

It was not always possible for the players to convince local authorities that they were pilgrims on their way to Blueshore. In the larger towns they sometimes got out the juggling tools and let Hewney and Finn deploy the troop’s collection of rings and clubs to earn a few coppers while the others gathered up local gossip and news of bigger events. Hewney was quite nimble when he was sober, but fat Finn was a revelation, able to juggle even torches and knives without harm.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Briony asked him.

“I was not always as you see me now, Highness,” her royal historian said with a sniff. “I have been on the road since I was small. I have made my living in ways honest and… not so much. Most of my juggling I had from my first master, Bingulou the Kracian—he was the best I have ever seen. Men used to go straight to church after watching him, certain that the gods had granted a miracle ...”

Two things they heard again and again wherever they stopped, in every town or city of the Esterian Valley: that the Syannese soldiers had not given up looking for them, and that strange things were going on in the north. Many of those they questioned, especially the traders and religious mendicants who traveled there frequently, spoke of a sort of darkness that seemed to have settled over the March Kingdoms—not just the weather, although to all it seemed grayer and cloudier than the season warranted, but a darkness of the heart as well. The roads were empty, the travelers said, and the fairs and markets that were always such an important part of the year were poorly attended if they were held at all. City dwellers were reluctant to travel, and those country folk who could do so had moved into the cities for safety, or at least huddled now in the shadows of their walls.

At the same time, though, not even those who had been there most recently, such as a tinker they met north of Doros Kallida, could describe exactly what was happening. Everyone agreed that the Twilight People had come down out of the mist-shrouded north, just as they had two centuries before, and had destroyed Candlerstown and several other cities as they moved on Southmarch. But the siege that had begun before Briony left home seemed to have been prosecuted for most of the time since in a most strangely offhand manner, with the fairies camped almost peaceably outside the walls for months, and no fighting at all between shadowlanders and men.

But more recently that had changed, the tinker told them, or so he had heard from other travelers he had met farther north. Sometime in the last few tennights the siege had resumed, this time in earnest, and the reports were horrendous and frightening, almost impossible to credit—giant tree-creatures pulling down the walls of Southmarch, the outer keep in flames, demon-things slaughtering the defenders and raping and murdering helpless citizens.

“By now it must surely be over, may the gods help them,” the man said piously, making the sign of the Three. “There can be nothing left.”

Briony was so miserable after hearing the tinker’s words that she could scarcely speak for the rest of the day.

“These are only traveler’s tales, Highness,” Finn told her. “Do not take them to heart. Listen to a historian, one who searches such tales for truth—the first reports, especially if they are passed by people who were not there, are always far more grisly and exaggerated than what has actually happened.”

“So how should that soothe me?” she demanded. “Only half my subjects dead? Only half my home on fire?”

Finn and the others did their best, but that night and for several days afterward, Briony could not be cheered.

And what if Barrick really did come back? she thought over and over. After all that, have I lost him now forever? Have the fairies killed him? She lay awake in the small hours, tormented. If they have, I will see every one of those godless creatures slaughtered.

“We have a problem,” Finn announced as they sat eating their mutton stew. Estir had cooked it, making up for the paltry amount of meat with a generous helping of peppercorns they had bought in the last market, so although it was not as filling as it could be, it was at least warming.

“Yes, we do,” said Pedder Makewell. “My sister spends all our money on spices and we are almost copperless again.”

“You are a fool,” Estir said. “You spend far more of our money on drink than I do on pepper and cinnamon.”

“Because drink is the food of the mind,” declared Nevin Hewney. “Starve the mind of an artist with sobriety and he will be too weak to ply his craft.”

Finn waved his hands. “Enough, enough. If we are careful, Princess Briony’s money should last us all the way home, so enough of your carping, Pedder—and you too, Nevin.”

“As long as careful does not mean drinking water,” Hewney said crossly.

“The problem is what the farmers we met today said,” Finn continued, ignoring him. “You heard them. They claim that Syannese guardsmen are camped outside the walls of Layandros. Now, what do you think they are doing there?”

“Making friends with the local sheep?” Hewney suggested.

Finn gave him a look. “Your mouth is your greatest possession, old friend—even more valuable than your purse. I suggest you keep both tightly shut. Now, if you have all finished filling the air with the fumes of your ignorance, give some attention. The soldiers are looking for Princess Briony, of course—and for us. We have been fortunate enough to avoid capture so far, although we were nearly found out in Ugenion and one or two other places.” He shook his head. “We may not be so lucky this time, I fear. These are Enander’s trained soldiers, not the local boobs and strawheads we have cozened—I doubt I shall be able to convince them we are on pilgrimage.”

Briony spoke up. “Then there is only one thing to do. I must leave you. It’s me they’re searching for.”

“Spoken like the heroine of a tragic tale,” said Finn. “But with all respect to your station, Princess, if you believe that you are a fool.”

For a moment she bristled—it was one thing to be talked to in a familiar way, another to be called a fool by a commoner!—but then she thought of how poorly she had been served by flatterers and thought better of it. I cannot have friends who will not tell me what they truly think. Otherwise they are not friends, only servants.

“Why shouldn’t I leave you, Finn?” she said. “I broke the king’s law by running away—went against his express order. And I am certain the Lady Ananka has been poisoning his ear even more busily ever since. By now, I am probably guilty of the loss of the entire Syannese Empire…”

“You are certainly the one they are most interested in, my lady,” said Finn. “But do not think for a second they are not searching for us, too. Why do you think we’ve so often made Dowan fold his long legs like a grasshopper and squeeze into the wagon with you? Because he is the easiest of us all for someone to recognize. Even if you were not with us, Princess Briony, they would not let us go. We would be taken, and then… persuaded… to tell all we know of your whereabouts. I doubt any of us would ever see freedom again.”

A sudden misery washed through her, so strong that she could only put her face into her hands. “Merciful Zoria! I am so sorry—I had no right to do this to you all… !”

“It is too late to change that,” said Hewney. “So waste no tears on us. Well, on Makewell, perhaps, who hoped for an easy life buggering orphan boys back in Tessis, but he was outvoted.”

“I will not bother to answer such a ridiculous charge,” said Pedder Makewell. “Except to say that my interest in boys is purely defensive, since they are the one thing I can be sure you haven’t given the pox to ...”

Finn rolled his eyes as the others laughed. “Gods, you are a crude lot. Have you forgotten that the mistress of all the March Kingdoms is traveling with us?”

“Too late to worry about her, Finn my old blossom,” said Makewell. “She curses like one of us, now. Did you hear what she called Hewney the other night?”

“And without cause,” the playwright said. “I simply stumbled against her in the dark ...”

“Enough!” said Finn. “You all jest because you do not want to talk about what is before us. The Royal Highway is not safe. The king’s men are waiting for us outside Layandros, and even if we manage to sneak past them, it is still several days walk to the Syannese border.”

“So what do you propose, Finn? ” Briony asked. “You sound as though you have a plan.”

“Not only does she have better manners than the rest of you,” the large man said, “she has more wit as well. But I suppose it would be hard not to,” he added, glaring at Hewney and Makewell. “In any case, a few miles north of here is a small road which turns east off the highway. It looks like nothing much more than a farmer’s track—in fact that is what it is for the first few miles. But after a while it joins another, larger road—nothing as large as what we’ve been on, but still, a proper road, not just a track—and passes through the edge of the forest. On the far side is a Soterian abbey, so that we will probably only have to spend one night in the woods, then will be welcomed, warmed, and fed in the abbey the next day.”

“Through the edge of the Black River Forest?” said Dowan Birch. It was the first time the giant had spoken.

“Yes,” said the playwright. “Of course.”

“I did not know it stretched so far west, that we could reach it in a day or less.” His long face was troubled. “It is not a good place, Finn. It is full of… of bad things.”

“What is he talking about?” demanded Pedder Makewell. “What sort of bad things? Wolves? Bears?”

But Dowan only shook his head and would not say more.

“We will be in it scarely a night,” said Finn. “We are nearly a dozen and we have weapons and fire. We even have food, so we do not need to forage. We will stay together and all will be well—and more than well. Come, do you really want to chance our luck with the king’s soldiers?”

Several of the others tried to get Birch to explain what he feared, but the big man would not be drawn. At last, for lack of a better plan, they all agreed.

They reached the fork in the road before the next morning’s sun was high in the sky. A few other travelers shared the road with them, mostly local folk, and they all watched with surprised curiosity as the Makewell troop left the main road for the bumpy forest track.

For several days they had been passing through wilder and wilder country, but now it was suddenly ten times as apparent. The great expanse of the Royal Highway had meant that it passed mostly through open areas, and even when it didn’t the very size of it meant the trees on either side were widely separated and offered little impediment to the sun. As soon as they turned east onto Finn’s track the oaks and hornbeams suddenly seemed to shoulder in on either side like curious folk coming to see what strangers had entered their lands. Suddenly the sun that had been their companion for most of the journey was absent for long stretches. Gone were the occasional sounds of farmers calling to other travelers on the road, or summoning their straying sheep or cows back from some high place. Other than the noise of the wagon’s wheels, the wind in the treetops, and the occasional muted trills of birdsong, the players’ new route was all but silent.

Also, it turned out that Finn had not been entirely correct: the farmer’s track, which is what it had looked to be when they left the main road, in places came to seem something much more chancy, more like a track for animals than people, so that the wagon often became stuck and required much work before it could be shifted and set rolling again. They had barely reached the outskirts of the forest when the hidden sun began to dip behind the western horizon and shadows stretched out across the world.

“I don’t like it here,” Briony said to Dowan Birch, who walked beside her. Because of the bad road and the absence of other travelers she and the giant had left the wagon and were walking behind it like everyone else, ready to push it out of the next ditch.

The place reminded her of something she could barely remember, her lost days after Shaso died and Effir dan-Mozan’s house burned down. Something about the way the shadows moved, the way the uneven light made the trees themselves seem to be turning slowly after she passed, felt secretive, even malicious. Because of it, she had pulled out the talisman Lisiya had given her and had been wearing it for hours.

Dowan shrugged. He looked even more gloomy than Briony. “I do not like it myself, but Finn is right. What else can we do?”

“Why did you say… that there were bad things here?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Highness. Things I heard when I was small.” He looked hurt by her smothered laugh. “I was small once, you know.”

“It wasn’t just that,” she said. “It was that, and… and… and you called me ‘Highness.’ I mean, look at you!”

He frowned, but wasn’t entirely displeased. “I s’pose there’s different kinds of highness, then.”

“Did you grow up somewhere near here? I thought you were born in Southmarch.”

He shook his narrow head. “Closer to Silverside. But we had many travelers coming from the country to the market in Firstford, which was over the river. My father used to shoe their horses, if they had them.”

“How did you come to Southmarch, then?”

“Mar and Dar took the fever. They died. I went to my uncle, but he was a strange man. Heard voices. Said I was made wrong—I was getting big, then. That the gods took my parents because… I don’t remember, truly, but he said it was my fault.”

“That’s terrible!”

Another shrug. “He was the one who wasn’t right. His head, you see? The gods gave him nightmares, even in the daytime. But I had to run away or I would have killed him. I traveled with some cattle drovers up to Southmarch and I liked it there. People didn’t stare so much.” He colored, then looked up. “Can I ask something, Highness?”

“Certainly.”

“I know we’re going to Southmarch. But what are you going to do when we get there? If those Tollys still have the crown, you see? And if the fairies are still there. What will any of us do?”

“I don’t know,” she told him. That was the truth.

Just before dark they stopped and made camp. The players shared the meal with a great deal of boisterous noise, as though nobody wanted to listen too carefully to the sounds of the forest night around them, but what was more unusual was that they did not stay up late. Briony, squeezed in between the warm, reassuring bulks of Dowan and Finn Teodoros, rolled herself tightly in her cloak and clutched Lisiya’s amulet to her breast.

A few times, as she floated in the river of dream, she thought she could hear the demigoddess’ voice, faint and beseeching, as though Lisiya of the Silver Glade were being pulled away in another direction. Once she thought she saw her: the old woman stood by herself on a barren hilltop, waving at her. At first Briony thought the demigoddess was trying to get her attention, but then she realized that what Lisiya was trying to tell her was “Go away! Go away!”

She woke, shivering, in the nearly pitch-dark of midnight, with only the faintest light from the campfire embers to show her where she was. Her eyes were wet, but she could not remember anything in her dreams that should have made her cry.

It could not have been much after the middle of the day, when the sun should have been at its highest and brightest, that the world began to grow dark. A superstitious panic ran through the troop until Nevin Hewney pointed out what the rest of them should have realized immediately.

“It’s a storm,” he said. “Clouds covering the sun.”

Despite the thickness of the trees around them, the forest did not seem like a place in which they wanted to weather a bad storm. Makewell’s Men and their royal charge did their best to hurry ahead, hoping to reach the abbey, or at least high, dry ground before true darkness fell. The road was wider here, crisscrossed by some other forest tracks, which made Briony feel hopeful for the first time in hours. Surely they must be nearing a place where people lived!

It was Finn Teodoros, laboring along at her side, who first saw the faces in the woods.

“Hist,” he said quietly. “Briony—Highness. Do not turn, but in a moment look past me on my left. Do you see anything strange?”

At first she could make nothing out of the complex, meaningless pattern of light on leaves—the graying of the day only made it harder to tell what was light and what was surface—but then she saw a glint of something a little brighter than what was around it. A moment later it resolved itself into a smear of orange fur and a bright black eye. Then it was gone.

“Sweet Zoria, what was it?” she whispered. “I saw… it looked like a fox. But it was the size of a man!”

“I do not know, but that was not the only one,” Finn said. His usual lightness of tone was gone, his voice tight with fear. He walked forward, carefully looking only straight ahead, and whispered in Hewney’s ear, then trotted a few more steps to talk to Pedder Makewell.

As she watched him, Briony saw another trace of movement in the dim, wavering light, this time on the far edge of the road, ahead of them and slightly to one side. Another strange, beastlike face appeared for a moment from behind a tree, then was gone, although for a moment she could have sworn it rose straight up into the air before it disappeared. Frightened, Briony stumbled and almost fell. Goblins? Fairies? Some outriders of the twilight army that had attacked her home?

Suddenly beast-men crashed out of the trees on either side, shrieking like demons.

“To me, to me!” Pedder Makewell bellowed. Briony saw him grab his sister and thrust her behind him, so that the wagon shielded her back. Makewell had a knife, but it was a poor thing, little more than a blade for cutting fruit and sawing over-tough mutton. Still, he held it up as though it was Caylor’s Sighing Sword, and for a moment Briony almost loved the man.

“Together!” Finn Teodoros called. He had the wagon door open and was pulling out what arms they had, many of them little more than props. The beast-men had paused just inside the belt of trees and now were slowly advancing.

“Throw them down!” shouted the first of the things in a loud, angry voice. “Throw down your weapons or we kill you where you stand.” It was with something like relief that Briony saw that he was no magical creature but only wore a half-mask. Several of the masked men had bows, the rest were well armed with spears and axes and even swords.

“Bandits,” said Nevin Hewney in disgust.

The leader walked toward him, grinning beneath his crude fox face. “Watch your tongue. We are honest men, but what are honest men who cannot work? What are honest men whose lands have been stole by the lords, who know no law but their own?”

“Is that our fault?” Hewney began, but the bandit chieftain cracked him hard across the face with the back of his hand, knocking the playwright to the ground. Hewney got up, cursing, blood running between his fingers where he held his nose. Dowan Birch held him back.

“Bone, Hobkin, Col—you watch them,” the leader said. “You others, take what they have. And chiefly search that wagon. Go to it, men!” At this his eyes, which had been flicking from one member of the company to another, lighted on Briony and widened. “Hold,” he said quietly, but his men were already busily and loudly at work and did not hear him. He walked toward her where she stood beside Finn Teodoros. “What have we here? Young and fair… and passing for a boy?” He leaned toward her, his breath rank. He was missing most of his teeth, which made him seem older than he truly was. The two pegs in his upper jaw protruded below the rim of the fox mask, and for a moment it was all too much for Briony. She drove her knife up at his belly, but he was a man who had been living on the edge of things for a long time: her thrust came as no surprise. He caught her wrist and twisted it hard. To her shame, the pain made her drop the knife immediately.

The Yisti knife, had the bandit known it, was probably worth more than the rest of the players’ possessions combined, but he had chanced onto prize he liked better and she had all his attention. “You are pretty enough in your way, girl,” he said, pulling Briony close. “Did you truly fool these yokels? Did they think you a boy? You will be happy to know that Lope the Red is not so easily gulled. You belong to a real man, now.”

“Let her be ...” Finn began angrily, but the bandit cuffed him and the playwright fell heavily to the ground and then struggled to rise as Lope the Red shoved at him with his foot.

Briony stared at the bandit chieftain and suddenly recognized something in him. He was a beast, a thief and a bully, but he was also the strongest and the smartest of these men: if the world continued in the same mad fashion as it had of late, many such men would be rising up from the shadows, and some of them would make kingdoms for themselves.

This is the truth, she thought. This is the ugly truth of my royal bloodline and every other. Those who can take power take it, then leave it to their children…

Finished amusing himself with fat Finn, Lope pulled Briony close again. Then, as the bandit chief reached out a dirty hand to feel for her breasts beneath her loose shirt, he suddenly cried out in pain and staggered back a few steps, the knife which he had twisted out of Briony’s hand standing quivering from his thigh.

“Bastard!” said bloody-faced Finn, hauling himself onto his knees. “I meant that for your stones!”

The rest of the bandits had turned at their chief’s shout, and stood staring as he took a staggering step toward the playwright. “Stones? I’ll have your stones off, if you even have any, you eunuch jelly.” He waved his hand and two more of the bandits hurried forward, overcoming the struggling Finn in a matter of moments and throwing him to the ground, then pinning him there with the weight of their bodies. Lope the Red pulled the knife from his leg with a contemptuous shake of his head.

“In the meaty part. Ha! You are no fighting man, it’s clear.” He leaned forward. “I will show you how to use a knife on a man ...”

“No!” shrieked Briony. “Don’t hurt him! You can do whatever you want with me!”

The bandit laughed. “I will do whatever I want with you, trull. But first I will carve this one like a joint of beef ...”

The air hummed and Lope the Red stopped for a moment, then slowly straightened up. He lifted his hand to his face and tried to take off his mask but found he could not: an arrow, feathers still trembling, had pierced his brow just above the eye and nailed it to his skull.

“I…” he said, then toppled backward like a felled tree.

“Take them!” someone shouted. A dozen armed men crashed onto the road from out of the trees. Arrows were buzzing in every direction, like furious wasps. One of the men who had pinned Finn to the ground leaped up in front of Briony only to fall back against her an instant later with three feathered shafts quivering in his chest and guts.

More arrows snapped past her. Men screamed like frightened children. One of the bandits clutched a tree as if it were his mother; when he fell away he had left it painted broadly with his blood.

Briony threw herself down on the ground and covered her head with her arms.

The Syannese soldiers dragged the last of the bandits’ bodies onto the pile. “All here, Captain,” one of the men-at-arms said. “Best we can tell.”

“And the others?”

“One dead. The others only have a few small wounds.”

Briony scrambled to her feet. One dead? Estir Makewell was on her knees, sobbing. Briony hurried toward her but one of the soldiers grabbed her arm and held her back.

Estir turned from the tall man’s corpse and pointed in fury at Briony. “It’s your fault—your fault! If not for you, none of this would have happened and poor Dowan would be living still!”

“Dowan? Dowan’s dead? But… I didn’t ...” There was nothing Briony could say. Even the other members of the troop, Estir’s brother, Nevin Hewney, even Finn, seemed to stare reproachfully at her from the spot where the guards had rounded them up.

The soldiers wore Syannese colors but an insignia Briony had never seen—a fierce red hound. Their captain stepped forward and looked her sternly up and down. His beard was long but carefully shaped; a bright white plume adorned his tall helmet. Briony thought he had the look of a man who thought himself quite elegant. “You are Princess Briony Eddon of Southmarch, late of our king’s court in Syan?”

No point in denying it now—she had done enough harm. “I am, yes. What will happen to my friends?”

“Not for you to think about, Mistress,” he said with a grim shake of the head. “We’ve been looking for you for days and days. Now come with me and don’t make trouble. You’re being arrested, you are.”

36. Hunting the Porcupine

I seem doomed to be part of strange trios in strange places, thought Ferras Vansen as they clambered up the curving track that Antimony called the Copper Ring. First across the Shadowline with the heir to the throne and a Qar soldier with no face, now through the depths of the earth with two little people. I survived the first one… if only just… But even now he was still dumbfounded by what had happened: why should he have fallen through a doorway behind the Shadowline and come out in the Funderlings’ own halls beneath Southmarch?

There was no answer, of course. Perhaps the gods had a hand in it, although he wasn’t certain about even that. The one thing that had become clear during this year of madness was that even the gods did not seem to be masters of their own fate.

Antimony and the grubby little creature known as Browncoal were arguing. The monk was a head higher—he was the largest Funderlings Vansen had met, the top of his head reaching the bottom of Vansen’s ribs—but he could not match the drow’s ferocity: the little man was snarling like a cornered cat. It was strange to see the two of them so close together, see both their similarities and differences, as though one were a wild pony, bristly and undersized, the other a handsome, stolid farm horse.

“What is all this about?” Vansen demanded.

Antimony scowled. “It is a trap or a trick. He wants to lead us up Old Quarry Way to Tufa’s Bag, but I was there only yesterday. There is no way out of it! We call it a bag because that’s how it is—you can only come out the way you came in.”

Vansen looked at Browncoal, who was glowering like a badger who’d just been dug up. “Does he say why he wants to go there if there’s no way out?”

“He says there is. And he says I’m a blind fool for thinking I know otherwise.” Antimony balled his fists. If Vansen had been Browncoal’s size it would have made him very nervous.

“Let’s see where he leads us. If it’s a trap, it’s a rather strange way to go about it, leading us down a dead end. Besides, I’m sure he knows if he proves false he’ll be the first to die.” Vansen showed the sullen drow his ax. “But it wouldn’t hurt to remind him of it.”

Browncoal led them farther up Old Quarry Way until they had left all but the most occasional cross-passages behind them. The corridor took a distinctly downward slant; then, after a bit more silent trudging, they reached a fork.

Antimony pointed to the rightmost of the branching tunnels. “That’s Tufa’s Bag.”

“And where does Old Quarry Way go from here? ” Vansen asked, pointing along the other branch.

“Back up again until it finally connects with the Copper Ring on the far side of Funderling Town. That’s one of Stormstone’s roads.”

“And why would somebody make a dead end here?”

“That was the original path of Old Quarry Way, but the digging proved too hard—there was no blasting powder in those days. They went this way instead,” he said, gesturing to the left hand fork, “where the stone was softer.”

Despite Antimony’s distrust, Vansen allowed Browncoal to lead them both down the spur tunnel, which twisted and turned and grew low enough in places that Vansen had to get down on his haunches and move forward in an awkward crouch. At last they came to a slightly wider spot. By the pale golden light of Antimony’s coral lamp Vansen could see that the monk’s summation seemed accurate: the corridor ended in an abandoned scrape and a pile of rubble. There was no way out.

Even as Antimony shook his head in dour satisfaction, Browncoal stepped forward, bent, and reached under one of the broken stones piled in front of the scrape. He grunted as he lifted; to Vansen’s surprise a few individual rocks rolled away but the rest of the stones came up together in a single block. Vansen hurried forward and saw that one of the drows’ round battle-shields had been covered with some kind of cement and garnished with stones so that anything except a very careful inspection would reveal nothing more than an innocuous pile of rubble.

“Perin’s Hammer!” he said. “A secret door!”

Browncoal looked up them with a near-toothless grin of triumph, then slipped his legs into the hole revealed beneath. He pulled at the rope around his ankle until the length between him and Brother Antimony had gone taut, then dumped the rest of the coil down the hole before letting himself drop in after the rope. For a moment after the drow had disappeared Antimony and Vansen could only stand, staring, as the rope first went slack and then tight again.

“By the Elders,” said Antimony in sudden shock, “he is down there by himself!” He tossed his pack over the edge of the hole and quickly followed. When he was gone, Vansen hesitated for a moment. He did not like the idea of letting himself down into something he could not see and did not know.

“Brother Antimony?” he called at the edge of the hole. “Are you there? Are you well?”

“Come down, Captain Vansen,” the monk called up from what sounded like only a short distance below. “You can jump. The landing is easy, and down here there is… stay, you must see it for yourself. Wonderful!”

Vansen had his doubts, but was reassured to hear the Funderling. He dumped his pack in and then turned around and let himself drop, shielding his face with his arms.

His armor shirt didn’t weigh much, but it still made his landing clumsier than the others’: Vansen slid, stumbled, slid again, and just managed to turn around before his feet went out from him altogether and he landed on his tailbone in a pile of hard stones.

“By the Thunderer!” he swore, groaning as he got to his feet. “You call that an easy landing?”

“But look,” Antimony said. “Is it not worth the tumble?”

Vansen had to admit it was—if you were a Funderling. The down-tilting passage at the bottom of the disguised hole opened out after a few sliding steps down a pile of tailings. The flickering golden glow of the coral revealed a huge cavern, its ceiling covered with strange, rounded pillow-shapes, each one almost as big as Vansen himself, so that he and the two smaller folk seemed to stand in the center of a motionless cloud. At the center of the room was a lake, lit by an odd, pearly light of its own. In the dim light the water was so still it seemed like crystal. As Vansen gazed down into depths no coral lamp could have reached he suddenly understood why the Funderlings believed that their creator god had arisen on the shores of such a pool.

“Is it not magnificent?” Antimony asked. “Who could have guessed this lay on the other side of Tufa’s Bag? I could almost forgive this beast and his kind for trying to kill us, just for bringing me here. This is what it must have been like when my ancestors first explored the Mysteries!”

Vansen wasn’t exactly certain what that meant. “It’s certainly beautiful, but we must get moving.”

“Of course, of course.” The monk said something to Browncoal, received a reply, then turned back to Vansen with a pained smirk. “He says he is sorry he had to reveal this to me to save his own skin. He had hoped neither my people nor the Qar ever found out about these caverns so his people could claim them for their own. In that way, at least, he proves himself kin to us Funderlings.”

The two little men led Vansen around the edge of the subterranean lake, which seemed almost as large as one of the lagoons in Southmarch Castle overhead. No matter where he looked down he could find no end to its depths, but from one or two angles he fancied he saw movement in the deepest shadows, although he told himself (and in fact hoped quite strongly) that it was only a trick of the lights he and his two companions wore.

Browncoal led them through the lake cavern and out the far end, where some ancient drainage had carved a sort of narrow valley down at an even steeper angle. They followed this low-ceilinged canyon, doing their best not to touch the delicate crystals like cone-shaped snowflakes that clung to the walls and disintegrated at the slightest touch. Antimony even wept after accidentally shattering one large and exuberant example that had sprouted sideways from the rock like a miniature tree, the trunk ramifying into ever more exquisitely narrow sprays of translucent stone. The drow Browncoal watched the unhappy monk in silence, his dirty face twisted in an unreadable grimace.

As the little company traveled deeper and deeper into the strange caverns Vansen saw things he could never have imagined—chambers hung with branching structures that might have been monstrous stag’s horns, and caverns filled with chalky pillars that grew both upward from the floor and down from the ceiling, as if two pieces of bread had been spread with honey, pressed together, then slowly pulled apart. Often beauty and danger came together as the travelers made their way along narrow tracks or over slender bridgelike structures with pits of empty blackness yawning below them.

Who would have guessed that an entire world lurked here beneath the ground? Vansen thought as they passed pools with eyeless white crabs and fish that darted away from their intruding footfalls. In some of the larger caverns bats roosted in astounding numbers—once they disturbed such a dormitory and the shrieking, flapping cloud seemed to take a good part of an hour to clear the chamber, the little creatures were so numerous. But more often Vansen followed his guides through confined spaces where he often had to crawl on his elbows and knees, or even on his belly, wriggling like a snake through narrow holes so that soon every part of him had been covered in mud and grit.

Finally they halted in front of one such gap, a crevice so small Vansen did not believe even his companions could get through it. He put down his pack and crouched beside it, measuring. It was no wider than the cubit between his elbow and fingertip!

“I cannot fit through a space so small,” he said.

The drow seemed to understand him; he said something in his guttural speech. “He says you must go,” Antimony translated. “This is the last narrow passage.” He frowned, listening. “Although he says that this is why they did not try to attack this way. It was too narrow for the ...” He fell silent. “He calls them the Deepings—I think he means the giants we call ettins. They could not fit through this tunnel and it was too long to widen—someone would have heard so much work.”

Vansen suppressed a shiver. “None of this matters. I will not fit.”

“Then he says you must go back,” Antimony reported. “There is no other way to reach the dark lady.”

But Vansen knew that only he could speak to her—only he had a chance to end this before every living person in Southmarch, big and small, aboveground and belowground, had been slaughtered. “Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll try. Can you take my armor and my weapon?”

Antimony considered for a moment. “Not and carry the rest of the food and water through a narrow place. I am not that much more slender than you—Nickel says I eat enough for two or three Metamorphic Brothers.”

Vansen did his best to smile at the monk’s weak joke. “Then I must leave the armor—but I will push the ax in front of me. So how will we do this?” Vansen asked. “Should I go last?”

“No. If you are as necessary to this envoy as you say you are, I do not want to be stuck on the far side from Funderling Town, unable to go back but unable to pull you out. If aught goes wrong, someone must be able to return for help. And I am certainly not trusting that inbred creature to go first. If you did get stuck, that would be the last we saw of him. No, I’m afraid you have to lead the way, Captain Vansen. Our little friend will follow, and I will be last.”

Ferras Vansen took off his byrnie and his padded undershirt—the change sent a chill through him so that his teeth chattered a little. He looked over to the drow, who was watching the proceedings with squint-eyed interest. “Don’t let him hamstring me,” he told Antimony.

“Don’t worry about that, Captain,” the monk said with a grim set to his jaw as he gathered the coils of the prisoner’s rope. “If he tries to do anything he shouldn’t, I’ll pull the leg right off him.”

“Yes, well, don’t kill him,” Vansen said. “We may still need him on the other side. Do I go in head or feet first?”

“Depends on if you want to travel in light or in the dark.” Antimony pointed at the Salt Pool lantern tied around Vansen’s brow. “No, you must go head first, Captain. Your shoulders are the widest part. Remember to lift your arms when you need to make yourself narrower. And do not fear—I will be behind you.”

Vansen took a deep breath, then a few more, but he knew he could delay no longer. He crawled to the hole. How could he ever get himself into such a tight space?

“One arm up, one arm down if you can manage it,” said the monk. “It will give you more choices of how to move, and it can make you even narrower.”

Vansen pushed his ax into the tunnel and then crawled in after it. To his surprise he managed to shift his shoulders and torso through the first tight space. The tunnel opened up a little after that, although he still could not bring his arms down below his head, so he nudged the ax ahead and then wiggled after it like a snake.

A very slow, clumsy, and frightened snake, he could not help thinking.

Everything in Vansen revolted at the idea of forcing himself ever deeper into the earth this way. Even the warm, moist air he was breathing began to feel thin and inadequate. The tunnel was not, as he had half-imagined, a single smooth passage like the burrow of an animal—it had been created by the accidental spaces left between huge slabs of fractured stone. He began to think about tremors, those times that the earth shrugged like a sleeping giant. If it did that now, even the smallest shift, he would be obliterated like a grain of wheat caught between millstones.

Once, when the tightness of the passage around his chest kept him from filling his lungs all the way he had to fight a sudden and surprising terror. He could dimly hear Antimony talking behind him, encouraging him no doubt, but his own body and the drow behind him blocked most of the sound and the monk’s voice was no more than a murmur.

Maybe he’s not encouraging me, Vansen thought suddenly. Maybe he’s thought of something he forgot to tell me—that there’s a pit or an even narrower spot ahead… or to watch out for snakes or venomous spiders…

Stuck in a tight bend and trying to free himself, Vansen banged his head painfully on the wall of the tunnel. He felt a trickle of wetness on his head and assumed it was blood. A moment later his lantern flickered and went out, leaving him in complete and utter darkness.

His heart raced, tripped, and seemed for a moment as if it would not catch its rhythm again. He was choking—trapped in blackness and strangling! No air!

“Stop!” he growled at himself, although the sound was more of a gasp or gulp than actual words. Still, it was his own voice. There was air. The sudden terror that was making his heart pound and his head feel as though his skull was being squeezed in a monstrous fist was only that… fear.

What does darkness matter, anyway? he asked himself. You can only crawl, moving forward an inch at a time, Vansen. You are a worm. Do worms fear darkness?

It was a weirdly reassuring thought; after some moments his heart began to slow. He suddenly saw himself as a god might see him—a god with a sense of humor: Vansen was only a little creature where he didn’t belong, crammed in a tunnel deep underground like a dried pea in a reed—the kind he used to blow at his brothers and sisters when they were children. The earth surrounded him, but it cradled him, too. There was nothing to do but go forward. When he stuck in the narrow places he would simply wriggle until he managed to free himself.

Forward. Only forward, he told himself. No point in anything else.

How the gods must be laughing!

Sweaty, shivering, with mud stinging his eyes and every joint trembling, Ferras Vansen at last crawled out of the far end of the crevice into a small cavern that felt as capacious and airy as the great temple in Southmarch after the tunnel. Browncoal crawled out behind him, followed by Antimony, who clutched the drow’s rope like a child hanging onto a kite string. They ate and rested, unspeaking, and then when Vansen could stand without his knees shaking they made their way forward.

They encountered only a few narrow spots the rest of the way, and nothing like that long, throttling tunnel; at last, after perhaps an hour or two of steady upward movement they clambered up into a gallery that had clearly been worked by the hands of thinking creatures, with crude pillars of stone left to hold up the roof so that the long, low series of chambers had the feeling of a beehive or a garden maze. Vansen was just wondering who and what had created it when a spatter of arrows cracked off stones above them. Vansen and Antimony dove for cover, the monk yanking the drow’s rope so hard the little creature flew off his feet and tumbled like a child’s toy.

The attackers quickly found the range and arrows smacked against the rocks all around them. A chip of broken stone gouged Vansen’s cheek. The drow Browncoal, crouching beside Antimony, began to scream at the unseen enemy in his guttural tongue.

“Tell me what he says!” Vansen demanded.

“I don’t understand all the words.” Antimony listened as the others shouted something back. Browncoal called out to them again, an odd tone of desperation in his voice. “Our drow is saying we come in peace to talk to the dark lady,” he told Vansen quietly. “But the others—they are drows, too—say something about the rope around his leg. I think they do not trust him—they think we force him to tell lies for us.”

“Cut the rope.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Cut the rope, untie it, what you will. But let him go to them so they can see we speak the truth.”

“Forgive me, Captain, but are you mad? What will stop them from killing us then?”

“Don’t you understand, Brother? We cannot fight them. They have bows and we do not, and even now they may be sending for reinforcements. Let the drow go.”

Antimony shook his head but did as Vansen ordered. When he realized what the monk was doing, Browncoal’s eyes widened. When the rope fell off he began to inch away from his captors.

“Tell him to say to his fellows that we come in peace.”

By the time Antimony finished translating the drow was already several steps away, raising his arms as he walked toward his fellows. One arrow snapped out of the shadows but by good fortune missed him. Browncoal stared balefully at the place from which the arrow had come and no more were launched.

“Now we wait,” said Vansen.

“Now we pray,” Antimony corrected him.

Ferras Vansen had time to address several different gods before Browncoal returned with a troop of his fellows, all dressed in leather armor and wearing almost identical expressions of suspicion. Despite Antimony’s misgivings, Vansen surrendered his ax—the drow who was detailed to carry it looked like an ordinary man staggering beneath a side of beef. The drows used the rope that had bound Browncoal to tie Vansen and Antimony by the wrists. Then their former prisoner said something to them, sharp and short. Vansen did not need the translation, but Antimony gave it anyway, in a voice of weary resignation.

“He says, ‘March.’ ”

They climbed steadily for another short while. As they went, squinting drows and other, stranger creatures appeared out of the darkness on all sides until a good-sized crowd followed them. Vansen began to feel like the leader of a religious procession, but couldn’t help remembering that in some processions it was the beasts meant for sacrifice that were carried on the foremost wagons.

They finally reached a huge, high-ceilinged chamber like the inside of a domed temple. The narrow path wound up the outside of the cavern wall and had been widened in some place with wooden walkways fixed directly to the stone. A troop of full-sized soldiers waited there, alien faces stern and eyes bright in their dark armor, and Vansen thought at first they had reached their goal, but instead the guards stepped aside to reveal a massive armored figure sitting on a rock. For a moment Vansen thought it was the demigod Jikuyin and terror gripped him, but as the drows prodded him forward he saw that this new figure, although huge, was smaller than the monster that had held them prisoner in the mines of Greatdeeps, and less like a man as well. Its skin was covered with rough, scaly skin like a lizard’s and its heavy-browed face seemed a crude approximation of human features, as if some creator god had hurried through its making.

Even seated, the thing looked down on them. As Vansen approached, the bright, surprisingly small eyes watched unblinkingly.

“Antimony,” Vansen said quietly, “ask Browncoal to tell this creature that we come in peace to speak with the dark lady ...”

“You shall not need Master Kronyuul,” the giant said in a voice like stone dragged over stone. “As you see, I speak your tongue. The Lady Yasammez likes her generals to know our enemies well.” His chuckle sounded like a hammer pounding slate. He rose, towering far above even his tallest guards. “I am Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps, war-chief of the ettins. You are assassins.”

“No!” Vansen took a step back. “We come to parley ...”

“Why should she parley with you? We will sweep you all away in days, both above and below the ground, and you know it. You come in desperation, hoping to kill our general. Do not worry! You will have your chance… but only if you kill me first.”

“What?” Vansen took another step back. “Don’t you understand? We come to parley!”

“Here, take up your weapon,” Hammerfoot said. “Give him back his ax. I shall have none.” One of the drows staggered forward with the Funderling ax. Vansen took it, in part out of pity for the creature who had carried the heavy thing some distance, but he did not lift it.

“I will not fight you,” he told the giant.

“Come, even you Sunlanders are not such cowards, are you?” Hammerfoot rumbled, leaning forward until his immense, cracked-leather face was no higher than Vansen’s own. “I will even let you strike first. Are you still afraid? Your ancestors were not so hesitant at Qul-Girah, where they killed my grandfather with buckets of burning pitch. Does only water run in the veins of their descendants?”

From childhood, and even after, when he became a soldier, Vansen’s quiet calm and slowness to anger had often been mistaken for cowardice. Only his captain Donal Murroy had recognized the fire that burned inside, that Ferras Vansen was a man who would put up with nearly any provocation to avoid a meaningless fight, but would battle like a cornered animal when there was no other choice. Still, Vansen felt hot shame rush through him at Hammerfoot’s taunts and the harsh laughter of those Qar who could understsand what the giant said.

“Take me to the dark lady,” Vansen said again.

“Your path is through me,” Hammerfoot said. “Is it because you have left your armor behind?” The ettin peeled off his giant chestplate and let it drop to the cavern floor with a noise like a temple gong. “Come, Sunlander, come and die—or are you completely without honor?”

“Captain!” It was Antimony’s voice, fearful to the breaking point.

Everything in Ferras Vansen strained to take up the ax, to wipe the smirk off that great, leering face in a cascade of red—or whatever color a giant bled. He lifted the weapon, weighed it in his hands. Hammerfoot spread his massive arms to show he would not block the blow.

Vansen dropped the ax to the floor of the cavern. “I will not fight. If you will not take me to your mistress then you may as well kill me. I ask you only to let the Funderling monk return. Your Browncoal will tell you he came in good faith and only to translate.”

“I make no bargains with sunlanders ...” snarled Hammerfoot, raising his tree-stump fist over Vansen’s head.

“Do not kill him, Deep Delver,” a new voice called, icy as an Eimene wind. “Not yet.”

“Elders protect us,” Antimony murmured.

“Lady Yasammez!” Hammerfoot sounded surprised.

Vansen turned to see a small procession stepping down off the spiral track and onto the cavern floor. Leading it was someone he had never seen before but nevertheless recognized instantly. She was taller than Vansen himself and caparisoned in black plate armor. A long white sword, unsheathed and thrust through her belt as though it were merely a spare dagger, seemed to glow with a subtle light of its own. But it was the woman’s face that arrested him, stony as a ritual mask, hard as a figure carved atop a tomb. At first Vansen saw nothing alive in that face at all but the eyes, brilliant as slashes of fire. Then the fiery gaze narrowed and the thin lips curved in a mirthless smile and he saw that it was indeed a face, but one without kindness or sympathy.

“So many visitors today,” she said. “And all unwanted.” She came closer. Even when he closed his eyes Vansen could feel her nearness like the approach of a winter storm. Beside him, Antimony let out a noise that might have been a whimper. “I suppose you hope to convince me that we should band together against the common foe.”

Vansen blinked. Was she talking about Hendon Tolly? “I… I’m not ...” It was hard to look at her, but it was also hard to look away. He felt like a moth circling a candle flame, hopelessly drawn and yet knowing the mere touch of it would scorch him to ashes. “I do not know what you mean, Lady.”

“Then the world spins more strangely than even I thought,” she said. “This small delegation here has come to inform me that the human creature known as the Autarch of Xis will soon enter the bay with a force of ships and men.”

Vansen stared, seeing for the first time that it was not only armed guards who accompanied the Lady Yasammez: looking cowed and fearful beside her stood three hairless, long-armed folk.

“Skimmers!” Vansen was utterly surprised. “Are you from Southmarch?” he asked, but the hairless men only looked away as if he had said something shameful. Vansen turned back to the dark lady. “The Autarch of Xis is the most powerful man on the two continents. Why would he come here?” Vansen looked around. Even in this moment of ultimate danger, he could not help marveling at how the world he had known had been so thoroughly shattered and rearranged into this—fairy warriors, giants, Funderlings… and now, apparently, the monster of Xand was joining this mad Zosimia festival. “He has the greatest army in the world,” he said loudly, as much for Yasammez’ supporters as the dark lady herself. “Even the terrible Lady Porcupine cannot defeat him. Not without help ...”

“Fool.” Her voice snapped like a drover’s whip. “Do you think that just because my folk will soon stand between two human armies I must sue for peace?” She glared around the chamber as though daring any of her minions to speak. Clearly, from their blank faces and downcast eyes, none of them even contemplated it. “I would rather die in the mud of the Hither Shore than make another pact with treacherous mortals!” She turned to the giant ettin. “This prattle is meaningless, Hammerfoot. Go on about your sport. Kill them quickly or slowly, as you choose.”

Antimony cried out in fear, but Vansen took a step toward her, crying “Wait!” In an instant a dozen Qar bows were drawn and aimed at him. He stopped, realizing he could easily be killed before saying what he needed to say. “You spoke before of a pact, Lady Yassamez. I know of another one—the Pact of the Glass!”

She looked at him, her expression unfathomable. “Why should I care? It has ended—the Son of the First Stone’s gambit has failed. There is nothing now not even this southern wizardling on his way here with all his warriors… that can prevent me burning this house of treachery to its foundations.”

“But the Pact of the Glass hasn’t ended!”

It might have been some trick of the shadows and the flickering torches, but for a moment Ferras Vansen thought he saw the dark lady become bigger, saw her silhouette grow and become spiny as a black thistle. “How dare you speak thus to me!” she cried, and he could feel the raging words clamoring in his head. He fell to his knees, clutching at his skull, almost weeping from the pain. “My father is dead! Kupilas the Artificer is dead! Despite imprisonment and solitude and pain you could not even imagine, he kept this world safe for century upon century… but now he is dead. Do you think I will bandy any more words with creatures like you—the destroyers of my family? Let this mortal autarch come! He will find nothing waiting for him but ruins. In my father’s name and memory, and in the memory of all the lives you mortals have stolen from us, no living thing shall survive here and the gods will sleep on in exile forever!”

But as she turned away again Vansen dragged himself up onto his knees and reached toward her. His head was throbbing, and blood dripped from his nose and into his mouth, so that he tasted salt.

“Kill me if you wish, Lady Yassamez,” he called, “but hear me first! I knew Gyir Storm Lantern. We traveled together behind the Shadowline. He was… he was my friend.”

She spun and took two long steps back toward him, hand on the hilt of the white sword. “Gyir is dead.” The words landed cold as hailstones. “And he was no mortal’s friend. That is not possible.”

“I am more sorry to hear of his death than you know. I was there in Greatdeeps with him in his last hour, and if we were not friends we were certainly allies.”

The reptilian gaze fixed him. “I doubt that. But what does it matter anyway, little man? He failed me. Gyir is dead, and in a moment you will be too.”

“You may be wrong, Lady. I think there is a chance that despite his death Gyir may yet succeed, and if he does, it will be because of a gift you sent to the king of the Qar—a gift named Barrick Eddon, prince of Southmarch.”

Her hand curled more tightly around the sword’s hilt. She was close enough, Vansen realized, to decapitate him with one swing. He bowed his head, resigned to whatever would happen next. “Gyir did not fail you, Lady, and if he died, it was doing your bidding. The pact could yet succeed.”

He waited for the blow but it did not come.

“You will tell me all you know about Gyir Storm Lantern,” she said at last. “You will live that long, at least.”

37. Under a Bone-white Moon

Briony could not stop marveling at the size of the Syannese camp. She had expected a group of men waiting on horseback, perhaps as many as a pentecount of soldiers camped beside the Royal Highway. Instead, after reaching the road and riding on through the rain for perhaps an hour Briony and her captors reached a muddy meadow full of tents—hundreds of them, she felt sure, an entire military encampment crowded with foot soldiers, mounted knights, and their attendants. As they turned to look at her, curiosity plain in even the sternest faces, her stomach clenched. Would they execute her? Surely not—not simply for running away! But she couldn’t get Lady Ananka’s cold-eyed stare out of her head. Briony had learned early that when you were a king’s daughter people might hate you without ever knowing you.

“Remember, you are not quite real in their eyes,” her father had often said. “You are a mirror in which people, especially your own subjects, see what they wish to see. If they are happy then they will see you in that light. If they are unhappy they will see you as their persecutor. And if a demon is in them they will see you as something to be destroyed.”

If the gods only touched people in dreams, as Lisiya had said, then could they sow lies there as well as truth? Had an evil god set Ananka and the king of Syan against her?

Listen to me! she chided herself. Isn’t it bad enough that I take pride in the number of soldiers sent to shackle me and drag me back to Tessis? Now I flatter myself that the gods oppose me as well. Stupid, prideful woman!

But whatever happened, she would give no one the satisfaction of seeing an Eddon weep and beg for mercy. Not even if she went to the headsman’s block.

When they reached a large pavilion near the center of the camp the captain dismounted and helped her from the saddle with silent and ungracious efficiency. Now that she could see the emblem on his surcoat more clearly she saw that the red hound was almost skeletal, its ribs showing so clearly that they resembled a lady’s comb. It sent a shiver across her skin.

The captain steered her past the sentries outside the pavilion. Once inside, he squeezed her arm hard enough to make her wince to stop her. At the center of the room several more soldiers, all in armor, were bent over a bed covered in maps. Nobody seemed to have noticed the visitors.

“Your pardon, Highness… ?” the captain said at last, clearly unwilling to wait to share his good news and receive his praise. “I have found her—the northern princess—and made her prisoner.”

The tallest of the armored men turned and his eyes widened. It was Eneas, the king of Syan’s son. “Briony… Princess!” An instant later he turned on the captain. “You have done what? What did you say, Linas—made her prisoner? ”

“As you ordered, Highness, I found her and captured her.” But the captain’s voice, so firm and proud only a moment before, now sounded less certain. “You see, I have brought her… brought her to you ...”

Eneas scowled and came toward them. “Fool. When did I ever say ‘make her a prisoner’? I said find her.” He extended his hands to Briony, then to her astonishment dropped to one knee before her. “I crave your pardon, Princess, please. I have confused my own soldiers and that is nobody’s mistake but mine.” He turned to the man who had brought her in. “Be glad you did not put her in irons, Captain Linas, or I might have had you whipped. This is a noblewoman and we have already treated her dreadfully.”

“My… my apologies, Princess,” the captain stammered. “I had no idea… I have wronged you ...”

She did not like the man but she did not want to see him whipped. Or at least not too badly. “Of course, you are forgiven.”

“Go now and tell the others to call off the search.” He watched as the chastened captain hurried out of the tent, then turned to the other armored men, who were watching with amused interest. “Lord Helkis, you and the others may leave me. I would speak to the princess alone.” He thought about it. “No, stay. I do not want this poor woman’s reputation any further besmirched—she has suffered enough at the hands of my family, and quite unfairly.”

The handsome young noble bowed. “As you wish, Highness.” He retired to a stool in the corner of the pavilion. Briony felt almost as though she floated in a dream. One moment she had been wondering whether she would be executed, the next moment a prince was kneeling before her and kissing her hand.

“Please,” said Eneas, “I cannot expect you to forgive my family, or even hope for such a thing—it is not deserved, in any case—but I can apologize again. I was sent away soon after we returned from Underbridge. By the time I found out what had happened and returned to Tessis you were already gone.” He squinted at her. “This is strange, but I could swear that is my old traveling cloak you’re wearing. Still, never mind.”

The prince went on to explain how he had only learned the truth because Erasmias Jino had sent a messenger who had caught up to him as he led his troops south along the southern Kingsway, toward the border. Briony found herself wishing she could thank Jino, whose goodwill—or at least his loyalty to Eneas—she had clearly underestimated.

“When I read the letter, even though it was the middle of the night, I called my Temple Dogs to fold their tents and we turned back to Tessis,” Eneas said.

“Temple Dogs?”

“You see them all around you. They are my own cavalry troop,” he said with more than a little pride. “I picked each one of them. Do you remember how I asked you questions about Shaso and his teachings? The Temple Dogs are modeled after Tuani horsemen. Do not let Linas and his foolish error mislead you—they are the best Syan has, trained to move quickly and efficiently, both on the road and in battle. I am sorry you had such a bad first meeting.”

Briony shook her head. “It was by no means all bad. They saved us from bandits.” She remembered Dowan Birch’s bloodless face and half-opened, unseeing eyes. “Most of us ...” Her joy at having been spared turned into something cold and heavy. “Can we send for my companions, the players? They do not know what has happened to me. They probably think I am going to be beheaded or dragged back to Tessis.” She stopped in confusion. “Am I going back to Tessis? What will happen to me now that I am your prisoner, Prince Eneas?”

He looked startled. “Never my prisoner, Lady. Never. Do not even think such a terrible thing. Of course, you are free to go where you will… although, yes, I pray you will let me take you back to Tessis. We can clear your name of these offensive, baseless charges. It is the least I can do.”

“But your stepmother, Ananka, hates me ...”

For a moment Eneas’ expression hardened. “She is not my stepmother. With the grace of the gods my father will soon end this unseemly relationship.”

Briony doubted it would be so easy. “Still,” she said, “Two people close to me were poisoned by someone trying to murder me.”

“But you would be at my side,” Eneas said. “Under my personal protection.”

The idea of letting someone as kind and strong and competent as Eneas take charge of her was certainly tempting—Briony had been on her own a very long time. Her father was gone, both her brothers were gone, and it would be such a relief just to rest… “No,” she said at last. “I thank you, Highness, but I can’t go back to Tessis.”

He did his best to smile. “So be it. Still, whatever refuge you choose, Princess, I hope you will let me escort you there safely. That is the least I owe you for your harsh treatment in my father’s court.”

“Then take me back to the players—your captain knows where they are. And tell me everything you’ve heard and seen since we last spoke,” said Briony. “But I think no matter what I hear, I’ll still want the same thing—to go back to Southmarch. My people are in sore need.”

“If that is your choice,” said Eneas solemnly, “then I will take you there, though the legions of black Zmeos himself block my way.”

“Please, don’t talk about the gods, especially the angry ones,” Briony said in sudden alarm. “They are too much with us already.”

When it happened, it happened quickly.

Many days had passed as the fishing boat on which Qinnitan was a prisoner followed the coast of Syan into lower Brenland and into the straits that separated Brenland from Connord and the many smaller, rocky islands surrounding it. As a young woman who had spent most of her life in the Hive or the Royal Seclusion Qinnitan would have known none of this, but she had discovered that during the morning hours after he had swallowed his potion or whatever it was, Daikonas Vo would now sometimes answer questions. Clearly, something of his iron control was slipping, but Qinnitan did her best to speak to him only sparingly for fear of this unlikely spring of knowledge suddenly drying up.

Qinnitan had known for a few days that Vo was taking his physick every night as well as in the morning: he became more and more agitated as the afternoons wore away until he quieted himself with the potion a short time after dark. She did not understand exactly what this meant but she was grateful for the slackening of his attention, which allowed her time to think and saw through her rope with an iron rail.

For some time all she could see on the coast sliding past had been stony headlands, cruel cliffs with waves beating at them like beggars pounding on a bolted door. But today, as Vo paced the deck and old Vilas plied the tiller, his sons sitting at his feet like stones, the fishing boat slid past a last bulwark of hills. The rocky front suddenly dropped away to reveal a great, flat expanse of wet sand dotted here and there with massive round stones like the dropped toys of giant children. Beyond this wet tidal flat the land rose into grassy hills spotted with groves of white-barked trees; beyond lay a forest lay spread like a dark green blanket on the knees of distant hills.

Tonight, she decided: if it was ever to happen, it must be tonight. Soon the coastline might be all rocky cliffs again as it had been for days, stones against which even a good swimmer would be crushed and drowned. It had to be tonight.

It wasn’t hard to stay awake, but it was very hard to remain still. She forced herself to keep her eyes closed as much as she could, fighting the urge to make certain that the moon she had just looked at a few moments before was still as bright.

Vo was mumbling to himself, a good sign. When she had last dared to look at him he had been scratching his arms and neck with his fingernails as he paced, and rubbing his belly as though it pained him.

“… Waking up,” he said, then let loose a string of curses in gutter Xixian that would have made the Qinnitan of a year earlier blush and grow dizzy. “Tricked!” he growled. “Not asleep at all. Both of them! They knew! Did it to me!”

He stopped pacing at last and Qinnitan lay as still as she could, doing her best not to breathe. She risked opening her eye just a slit. Vo had his back to her and was licking the needle that he used to take his potion. To her surprise, he dipped into the bottle again, then lifted the needle to his mouth.

Licking the needle three times in a day! Was that good for her or bad? She thought for a moment and decided it could only be good. She found it even more difficult to wait now, but the gods were kind to her: after only a short while, Vo sagged down to sit on the deck.

Through half-shut eyes she watched until the moon had dropped behind the mainsail. Then, after taking a long breath and letting it out slowly, Qinnitan rolled over, snapped the last threads of rope, and crawled toward the shadowed figure leaning against the mast.

“Akar,” she whispered, using the Xixian word for master. “Akar Vo, can you hear me?” She reached out and gave him a carefully measured shake. His head lolled. His mouth opened a little as though he might say something, which made her start back in alarm, but his eyes remained shut and no sound came.

She gave him another gentle shake and as she did she let her hand slide into his cloak. She searched until she found his purse and drew it out. It was heavier than she’d expected, made of heavily oiled leather. She shoved the bits of hard bread she had saved into it, then froze in terror for a moment as her captor stirred and mumbled. When he had once more gone still, she quickly tied the purse to the piece of cord she wore as a belt over her tattered, threadbare servant’s dress from Hierosol. Her heart was beating very fast. Did she really dare to do this?

Of course she did. She could do nothing else. Now that Pigeon was gone she owed her life to no one. If she died trying to escape—well, that still would be better than what awaited her when she was given back to the autarch, of that Qinnitan had no doubt.

She reached into Vo’s cloak again and found the bottle, pinching it carefully between finger and thumb to draw it out. For a moment she hesitated. If she drank it herself, all her problems would be over—at least all problems that troubled the living. The darkness inside the small glass container called to her, a sleep from which she would never have to awake—so tempting… ! But the memory of the young man named Barrick, her dream-friend, tugged at her. Had he really turned his back on her? Or had something happened to him—did he need her help? If she ended her life she would never know.

Decided, Qinnitan pulled out the glass stopper, sent up a prayer to the golden bees of Nushash that she had tended for so long, then upended the bottle over Vo’s mouth.

She was almost undone by the thickness of the physic, which did not splash out like water but rather oozed like pomegranate syrup: it had barely begun to drip when he started to struggle. Still, she managed to pour at least a small spoonful into the back of his throat before he came awake and broke free from her, coughing and sputtering. He knocked the bottle from her hands and it skittered down the deck, but Qinnitan did not care. She must have given him dozens of times his normal portion—surely that would be enough to kill him.

She did not wait to find out, of course. Vilas and his dull, cruel sons were on the boat, the older of the two boys minding the tiller while the other two slept. In a moment even that dullard would notice the struggle. She dashed to the low rail and threw herself over it on the landward side. When the first shock of the cold water had passed, she rose to the surface and began to swim as best she could toward the dark, distant shore. When she had gone a little way she turned to look back toward the boat. She saw something dark go over the side and make a pale splash in the moon-lit water. Her heart flopped in her chest. Was Vo coming after her? Could it be that even a mouthful of poison hadn’t killed him?

Perhaps he stumbled and fell over the side, she told herself as she quickly started splashing toward the shore again. Maybe he’s already drowned.

Only a long stone’s throw from the fishing boat Qinnitan was already cold and exhausted—at times it even seemed the water was pushing her away from the shore, as though Efiyal, the wicked old god of the ocean, was doing his best to defeat her.

I won’t… she thought, although she wasn’t quite sure what she was resisting and she was finding it hard to think. Death? The gods? Daikonas Vo? I won’t!

She fought on, struggling and thrashing so that she knew they must be able to see her from the boat, but the boat did not come after her. Did that mean Vo was dead? Or that they felt sure she was beyond rescue?

It didn’t matter. She could do nothing but what she was doing.

Water stung her eyes and threatened to fill her mouth. The moon hung above her like a giant eye, rippling as her head sunk beneath the water each time and then rose again. Her legs were like stone, dragging her down no matter how hard she kicked them against the grip of the ocean. And now the weariness seeping through her, which only a short while earlier had burned in her veins and lungs like fire, had begun to turn into something else—a killing cold that spread inch by inch until at last she could no longer feel her limbs, did not know up or down, living or drowning, whether it was the moon itself that hung above her or its reflection in the mirroring deeps…

Qinnitan’s feet touched sand and smooth rocks, then lost them again. A few more jerking lunges and the shore was beneath her again, this time for good. Her feet touched the bottom and the water was only at her neck… then her breasts… then her waist.

When she could no longer feel the water Qinnitan dropped onto the wet stones of the beach and followed the moon up into darkness.

Qinnitan woke up shivering under a bone-white moon. She could see no sign of Vo or his boat, but she felt terribly exposed on the beach and the wind was cold and strong. She squeezed as much water as she could out of her sopping dress, then slowly began to make her way toward the hills, her bare feet so cold she scarcely noticed the sharp stones on which she trod.

Partway up the hill she found herself in a sea of long grasses that leaned this way and that in the wind, whispering like anxious children. Qinnitan was too tired to walk any farther. She got down on her knees and crawled a little, thinking in her exhausted, dreaming way that she was somehow tunneling to safety, that she would reach a place where no one could see her. Finally she let herself sink down into the deep, grassy murmur until she could no longer feel the burn of the wind and then the world escaped her again.

“I wish you had not cut off your hair, Princess,” said Eneas as he helped her pull the mail shirt down over her head. “Although in truth such a mannish look will match more nearly with your current garb.”

“People will do strange things when they are fleeing for their lives.”

The prince colored. “Of course, my lady, I did not mean ...”

Briony changed the subject. “This is very light—much lighter than I would have expected.” In truth, the armor did not feel a great deal less comfortable than one of the formal dresses she had worn at court, let alone the stomacher and starched collar and layer upon layer of petticoats that she had been forced to wear beneath the dresses. The mail hung comfortably over a padded undershirt and dangled to almost her knees, but was slit on either side to make riding easier.

“Yes.” The prince was pleased she had noticed. It was one of his more endearing qualities, Briony couldn’t help feeling, that he was always happy when she showed interest in arms and armor—or at least more interest than other women would. “As I told you, it is modeled on the Tuani and Mihanni, fast desert riders like your teacher Shaso commanded. No longer can slow-moving knights trample an enemy at will. What the longbow made difficult during our grandfathers’ day, guns will soon make impossible. Even the strongest armor can stop a rifle ball only from a distance, but it leaves its wearer ungainly on a horse, and helpless when he falls ...” He colored again. “I am talking on and on. Let me help you with your surcoat.” Eneas and his page slid the garment over her as she held out her arms, then Eneas stepped away, perhaps out of a sense of propriety, while the young page tied up the sides.

“There,” said the prince. “Now you are a proper Temple Dog!”

Briony laughed. “And honored to be one, even if only for show. But is it truly necessary this soon?”

“Southmarch is a long way, Princess, and the north is unsettled and dangerous. Lawlessness has followed in the wake of the fairy army. Those bandits that Captain Linas and his men killed are by no means the only ones, and there are many others who do not love my father or Syan, even within our own borders.”

“But surely no one will attack a troop this size!”

“I do not doubt you are right. But that does not mean someone might not fire on us from cover with a bow or a gun.” He held out a helmet with a drape of mail at the neck. “And so you will wear this, too, Princess.”

“May I at least wait to put it on until we leave the tent?”

He smiled at last. Briony had to acknowledge that Eneas was really quite good to look at, with his big open face and strong jaw. “Of course, my lady. But then you may not take it off again until we reach Southmarch. No, nor even then.”

The prince had ordered his men to prepare for the journey north as he and Briony and his private guard rode back to where the players were still being held in uneasy custody by Syannese soldiers.

“Again we are rescued from a most unpleasant fate, thanks to you, Princess,” said Finn Teodoros.

“A fate that wouldn’t have threatened you were it not for me,” she said. “I’ll do what I can to make it up to you all. How do the others fare?”

“As you would guess,” Finn told her. “Mourning Dowan Birch’s death, of course. We all loved him, but I think Estir loved him more than the rest of us realized.”

Briony sighed. “Poor Dowan. He was always so kind to me. If I ever have my throne again I will build a theater and name it in his honor.”

“That would be kind, but I would not mention it yet, while the wound is so new.” Finn shook his head. “I cannot tell you how my heart sank when they took you away, Highness—yet here you are! There is something epic in your adventures, I cannot help feeling, and I suspect I have only heard half of them from you.”

“Teodoros may praise you to the heavens,” said a voice behind her, “but don’t expect it from me.”

Briony turned to find Estir Makewell staring up at her, eyes red and hair draggled.

“Estir, I am so sorry…”

“Are you?” The woman seemed sunk into herself, but taut, like an animal poised to spring. “Truly? Then why didn’t you ask to pay your respects to Dowan when you first came back?”

“I meant to…”

“Of course.” Estir grabbed Briony’s arm hard enough that it felt like a kind of assault. “Come, then. Come and see him.”

“Estir ...” said Finn Teodoros in a warning tone.

“No, I’ll go,” Briony told him. “Of course I’ll go.”

She allowed the woman to drag her across the road and back a few steps toward the beginnings of the forest where they had been waylaid. The tall man’s body lay on the ground, his face and chest covered in one of the bright costume cloaks he had worn as the god Volios.

“Here,” said Estir. “This is what I have left of him.” She twitched back the covering, revealing Dowan’s long face, fish-belly pale. She had closed his eyes and tied his jaw shut with a length of cloth, but despite the soothing words people always said, the kind giant did not look anything like he was sleeping. He looked like a mere object now, broken and useless.

Like poor Kendrick, she thought. One moment the blood was making a blush in his cheeks, the next moment it was only a drying splash on the floor. We are nothing when the life is gone from us. Our bodies are nothing.

“Are you weeping? ” Estir demanded. “Are you weeping for my Dowan? You have some nerve, princess or not. You have the pride of the gods if you can weep for him when it was you who brought this on him.” She pointed at the giant’s awful, empty face. “Look at him! Look! He was all I had! He was going to marry me when we had a little money! Now he’s… he’s only ...” She swayed and then sank down to her knees, hitching and sobbing. “Kernios lead you s–safely and take you in, dear D–D–Dowan…”

Briony reached down to touch her shoulder; Estir knocked her hand away. “Don’t! The others can fawn over you but this was your fault! You never cared for us at all.”

“Estir,” said Finn as he hurried to Briony’s side, “you’re being foolish. The princess had nothing to do with this ...”

“She had everything to do with this,” Estir Makewell snapped. “But no one else will say anything to her because she’s a gods-cursed royal! What do I care? My lover is dead—the last chance I had! The last ...” She fell forward again, sobbing as she lay her head on the corpse’s chest. “Dowan… !”

“Come away, Princess,” said Finn. “None of the rest blame you.”

But Briony could not help noticing that none of the others had come to welcome her back, either—that Nevin Hewney and Pedder Makewell and the rest had watched from a distance, as though a spell had transformed her into something new and a little frightening.

“I will see that he has a good burial in Layandros,” she told Finn. Briony looked to where Prince Eneas waited with his men, deliberately staying at a distance so that she could have this reunion with what he supposed—what she herself had supposed—were her friends. “That’s the least I can do.”

“I say again, do not blame yourself, Princess. The roads are bad these days and we have spent much of our lives traveling. This might have happened whether we journeyed with you or not.”

“But you were traveling with me, Finn, and I didn’t give you any choice about it. Without me, Dowan could have stayed behind—could have gone off to tend a farm with Estir.”

“And caught the plague, or been gored by his own bull. I’m not certain I believe in the gods, but Fate is something else.” Finn shook his head. “Our deaths will find us, Princess—mine, yours, Estir Makewell’s—whether we hide from them or not. Dowan’s found him here, that’s all.”

She could not speak for a long moment. The weight of all she had lost and all she had failed to do felt as though it were pressing down on her so heavily she could barely breathe.

“Th–thank you,” she said at last. “You are a good man, Finn Teodoros. I regret involving any of you in my troubles.”

Now it was the playwright’s turn to fall silent, but it seemed a silence of consideration rather than emotion. “Come a little way aside with me before you leave us, Princess Briony,” he said at last.

They retreated back across the road until they stood a goodly distance from Eneas and his soldiers but still in sight, and far enough from the grieving Estir Makewell that Briony could breathe again.

“If there is something you want, ask me,” said Briony. “Dear Finn, you are one of the few people in this world who has done me nothing but kindness.” She could not forget the imperiousness she had shown him earlier—it made her wince to think of how she had threatened him with her rank. “You will be my historian, as I said, but I hope you’ll also still be my friend.”

For the first time since she had met him he seemed at a loss for words, but once again it seemed something other than raw feelings that kept him silent. At last he shook his head as if to throw off some nagging annoyance. “I must speak to you, Princess.”

“You puzzle me, Master Teodoros. Aren’t we speaking?”

“I mean in honesty. True honesty.” He swallowed. “You have suffered much for your people and risked even more, Highness. Listen to me now. Those whom you consider your friends and allies—well, some of them are not friends. Not at all.”

Dawet had said much the same to her on that day so long ago, back in Southmarch. That felt like another world. “What do you mean? I do not mean to mock you, but I can scarcely think of anyone who hasn’t betrayed my family’s trust—the Tollys, Hesper of Jellon, King Enander ...”

“No, I mean someone closer to you.” His usual air of amused cynicism was quite gone. “You know that I have long served Avin Brone, both as a scholar and as a spy.”

“Yes, and someday I will ask you to tell me what you can of those days, those tasks. Brone himself said that I was too trusting, that I needed to find my own spies and informants, but I confess I know little of the game ...”

Teodoros raised his hand, then thought better of displaying impatience to a princess. “Forgive me, Highness, but it is Brone himself I am talking about.”

It took a moment before she understood him. “Brone? Are you saying that Avin Brone is a traitor?”

His round face was full of pain. “This is difficult, my lady. Lord Brone has never been anything but just and fair with me, Highness, and neither has he ever said anything to me that suggested he was less than loyal to you… but he left me alone in his retiring room once, when one of his other spies was brought in unexpectedly from the South Road, wounded by an arrow ...”

“Rule. His name was Rule,” Briony said. “Merciful Zoria, I remember that night. I was there in Brone’s chambers.”

“And I was in a room nearby where the count does his business.” Finn glanced around to make sure they were still out of everyone’s earshot. “I am… I am a curious man, to tell you something that will not surprise you. By Zosim the Many-Faced, it is not my fault—I am a writer! I had never been left alone among Lord Brone’s things before, and… well, I must confess that I took the chance to look at some of his papers. Some of them were things I could not make much sense of—maps of places I didn’t know, lists of names—and others were simply reports about doings in Summerf ield, Hierosol, Jellon, and other places, obviously reports from his many spies. But at the bottom of a pile in his writing desk I found a vellum cover with the Eddon blazon upon it, but without a seal to keep it closed.”

“You know you should not have even touched such a thing,” said Briony. “You could have been executed for that if someone caught you reading it.” She said it almost lightly, but in truth she spoke only because she was stalling; she did not want to hear what he would say next.

“As I said, Princess, I am a writer, and as all know, that is another name for a fool. I stepped to the doorway to listen for anyone coming and then unfolded the cover. Inside was a list of people—those that I recognized were trusted agents of Lord Brone—who, at a certain time and at a certain signal, would kill or imprison the members of the royal family. There were also plans for consolidating power afterward and keeping the people pacified. And the scheme was in Brone’s handwriting. I know it as well as my own.”

“What… ?” She could not believe what she was hearing. “Are you telling me that Brone plans to murder us?”

Finn Teodoros looked miserable. “It could be that I am wrong, Highness. It could be that it was another report—some conspiracy that he had uncovered, and perhaps even thwarted, copied over in his own hand. Or something entirely different. I would not want to declare the count guilty on what I saw alone and have his death on my conscience. But I swear it was as I tell you, Princess. He had made a list in his own hand that looked very much like a plan of betrayal and assassination—a plan to seize the throne of Southmarch. I wish it were not so, but that is what I saw.”

The clearing beside the road suddenly seemed as unstable as the deck of a ship. For a moment Briony feared it would spin away from beneath her and she would faint. “Why… why do you tell me this now, Finn?”

“Because you are leaving us soon,” he said. “We will not be able to keep up with the prince’s soldiers and in truth we wouldn’t want to. We are not fighters, but there’s fighting ahead of you, the gods know.” Finn bowed his head as though he couldn’t meet her eye. “And… because you have been kind to me, Princess. I am fond of you. As you said, I would like to think of you as a friend—and not simply because of the power that comes with being close to royalty. Once I could convince myself that I might be mistaken, that it was none of my affair. Now… well, I know you too well, Briony Eddon. Princess. That is the truth.”

“I… I have to think.” As alone as she had felt since her twin brother marched away, this was worse. The world, already a dangerous and confusing place, had now proved to have no center and no sense at all. “I have to think. Please leave me alone.”

He bowed and went away. And when Prince Eneas came to speak to her, sensing something wrong, she waved him off as well. There was no comfort to be had in the company of other people. Not now, anyway. Perhaps never again.

38. Conquering Armies

Olin Eddon stood at the rail. He was tethered to one of his guards, with two others standing close by. The autarch might not worry about what a desperate, condemned man might do, but Pinimmon Vash did, and he had finally ordered that some kind of restraints be kept on the northern king at all times. At the very least, Olin might throw himself overboard and spoil whatever purpose Vash’s master had in mind for him. Why this didn’t worry Sulepis, Vash had no idea, although the autarch generally behaved as though he were infallible. So far nothing had proved the Golden One wrong, but Vash knew from long experience that if something did go wrong, it would be considered his fault, not his monarch’s.

“You do not look well, your Majesty,” said Vash.

“I do not feel well.” The northerner was more pale than usual, and his eyes were shadowed. “I have been sleeping poorly of late. I have many bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” What a strange dance the autarch had forced him into, Vash thought. Everyone on the ship knew that this man was doomed, and yet the autarch expected Olin to be treated not just with courtesy, but as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “It is good you have come out on deck. The sea air is reputedly good for many ailments of the spirit.”

“Not for this one, I fear.” Olin shook his head. “It will grow worse as I draw closer to my home.”

Vash didn’t know what to say—hardly knew from listening to their conversations whether either King Olin or his own master were entirely sane. He looked up at a castle on the rocky headlands. A flag flew from its tower, but it was too far away to make out anything but its colors, red and gold. “Do you know that place?”

“Yes—Landsend. It is the home of one of my oldest and most trusted friends.” Olin’s smile was more like a grimace—Vash could see the man was hiding some sharp pain, but whether it was physical or caused by a memory, he couldn’t tell. “A man named Brone. He was, in many ways, my paramount minister, as you are the autarch’s.”

And I would wager you treated him better than Sulepis does me, whom he considers little more than a useful pet. Vash was surprised at his own bitterness. “Ah. Would you prefer to be left alone?”

“No, your presence is welcome, Lord Vash. In fact, I had been hoping we would find a little time to talk like this… just the two of us.”

The skin on Vash’s neck prickled. “What does that mean?”

“Merely that I believe that you and I have more interests in common than you might immediately recognize.”

Did this fool think he could talk Pinimmon Vash into betraying the Autarch of Xis? Even had he not been frightened of his master—and the gods knew that Sulepis terrified him—Vash would never betray the throne. His family had been serving Xis for generations! “I am certain that we have many interesting things to discuss, your Majesty, although I cannot conceive of any common interests we might share. Sadly, though, I have just remembered several chores still to be done this morning, so our conversation will have to wait.”

“Do not be so certain that we have no common interests,” Olin said as Vash turned to go. “None of us can know all the truth. It is a truly strange world we mortals inhabit—that is both my greatest solace and my greatest fear.”

The next time Vash encountered the northerner, Olin was brought to the fore of the ship to join Sulepis while the priests chanted and poured two golden seashells full of the autarch’s blood over the side to purify the waves and to claim this new body of water for Xis. Other than the linen bandages around his forearms, Sulepis seemed almost bursting with health, and when Olin and his guards climbed onto the forecastle the contrast between the two could not have been greater.

“Vash tells me you are not well,” the autarch said. “If it is the sea that does not agree with you, take heart—as you can guess, we will drop anchor in only an hour or two.”

Olin did not reply. Instead of watching the spectacle of Panhyssir and his priests blessing the waters, he turned to look back at the rest of the great ship. Everything was being prepared for landfall, sailors and soldiers swarming over the deck, windlasses creaking as the army lifted out their equipment and prepared to debark. It was unusual and more than a little dangerous to begin unloading before the ship touched land: Vash could tell that Sulepis was in a hurry.

Ranged behind them up the bay was the rest of the fleet, almost half of the ships the autarch had brought to the northern continent, so that the golden falcons on their sails seemed to be flying across the water in a great flock. Hierosol’s great outer walls had fallen in a few days. How long could the much smaller Southmarch hope to resist the power of Xis?

The northerner had doubtless been thinking the same thing. “You have brought an impressive force,” Olin said, turning back to the autarch. “It reminds me of a bit of history. You are a well-read man, Sulepis. Have you heard of the Gray Companies who roamed these lands three centuries ago?”

The autarch spread his gold-tipped fingers as if to admire how they sparkled in the sun. “I have heard of the mercenaries, of course,” he said. “Such things would not be allowed in my country. In Xis bandits are impaled on sharpened posts for all to see. My people know that I watch over them.”

“Oh, I am certain of that,” said Olin. “But looking at your fleet and the vast army it carries, I was reminded of the days of the Gray Companies, and especially the famous warlord Davos, called ‘The Mantis.’ ”

The autarch seemed amused. “The Mantis? I have never heard of him.”

“I think that is because you have studied my family’s later history more closely than you have that particular period.”

“Was he truly a priest, with such a name?”

“He owned the income of a mantisery, but that did not make him a true priest. Neither did he receive that name for his good deeds. In fact, there are some who say there was never a greater villain on the continent of Eion… but others might argue that.”

Sulepis laughed with what seemed honest pleasure. “Oh, very good, Olin! Never a greater villain until today is what you mean.”

The northerner shrugged. “Do you really think I would be so rude to such a thoughtful host?”

“Speak on. You have my interest.”

“You will know how the Gray Companies sprang up here in the north during the chaos of the first war against the Twilight People. They roamed the lands in the years after Coldgray Moor—bands of soldiers with nowhere to go, fighting at first for any lord who would pay them, but turning at last to pillage and robbery for its own sake. The worst of these—and the most powerful—was the son of a Syannese noble family, Davos of Elgi. Because of the mantisery income, or perhaps because of the long, black cloak he wore, he gained the name ‘Mantis.’ In the chaos of those days Davos fought for many causes and plundered many cities, but a great warlord is like a man riding on a fierce bear—everyone fears him except the bear, and he must always remember to keep the beast fed. The Mantis was forced to continue his raids even when most of the wars that followed the Qar’s withdrawal had ended. As more and more northern cities were despoiled, the starving survivors had nowhere to go but to follow their despoiler, so the armies of the Mantis grew and grew. At last he ruled over all Brenland and large stretches of Syan. His men also pillaged parts of my own country, roaming through Southmarch and Westmarch, robbing and killing, until the people screamed out to be saved from this terror. Helping them fell to my ancestor, King Anglin’s granddaughter, Lily Eddon.”

“Ah, yes,” said the autarch. “The woman who ruled a nation! This name I have heard.”

“She earned her fame. Her husband had been killed in a fight against one of the Mantis’ fellow bandits and his son had died beside him. Lily was left to rule the country alone, and many of the frightened people argued that she should be deposed, that a warrior-knight should be elevated to the throne. But Lily was as much a warrior as any man in her court—Anglin’s blood ran hot and strong in her. She would not be put aside.

“The Mantis had long admired Southmarch, and not just because of its young queen. The land was fertile and the castle was all but impregnable. Davos sent Queen Lily an offer of marriage. She had no husband and no son. The Mantis pointed out that he was rich and strong, and that if she married him his great army would be at the service of the March Kingdoms. Many in the Southmarch court urged her to accept this proposal. What other hope did they have?

“Instead, Lily sent a letter back to Davos Elgin, the black-cloaked Mantis—master, so it was said, of a hundred thousand bloodthirsty soldiers—which read, ‘Queen Lily regrets that she will be unable to honor your invitation. She will be too busy killing the rats that are swarming across her lands.’ And that is what she commenced to do.” Olin glanced up. “Am I wearying you, Sulepis?”

“Not at all! You are amusing me and that is a rare treasure.” The autarch leaned down toward the foreign king. With his bony, long-nosed face and troublingly bright, unblinking eyes, Vash thought Sulepis looked more than ever like a human hawk. “Please continue.”

“Lily knew that the Gray Companies could not survive without plunder—they had already left destruction across all the other lands they had entered—so she sent her agents out to tell the people to retreat, not just in the Mantis’ direct path but all around, even from places it seemed he did not threaten. She told the people to take everything they could and destroy all that was left behind. If they could reach Southmarch, she told them, she would protect them there. Then she sent out her armies, still full of hard, battle-worn veterans of the war against the Twilight People, to harass the Mantis’ much greater force but never to confront him directly.

“Thus, as the mercenary armies trekked across the March Kingdoms they found the way deserted and scorched before them—no nobles to ransom, no valuables to steal, no food to eat. As they struggled on, the Marchmen appeared from out of nowhere, struck, then vanished like shadows, never killing many of the Mantis’ soldiers but making them all fearful because of the unpredictability of their attacks. Sometimes they slit the throat of just one mercenary where he lay sleeping in the midst of a dozen comrades, so that when the others found him they would know it could just as easily have been any of them. Queen Lily’s raiders killed the Mantis’ men in a hundred different ways, subtle and otherwise, weakening the bridges, poisoning the mercenaries’ water or rations, or simply setting fire to their tents as they lay sleeping. So many of Davos’ sentries were murdered that finally the pickets insisted on huddling together in groups of three or four, which meant large stretches of the perimeter were left virtually unguarded.

“At last, with his unnerved men starting at shadows, Davos the Mantis staked everything on a swift and direct assault upon Southmarch Castle itself. The shores of the bay were full of rough dwellings built by those who had already fled Davos’ assault but could not get into the crowded castle. As the mercenaries’ march drew closer these refugees fled from them again, disappearing into the caves and forested heights of the headlands. Then, as Davos and his men marched down the main street, wary of ambush, they smelled the smoke and saw the first flames—the town along the shore had been set on fire. The mercenaries looked at each other fearfully. These people of Southmarch would rather burn their towns down again and again instead of ceding one inch to the raiders. Who could fight such madness?

“And then the Mantis’ men at last saw the high walls of Southmarch Castle across the bay, and knew it would take them a year or more to overthrow such a powerful stronghold—a year of starvation, because the land had been made uninhabitable around them and their stores were empty. Even Davos’ most loyal lieutenants, the men who had enriched themselves at his side and gone from bandits to magnates in his employ, now refused his orders. They had lost the will to fight. Many of the soldiers threw down their weapons on the spot and skulked away from the overwhelming sight of unconquered Southmarch.

“But Lily had kept only a token army inside the castle. The greater part of her forces had been taken by ship to the coast of Landsend to begin their ride south. So it was that as the Mantis’ army was in its greatest disarray, with a quarter or more of its number deserting and the rest fighting among themselves, the army of Southmarch fell upon them.

“The Southmarch folk were much fewer but they were fed, and angry, and fighting for their own land. The mercenaries trapped on the beach put up only a short resistance before the Southmarch force split them in half. Those on one side were forced back against the waves of the freezing bay and either surrendered or were killed. Those on the other side did their best to follow their comrades who had fled earlier, but most were caught as they tried to climb the cliffs. The queen’s archers picked them off like birds on a low branch, their bodies tumbling down the hillside in such quantity that in Southmarch we have for centuries called a disordered heap a ‘mantis-pile,’ although few these days remember where the term came from.

“The Mantis himself, Davos of Elgi, died in Brenn’s Bay, trying to wade toward the castle with a dozen arrows in him.

“You see, the March Kingdoms have been invaded by Syan, by Hierosol, by the Kracians and all the mercenaries of the Gray Companies. We have been invaded three times by the Qar themselves. Twice we have driven them out with them suffering great losses, and we will drive them out again. And you, Sulepis, for all your power and certainty, will soon be only another name in the histories of my country—another failed invader, another man whose pride was greater than his sense.”

Even though only Vash, the autarch himself, and Panhyssir spoke enough of Olin’s tongue to understand all he had said, the northern king’s tone as he finished his tale was enough to make many of those surrounding the autarch’s litter look up at their monarch with foreboding, if not terror. This foreigner was insulting the Golden One!

At first Sulepis said nothing, but at last a smile stretched slowly across his angular face.

“Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed, Olin. A story with a lesson in it! Although I think you could have trusted your audience to puzzle out the meaning without the last bit—perhaps a bit too much honey on the cake, if you take my meaning. Still, very good.” He nodded as if taken with a new idea. “And your advice is excellent. It would certainly not be a good idea to sail all my ships and all my men into the bay at once, leaving myself open to whatever mischief these Qar have planned for me.” He leaned down as if about to impart a secret. “So in a few moments we will disembark a good number of our soldiers and let them come upon Southmarch from the land while the fleet approaches on the water. What do you say, King Olin? Since it is your idea, will you accompany me? It may be your only chance to feel the earth of your homeland beneath your feet—or at least, to do so with the open sky above your head.” He laughed, then called out to the captain of the flagship, “Prepare to make land!”

The autarch swept down from the forecastle and his servants scurried before him like ants. Pinimmon Vash had to follow the Golden One, of course—this early landing was news to him and he had much to do. When he looked back, Olin Eddon still stood in the same place, surrounded by guards, his pale, weary face empty of any expression Vash could recognize.

If he had wished to be completely honest, Pinimmon Vash would have had to admit that Olin Eddon made him uneasy. He had only ever met two types of monarchs, and certainly all the autarchs he had served had been either one or the other—those who were oblivious to their own shortcomings or those who were overwhelmed by them. Some of the most savage, like the current autarch’s grandfather, Parak, had been of the latter sort. Parak Bishakh am-Xis VI had heard conspiracies in every whisper, seen them in every downcast gaze. Vash himself had barely survived his years in Parak’s court, and had kept his head only by recommending—in the subtlest possible way, of course—other targets to the autarch’s attention. Still, Pinimmon Vash had twice been arrested in those last, nightmarish years, and once had written his testament (not that if he had been executed Parak would have honored it: one of the incitements for an autarch to declare treason was that the traitor’s goods were always forfeited to the throne).

The current autarch was of course the other sort, the sort that believed himself infallible. In fact, the young autarch’s luck was so extravagant that even Vash had begun to believe that the success of Sulepis might have been ordained by Heaven itself.

But this northerner, Olin Eddon, was like no other ruler the paramount minister had ever met: in truth, his measured way of speaking and his quiet observation of what went on around him reminded Pinimmon Vash of his own father. Tibunis Vash had been chief steward of the Orchard Palace, a position from which he was the first ever to retire—all others before him had died in harness or been executed by dissatisfied autarchs. Even after Pinimmon had reached adulthood, and indeed even after he had been raised to the position of paramount minister, the highest position a nonroyal could reach, he had still felt intimidated in his father’s presence, as though the old man could see right through what impressed so many others, could see through the robes of office to the trembling boy beneath.

“He has been dead ten years,” Vash’s younger brother had once said, “and yet we still look over our shoulder in case he is watching.”

But Tibunis Vash had not been cruel or even particularly cold, just a reserved and careful man who always thought before he spoke and spoke before he acted. In that way this Olin Eddon was much like him. Neither of them ever rushed to speak and both of them seemed to hear and see things others missed. If there was a difference it was in the impression that each gave to an observer: Pinimmon Vash’s father had seemed to sit above the turmoil of the busy and treacherous Xixian court, serene as the statue of a god in a temple garden. King Olin seemed bowed down beneath a great but secret sorrow, so that nothing else in life, no matter how wonderful or dreadful, could ever seem more than trivial. Still, though, despite his aura of defeat, there was something about the northern king that made Pinimmon very, very uncomfortable. So it was that as Olin stood beside him now on the rocky beach of the small cove where the boats had set them down, Vash felt that it was he, not the prisoner, who was subtly in the wrong.

“It will not be long,” Vash said. “We will be moving before the sun has finished tipping noon.”

Olin did not seem to care much one way or the other: the northerner did not even look at him, but went on watching the troops preparing for the march, some carrying jars and chests off the ships, others assembling wagons that had been in pieces in the hold, or harnessing teams of horses and oxen to pull those wagons. “Did you wish to have that conversation now?”he asked at last, still looking anywhere other than at Vash himself.

“What conversation?” Was the man truly so desperate, or just a fool? “Look, here comes the Golden One. Have your conversation with him, King Olin.”

A hundred paces down the beach the autarch stepped from his gilded boat onto the backs of a dozen crouching body-slaves, and from there to the throne atop his litter, which the slaves then lifted and carried up the beach. The gold leaf that covered it glittered so brightly in the spring sun that it did in truth look like the sun’s own chariot.

The commanders of the brigades now brought the soldiers, who had been waiting in the sun, back to attention. By the time they had marched out the supply train would be ready to move in behind them.

Vash was still on his knees when the litter stopped beside him. “Ah, there you are,” the autarch called down to him. “I did not see you groveling in the sand. Stand up.”

Vash quickly did what he was told, although he had to struggle not to groan out loud at the pain in his joints. It was mad that he should be here in the wilds of this uncivilized land, exposed to the gods alone knew what kind of chills and harmful vapors. He should be back in Xis overseeing the kingdom, dispensing wise justice from the Falcon Throne in the autarch’s absence, as befitted his age and years of service… “I live only to serve you, Golden One,” he said when he was on his feet at last.

“Of course you do.” Sulepis, dressed in his full battle armor, looked up and down the beach at the waiting soldiers—several thousand fighting men and nearly an equal number of their supporters, with at least that many more remaining on the ships until they reached Olin’s Southmarch. Vash knew that the northerners could not even comprehend the autarch’s power, the size of his empire, let alone withstand it: the Golden One could easily summon an army ten times bigger than this if he needed it, while still leaving Hierosol under strong siege and his home in Xis impregnably guarded.

The autarch himself knew all this, of course: he had the expansive, grinning face of a man who watched something dear to his heart finally taking shape. “And where is Olin?” he called. “Ah, there. We agreed you would travel with me, so come sit at my feet. This is your country—I am sure there are many local features and quaint customs you can describe for me.”

Olin looked sourly up at Sulepis atop the litter. “Yes, we have many quaint customs here. Speaking of such, may I walk? I find the long weeks on the ship have left me in want of exercise.”

“By all means, but you will have to speak loudly so I can hear you from up here—a metaphor of sorts, eh? A caution against becoming too removed from one’s subjects!” Sulepis laughed, a high-pitched giggle that made some of his bearers tremble, so that the litter actually rocked a little. Vash’s heart climbed into his mouth. The autarch seemed to grow wilder and less predictable by the hour.

The drums thundered and the horns blew. The great army began to move out, armor gleaming in the afternoon sun so that the flashing wave caps seemed to have rolled across the beach and over the land for as far as the eye could see. Vash waited with Olin and his guards, Panhyssir and the other priests, and dozens of other courtiers and functionaries, all doing their best to crowd into the shadow of the autarch’s raised litter.

“I don’t believe I finished talking with you about the fairies,” said the autarch as they reached the coast road and the ranks of men and animals turned and began to travel southwest toward Southmarch. “We were speaking of your unusual family heritage, Olin, weren’t we?”

The northerner was breathing heavily after only a short climb up from the beach, and his face had gone from deathly pale to an angry red flush. He did not answer.

“So, then,” Sulepis said. “The fairies—or the Pariki, as we call them in Xand—were driven out of most of our lands long ago, even the high mountaintops and deep jungles in the south. But when they had roamed our lands in the earliest days the fairy-people had sometimes coupled with the gods themselves. Sometimes fairies coupled with mortals as well, and sometimes those couplings made children. So even long after the gods were gone and the fairies driven out, the heavenly blood survived in certain mortal families, unseen and unsensed sometimes for many generations. But the blood of the gods is a strong, strong thing, and it will always make itself known again.

“In my studies I learned that your northern Pariki, the Qar, had never been completely driven out, and in fact still held much of the northern-most part of the continent. More important, though, I learned that they had shared blood with one of the royal families of Eion, and that what was even more interesting was that the Qar who had done so also claimed direct descent from the god Habbili… the one you call Kupilas, I believe? Yes, Kupilas the Artificer. You can imagine my interest at learning there were mortals living in the north with the blood of Habbili himself flowing in their veins. You know the family I mean, Olin—don’tyou?”

The northerner bunched his hands into fists. “Does it amuse you to mock the curse of the Eddons? The grim trick the gods played on us?”

“Ah, but my dear Olin, that is where you are wrong!” chortled the autarch. Vash had never seen the god-king in such a strange mood, like a perverse child. “It is no curse at all, but the greatest gift imaginable!”

“Still you mock me!” Just the tone of Olin’s voice made the autarch’s Leopards loosen their daggers in their sheaths. Vash was very glad to see they weren’t planning to use muskets in such close quarters. The loudness of guns made him nervous, and he had once seen an undervizier’s head blown off in an accident when the Leopards were trooping. “You have me prisoner, Sulepis—is that not enough? Must you taunt me, too? Just kill me and have done with it.”

Vash had grown used to the way the autarch treated Olin as an amusement, how he took abuse and resistance from the northern king which would have had one of his own subjects tortured to death ages ago, but he was still surprised at the mildness of Sulepis’ reaction.

“It is a gift, Olin, even if you do not know it.”

“This gift, as you call it, likely killed my wife in childbirth. It made me throw my own infant son down a stairway, crippling him for life, and forced me many nights each year to hide myself away from my own family for fear I would hurt them again. In its grip I have even howled at the moon like your Xixian hyena-men! And that same curse that crawls through my veins, and in the veins of my children as well—and if the gods continue to hate us, will someday crawl like a poison through my grandchildren too—now grows stronger in me again with every hour as you drag me back to my home. Gods, it is like a fire inside me! I might have been Ludis Drakava’s captive as well, but at least in Hierosol I was free of it, may heaven curse you! Free of it! Now I can feel it again, burning in my heart and my limbs and my mind!”

It was all Vash could do not to turn and run away. How could anyone speak to the Living God on Earth like that and survive? But again, the autarch seemed barely to hear what Olin had said.

“Of course you can feel it,” Sulepis said. “That does not make it a curse. Your blood feels the call of destiny! You have the ichor of a god inside you but you have always tried to be nothing but an ordinary man, Olin Eddon. I, on the other hand, am not such a fool.”

“What does that mean?”the northern king demanded. “You said there is no such curse in your family, that your ancestors and you are no different than other men.”

“No different in blood, that is true. But there is a way in which I am nothing like any other man, Olin. I can see what none of the rest of you can see. And here is what I saw—your family’s blood gave you a way to bargain with the gods, but you didn’t understand that. You have never used this power… but I will.”

“What nonsense is this? You said yourself you do not have the blood.”

“Neither will you after it has leaked out of you on Midsummer’s Night,” the autarch said, grinning. “But it will help give me power over the gods themselves—in fact, your blood will make me into a god!”

King Olin fell silent then, his footsteps slowing until one of his guards had to take his elbow to make him move faster. The autarch, on the other hand, appeared to be enjoying the conversation: his long-boned face was lively and his eyes flashed like the golden plating on his costly battle armor. Earlier that year Vash had almost lost his head when he had been forced to tell the autarch they could not make his armor suit entirely from gold, that such weight would cripple even a god-king. He had learned then what was now becoming obvious to Olin—you could not reason with Sulepis the Golden One, you could only pray each morning that he would spare you for one more day.

“Come, Olin, do not look so offended!” the autarch said. “I told you long ago that I would regret ending our association—I truly have enjoyed our conversations—but that I needed you dead more than I needed you alive.”

“If you think to hear me beg ...” Olin began quietly.

“Not at all! I would be disappointed, to tell you the truth.” The autarch reached out his cup and a slave kneeling at his feet instantly filled it from a golden ewer. “Have some wine. You will not die today, so you might as well enjoy this fine afternoon. See, the sun is bright and strong!”

Olin shook his head. “You will pardon me if I do not drink with you.”

The autarch rolled his eyes. “As you wish. But if you change your mind do not hesitate to ask. I still have much of my story to tell you. Now, what was I saying… ?” He frowned, pretending to think, a playful gesture that made Vash feel ill in the pit of his stomach. Could it be true? Could the might of the heavenly gods really come to Sulepis—a madman who was already the greatest power on the earth?

“Ah, yes,” the autarch said. “I was speaking of your gift.”

Olin made a quiet sound, almost like a little sigh of pain.

“You know, of course, how your gift comes to you—the Qar woman Sanasu captured by your ancestor Kellick Eddon, the children that he fathered on her who became your ancestors. Oh, I have studied your family, Olin. The gift is strongest in those who show the sign of the Fireflower, the flame-colored hair sometimes called ‘Crooked’s Red’—or ‘Habbili’s Mark’ as it is called in my tongue. I suspect the gift runs in the blood of all of Kellick’s descendants, even those who do not bear the outward signs....”

“That is not so,” said Olin angrily. “My eldest son and my daughter have never been troubled by the curse.”

The autarch smiled with childlike pleasure. “What of your grandfather, the third Anglin? Everybody knows he had strange fits, prescient dreams, and that he once almost killed two of his servants with his bare hands although he was considered a very gentle man.”

“You truly have learned… a great deal about my family.”

“Your family has attracted much attention in certain circles, Olin Eddon.” The autarch leaned toward him. “You must know that even though your grandfather Anglin showed every sign of this… tincture of the blood… he was not one of the red Eddons, was he? He had the pale yellow hair of your ancient northern forebears, just as your daughter and eldest son.”

“You mock me. My daughter bears no taint,” Olin said tightly.

“It matters not—she is of little interest to me,” the autarch told him. “I have what I need, thanks to Ludis, and that is you… or rather, that is your blood. The one thing on which the oldest and most trustworthy of tale-tellers on both continents agree, as well as those alchemists and thaumaturges of my own land who performed secret experiments and lived to describe them, is that only the blood of Habbili—your people’s Kupilas—can open a path to the sleeping gods. Why is that important? Because if the path can be opened, the sleeping gods that Habbili banished so long ago can be reawakened and released.”

“You are mad,” Olin said. “And even if such madness were true, why would you do it? If we have lived so long without them, why would you let them walk the earth again? Do you think even with all your armies that you could stand up to them? By the Three Brothers, man, even the tiniest drop of their diluted blood in my veins has turned my life topsy-turvy! In their day they threw down mountains and dug oceans with their bare hands! Why would you, loving power as you do, free such dreadful rivals?”

“Ah, so you are not entirely naïve,” said the autarch approvingly. “You at least ask, but if it were true, what next? Yes, of course, I would be a fool to let all the gods go free. But what if it were only one god? And more important, what if I had a way to rule over and command that god? Would that power not become mine? It would be like having mastery over one of the ancient shanni—but a thousand times greater! Anything within the god’s power would be mine.”

“And this is what you plan to do? ” Olin stared. “Such hunger for more power and wealth in one who already has so much is ludicrous… sickening.”

“No, it is so much more. It is why I am who I am while other men, even other kings like yourself, are merely… cattle. Because I, Sulepis, will not surrender what I have when Xergal the master of the dead comes with his cowardly hook to take me away. What point conquering the earth if the bite of an asp or a piece of stone fallen from a column can end it in an eyeblink?”

“Everybody dies,” said Olin. There was contempt in his voice now. “Are you so frightened of that?”

The autarch shook his head. “I feared you might not understand, Olin, but I hoped the magic in your own blood might make a difference. What is a man who settles for what he is given? No man at all, but only a brute beast. You ask what a man who already rules the world can possibly desire? The time to enjoy what he owns, and then, when he ceases to enjoy it, to tear it down and build something else.” Sulepis leaned so far that Vash was terrified he might topple from the litter. “Little northern king, I did not kill twenty brothers, several sisters, and Nushash knows how many others to seize the throne, only to hand it to someone else in a few short years.”

Somebody was shouting outside and the platform began to slow.

“So, we near your old home, Olin. It is true, you do not look well—it seems you were right about being close making you ill.” The autarch laughed a little. “Still, that is another reason for you to be grateful to me. I shall make certain you do not suffer such unpleasantness for too much longer.”

“Golden One, why have we stopped?” Vash asked. He had visions of some of Olin’s people springing out of the woods in ambush.

“Because we are only a short distance away from the place where this coastal road comes out of the forest,” the autarch said. “We have sent scouts ahead to determine where we should make our camp. It is likely we will have to dislodge the Qar, who have been besieging our friend Olin’s castle for some months. Their army is small but they are full of tricks. However, Sulepis has some tricks of his own!” He laughed as gleefully as a young boy riding on a fast horse.

“But why are we even here?”Olin asked. “If you believe you must kill me to pursue your mad ideas, why come all this way? Simply to punish those of my family and subjects who still care for me? To taunt them in their helplessness?”

“Taunt them?”The autarch was enjoying this playacting. At the moment, he pretended to be insulted. “We have come to save them! And when the Qar are driven off and I am done here, your heirs may do what they please with this place.”

“You came here to save my people? That is a lie.”

Again the autarch refused to take offense. “It is not the whole truth, I admit. We are here because once this was the very place the gods were banished. Here, now buried beneath the buildings your kind made, lies the gate to the palace of Xergal—Kernios, as you northerners call him. And here Habbili fought him and defeated him, then pushed him out of the world forever. Here is where the ritual must take place.”

“Ah,” said Olin. “So as I suspected, it has nothing at all to do with anything but your own mad schemes.”

The autarch looked at him almost sadly. “I am not greedy, Olin, whatever you think. When I have the power of the gods at my service I will not need to quibble over this castle or that castle. I will rebuild the heavenly palaces of Mount Xandos itself!”

Olin and Vash could only stare in amazement and horror, although of course the Paramount Minister did his best to hide his feelings.

A good part of an hour had passed as they sat motionless in the middle of the coast road. Olin had fallen into silence and the autarch seemed more interested in drinking wine and dandling one of his young female servants while he whispered in her ear. Vash was using the delay to look through his records—he would be hideously busy the moment they reached the place to make camp—when one of the autarch’s generals came to the platform and asked for a word with him. After an exchange in which the general did not raise his voice above a whisper, the autarch sent him away. For a moment he was silent, then he began to laugh.

“What is it, Golden One?” Vash asked. “Is everything well?”

“Never better,” said the autarch. “This will be even easier than I planned.” He waved his gold-tipped fingers and the platform lurched into movement once more, the slaves carrying it groaning quietly as they began to walk. “You will see.”

It was some time before Vash learned what his master meant. As they reached a bend in the road the slaves got up and pulled back the curtains, giving Vash a moment of panicky vulnerability, but a moment later he saw why they had done it.

On the coast side of Brenn’s Bay, the mainland city of Southmarch was deserted. Much of it had been burned, or was still burning, but the smoke and the dancing flames gave the scene its only movement. There was not a living creature in sight anywhere nearby, and even the castle across the water looked empty, although Vash did not doubt that plenty of Olin’s countrymen lurked inside, sharpening their weapons to shed Xixian blood.

“See?” the autarch said in triumph. “The shore is ours—the Qar have gone. They had no wish to be caught between our army and the bay. They have given up their claim to the Shining Man!”

Vash was distracted by a noise behind him, but the autarch paid it no attention. Sulepis was gazing over the scene with obvious satisfaction, as though this were not Olin’s long-lost home but his own.

The noise, Pinimmon Vash realized after a moment, was King Olin praying as he stared out across the water toward the silent castle.

39. Another Bend in the River of Time

All his life Barrick Eddon had prayed the things that made him different from others, his crippled arm, his night-terrors and storms of inexplicable grief, all the terrible legacy of his father’s madness, would prove to have some meaning—that the truth of him was something more than simply a botched and meaningless life. Now his prayer had been answered and it terrified him.

I didn’t save the queen. What if I fail with the king’s Fireflower, too? What if it will not have me?

He stood on the balcony of the king’s retiring room. A shower had just passed over the castle; the towers and pitched roofs jutted like tombstones in a crowded cemetery, dozens of different shades of damp, shiny black. In the short time since he had come the skies over Qul-na-Qar had always been wet, shifting back and forth between mist, drizzle, and downpour as though the ancient stronghold were a ship sailing through the storms.

Still, there was something peaceful about the place, and not just its near emptiness: the seemingly endless maze of halls had the quiet air of a graveyard, but one in which the ghosts had been dead too long to trouble the living. He knew things lurked in the shadows that should have terrified him, but instead he felt at home in this god’s house full of uncanny strangers. In fact, it was odd just how little he missed anything that had been his before—his home in the sunlands, his sister, the dark-haired girl in his dreams. They all seemed very distant now. Was there anything worth going back for?

Barrick grew impatient at last with the shimmer of wet roofs and his own circling thoughts. He left the room and made his way down a steep stairway of cracked white stone and out into the covered colonnade beside a dripping, empty garden. Even the strange plants seemed muted in color, their greens almost gray, their blossoms so pale that their pinks and yellows could only be seen from nearby, as though the rain had leached most of their color. From down here the castle’s many towers looked less like cemetery stones and more like the complexity of nature, full of abstract, repeating shapes—pillars and bars and chevrons of the sort human nobles used as heraldic symbols to mark their family name, but which were repeated here in endless patterns like the scales of a snake. The profusion of these basic shapes both lulled and confused the eye, and after walking for a while Barrick found even his thoughts growing weary.

Why have you given me a choice, Ynnir? he thought. I’ve never chosen well…

As if coming to answer him, a swirl of rustling leaves blew around the corner then eddied back as the king in his tattered robes stepped into the colonnade in front of Barrick, appearing from nowhere as though he had walked out of a fold in the air.

I can no longer bear to hear the weeping of the Celebrants, Ynnir told him, his thoughts fluttering to Barrick like the leaves falling on the path, so I have brought my sister—my beloved—out of the Deathwatch Chamber. Whatever you choose, Barrick Eddon, I must give her my strength soon if I am to preserve her life. I sense that the Artificer has failed at last. My own strength is fading. Soon the gift of the glass will fail Saqri too and it will no longer matter what we do.

Walk with me.

Barrick accompanied the tall king in silence as they made their way out of the wet garden and back into the echoing halls. As they walked, some of Ynnir’s servants came whispering out of the shadows, creatures of many different shapes and sizes who fell in behind them and followed at a respectful distance. The strange faces peering at him made Barrick uncomfortable, but only because he knew they belonged here and he didn’t.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “I don’t know what will happen.”

If you did, you would only be making a selection, not a choice. Ynnir stopped and turned to him. Here, child. Let me show you something. He reached up to the rag covering his eyes, touched it delicately with his long fingers. As the years of my life passed and our people’s plight became more and more grim, I turned farther and farther inward in search of anything that might save us. I lived almost every moment with my ancestors, with the Fireflower and the Deep Library, and traveled in my thoughts to places that have no names you would understand. I dove so deeply into what might be and what had been that I lost sight of what was before me. A century passed before I noticed that my wife, my beloved sister, was dying. He undid the knot at the back of the blindfold, let the piece of cloth slide free. His eyes were white as milk. Eventually I lost my sight in truth. I have not seen my beloved’s face except in memory for longer than I can remember. I will never know your face, boy, except for how you look in the minds of others. All from trying to know all that will happen. All from trying not to make any mistakes.

“I don’t… I don’t think I understand.”

One of our oracles tells us, ‘Rain falls, dew rises. Between is mist. Between is all that is.’ Let that be your answer, manchild. Do not brood too much over what went before or worry too much over what is to come. Between those two is everything that matters—all that is.

Ynnir knotted his blindfold again and walked on. Barrick hurried after him, then accompanied the king in silence for a long while, thinking.

“Could you do this even if I didn’t want you to?” he asked at last. “Could you force it on me?”

I do not understand. Could I force you to take the Fireflower?

“Yes. Could you give the Fireflower to me if I didn’t want it?”

What a strange question. Ynnir seemed tired: he was even more slow in his movements than he had been in the first hours of Barrick’s arrival. I cannot imagine such a thing—why would I do that?

“Because you need to do it for your people to survive! Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

If you take the Fireflower, Barrick Eddon, that does not mean my people themselves will survive—only what they have learned.

“But could you force it on me?”

Ynnir shook his head. It… I do not… I am sorry, child, but thoughts colored by your language will not carry the meaning. The Fireflower is our greatest gift, the thing that Crooked gave us that sets us apart from all others. Those who will carry it wait our whole lives for it, and we gain it only when our mothers or fathers are dying. Then, when we have it, we spend the rest of our lives contriving to pass it along to our heirs, the children of our bodies. To force you to take it—I cannot find the words to explain, but it is just not possible to my mind. Either you will accept it, and then we will see what comes, or you will not, and my people will continue to an end that no longer contains the Fireflower. And thus roll the days of the Great Defeat unto Time’s sleep. He stopped. We have reached the hall where Saqri waits.

The huge, dark doors were open. The king stepped through and Barrick went with him, but none of the creatures following them crossed the threshold. The hall was lit with many lights, but it was the darkness that lingered beneath the carved beams despite candles and lamps that made the strongest impression on Barrick—the darkness and the mirrors.

On either side of the hall, stretching so far that Barrick thought he must have fallen into a dream as he walked, the walls were lined with oval reflecting glasses in countless sizes, with as many different frames as there were mirrors. In each both light and shadow made a home, and in each they produced something different, so that Barrick felt he was seeing not reflections but windows which, though set closely side by side, opened into a thousand different places. He was confused and overwhelmed—but there was something more. “I have… I have been here before.”

Ynnir shook his head, but did not reply for a moment. When he did, his voice sounded weaker than it ever had. You have not been here, child. No mortal has…

“Then I dreamed it. But I know I’ve seen it—the mirrors, the lights ...” He frowned. “But it was full of shapes, and at the end of the hall… at the end of the hall ...”

It had all been so overwhelming that until this moment he had not noticed the figure at the hall’s far end. Now he and the king seemed to move toward her through a shimmer like that of the most blazing summer’s day, though the hall itself was cool and even a little drafty. When they had come near enough, Barrick saw that the queen had been set in one of two stone chairs, her body slumped like a corpse; the other throne was empty. It seemed macabre for the king to have left her this way, both odd and disrespectful. He felt an urge to go and lift her upright, to hold her in a position that befitted a creature of such singular, helpless elegance.

“Why is she… my lord?”

Ynnir had stopped and lowered himself to his knees. At first Barrick had thought he was making some ritual gesture of respect or mourning, but now he realized that the king was fighting for breath. Barrick scrambled forward and tried to help him rise but the king was too long-boned and his weakness was too great. At last Barrick just crouched with his arms around him, astounded to feel actual muscle and bone beneath the ragged clothes. The king, for all his weird majesty, was only flesh after all, and he was dying.

The world, the shadowlands, even the mirrored hall shrank away in Barrick’s mind and disappeared. There was nothing now but the king and himself and his choice. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve decided, and I say… yes.”

The king’s breathing eased. Still, you must be certain, Ynnir told him at last. Such a thing has never happened—receiving the Fireflower might kill you. And if it does cross to you, nothing will remove it from you but death. You will be a living memorial, haunted by the memories of all my kingly ancestors, until your last moment upon the earth.

Now it was Barrick’s turn to struggle for breath. “I understand,” he was finally able to say. “I am certain.”

Ynnir shook his head sadly. No, my son, you do not understand. Even I cannot fully understand what Crooked gave us, and I have lived with it all my long life. The king climbed to his feet, but when Barrick would have risen too, Ynnir shook his head and gestured for him to stay sitting on the floor. But that was what had to be, and this is all as it must be too—Saqri, myself, you, and the threads of foolish choice and strange accident that bound our families together.

“What do I have to do?” Fear swept over Barrick, not of the pain the Fireflower might bring him, but that he would fail Ynnir, that he would not be strong enough to receive what was given.

Nothing. An unusual glow filled the room, purple as the last evening light. A moment later Barrick realized that the glimmer was not so widespread as he had thought, but coming from very close—it surrounded Ynnir’s head like a mist around a mountain. The tall king bent down and took Barrick’s head between his hands, then pressed cool, dry lips against the young man’s forehead just above and between his eyes. For a moment Barrick thought that the soft light had somehow seeped inside of him, because everything around him—Ynnir, the dusty mirrors, the ceiling beams carved like hanging boughs heavy with leaves and berries—had taken on that same violet glow.

“What?” He blinked. A bell was sounding—it must be a bell, it was so loud, so deep! “What do I ...” The bell sounded again—but it could not be a bell, he realized, because it was silent. Still, he felt its tolling shiver down into his bones.

Sleep, child, Ynnir said, still holding his head. It has already begun…

And then Barrick could hear nothing except the slow sounding of his own thoughts, his heart beating as loud and strong as icy waters pulsing through the veins of a mountain, a pain like freezing fire, and his skull quivering with each echoing beat… beat… beat…

At last, exhausted from struggling, pierced by an infinite moment of agony, he fell away into a place of darkness and silence.

The hairless, manlike creature stood looking down at him, shadows cast by the flickering lamps swimming across his face. No, it was not just one creature, it was more, many more, all slightly transparent.

Something whispered to him then, a voice without sound, tickling at his thoughts: Harsar so faithful servant but never to be completely trusted the Stone Circle have lost too much in the Great Defeat…

Now the voice in his thoughts trailed away and the figure before him became only one shape again—the king’s servant, Harsar. For a long, dizzy moment Barrick could not make sense of anything. What had happened? Where was he?

“Still in the Hall of Mirrors,” Harsar answered him, though Barrick had not spoken. He could see the servant’s mouth move, could hear Harsar’s carefully uninflected voice in his ears, but he heard it in his thoughts as well, and what it said there was subtly different. “The First Stone sleeps. The Daughter of the First Flower asks for you.”

The soundless whisper blew through him again: Success she lives but we are fruitless we cast our seed on the wind just as we roll the bones. It was nothing as simple as a voice in his head, but… an idea, quiet as grass stretching toward the sun. Barrick tried to sit up. Why was he lying on the ground? Why did his head feel like a sack overfilled with gravel and threatening to rip its seams, while all these thoughts words ideas sounds smells crackled in his head like pine knots bursting in a fire? He lifted his hands to his head to keep his skull from breaking open. After a moment the sensation faded, although his head still felt disturbingly full and the world around him seemed tenanted by ghosts of itself, as though he watched everything through poorly made glass.

“Come forward,” Harsar said. “The Daughter of the First Flower ...”

Saqri, Sister, Wife, Granddaughter, Descendant… the silent voices in his head murmured.

“… is waiting for you.”

In the Place of Narrowing. The Crossroads Hall. Beneath the thorn boughs, as in the First Days, when the People were young…

Barrick’s head felt like a beehive—it was all he could do not to raise his hands and swat at the swarming thoughts. “But what about the king… where is Ynnir?”

“The Son of the First Stone is in the Hall of Leavetaking,” he said out loud.

... Has passed to the Heart of the Dance of Change, his thoughts said.

“Come,” he said aloud. “She will take you to him.”

Barrick could not speak anymore: it was all he could do to follow Harsar up the aisle while the new thoughts swirled like dust flecks in a windstorm—names, moments, glimmers that felt like memories, but were memories of things he could not remember seeing and did not entirely recognize. And with all these flecks of meaning bedeviling him, there was more: everything in the hall—the benches, the mirrors on the walls, the swirling tiled designs on the floor—seemed to have a kind of glow, a shine of realness unlike anything he’d experienced before. Even the most familiar objects of his own childhood had never seemed as much a part of him as the beams above his head, the dark, ancient wood shaped into prickly holly leaves and sinuous vines. Everything had a texture and shape that could not be ignored; everything had a story. And like everything else in Qul-na-Qar, the hall itself was a story, a great story of the People.

Then he saw her, waiting in her shimmering white robes.

Just the sight of her crashed onto Barrick like an ocean wave, battering all his senses, submerging his mind in memories he had never had before—a forest full of red leaves, a smooth shoulder, pale as ivory, her upright form on a gray horse with snow dappling her cloak.

Saqri.

Wind Sister.

Last of the line.

Beloved enemy.

Lost and returned.

Queen of the People…

The memories crowded in until there was almost nothing left of Barrick himself at all, but at the same moment something far more powerful and far more pure struck him as well, as if a beam of brightest light pierced his eye at the same moment that a silver arrow pierced his heart.

He swayed. He could not stand. He fell to his knees before her and wept.

Saqri was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, so powerful and complicated that it hurt him just to look at her: one instant she seemed made of gossamer and cobwebs and dry twigs like a child’s doll from a hundred years gone, so old and fragile that she might fall apart under the gentlest handling, then a moment later she seemed a statue carved of hard, gleaming stone. And her eyes—her eyes, so black and deep! Barrick could not look into them without his head reeling, without feeling as though he would fall and fall without ever touching bottom.

The queen looked back at him, her face as unmoving as a mask, a mask stranger yet more familiar than any face in the world. The smallest curve at the corner of her lips made it seem as though she smiled, but her eyes and his inexplicable memories told him that she did not.

“So this is what is left of my daughter Sanasu’s precious blood?” She spoke aloud as if she could not bear to touch his thoughts. Her voice was without warmth. “This jest, this piece of strange lost material, this is what comes back to me at the end of days?”

He knew he should be angry but he did not have the strength. Just standing before her was too overwhelming. Was it her or the Firef lower that filled his head with colors and noise and heat? “I am what the gods made of me,” was all he could manage.

“The gods!” Saqri let out a short sound that might have been a laugh or a sob, but her face did not change. “What have they ever made for us that did not turn its sharp edge? Even Crooked’s greatest gift has been proved a torment.”

Even the shadows seemed to draw back as if from a terrifying blasphemy. A part of Barrick recognized that what she said was spoken from the depths of an anguish he could not begin to understand. “I am sorry… if what I am displeases you, Lady. I didn’t choose to come here and I didn’t choose the blood that runs in my veins. Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.”

She looked at him for a long time with eyes so dark and fierce he could barely sustain her gaze. “Enough,” she said. “Enough of talking. I have a husband to mourn.”

The queen came down from the dais as lightly as if carried on a breeze, her billowing robe barely seeming to touch the ground. As Barrick followed her back down the center of the hall a thousand fairy-queens and a thousand mortal princes surged toward the doorway, reflected in the mirrors on either side. Some of the Barricks even turned to look back at him. Some of the faces were nothing like his, but it was the expressions worn by some of those most like him that he found more disturbing.

They stepped out into the great chamber beyond the door of the Mirror Hall and found it thronged with fairy folk of a hundred different sorts, apparitions that were completely strange to Barrick’s eyes, and yet somehow he recognized them all—redcaps, tunnel-knockers, trows tall as trees—and even knew that the place where they were waiting was known as the Chamber of the Winter Banquet. As the queen moved past with Barrick just behind her they joined in behind, the weeping women and the small men with animal eyes, the winged shadows and others with faces like unfinished stone, swelling the procession until it filled the corridors and extended back beyond Barrick’s sight, a river of uncanny life.

He followed Saqri through a maze of unknown corridors, but names and ideas seemed to slide across them like a reflection on a still pond—Sad Piper’s Rest, the Groaning Solar, the place where Caution and Swimming Bird parted. At last they moved out beneath the open sky, across a garden of stone shapes twisted as though in uneasy sleep where the rain spattered his face and wetted his hair. The sensation was something so old and so recognizable that for a moment the other thoughts fell away and he was simply himself again, the Barrick he had always been, before the Shadowline, before the Dreamers, before Ynnir’s kiss.

What will become of me? He was not as frightened as he had been earlier, but it was hard not to mourn his losses. I will never be that person again.

On the other side of the garden—Beetle’s Wakeful Garden, his thoughts whispered, where Rain Servant held the King of Birds and told him how the world would end—they passed into a vast room, dark except for a small ring of candles on the floor and empty except for those candles and the body that lay on a flat stone at the center of the ring.

Barrick’s eyes filled with tears. He did not need to be told who this was. Now the chorus of whispers in his head served only to fog the clarity of his feelings. The one who lay before him had, in only a single day, become a sort of father to him—no, more than that: Ynnir had shown him nothing but forbearance and kindness.

The queen stood looking down at her husband’s body. The blindfold was gone, Ynnir’s eyes closed as if in sleep. Barrick took a few steps forward and then sank slowly to his knees, unable to carry the weight of the present moment any longer.

Son of the First Stone, the Leaping Stag, Clever Weakling… It was a chorus of whispers like the cooing of pigeons. Traitor!—no, Crooked’s Own ...!

Look at me, another voice said, sighing and distant. So small. So lost in the moment!

Startled, Barrick looked around. “Ynnir? ”The voice had been the king’s, Barrick was certain. Don’t leave me! He cast his thought after the king’s thoughts. The other memories, voices, ghosts, those countless shades and rags of understanding that haunted him now, all dispersed before his inquiry, but whatever of the real Ynnir had touched him was gone again.

“Old fool,” the queen said quietly as she stared down at the king’s pale, rigid face. “Beautiful, blind old fool.”

The funeral of the Lord of Winds and Thought passed before Barrick’s senses like a swollen, flooding river, the current crowded with objects that had become unrecognizable. In that dark, murmurous room shapes assembled around the king’s body, weeping, singing, sometimes making noises and gestures that Barrick could not connect with any human emotion at all, then after a space they dispersed again. Some of these mourning gestures were as complex as plays or temple rituals and seemed to last hours, while others were no more than a brief fluttering of wings above Ynnir’s silent form. Barrick heard speeches of which he could understand every word, but which nevertheless made no sense to him at all. Other mourners stood beside the king’s body and uttered a single unfamiliar sound that opened up in Barrick’s mind like an entire book, like one of the tales told by Orphan’s Night bards that lasted from sunset until dawn.

And still they came.

Rats, a thousand or more, a living velvet carpet that swirled around Ynnir and then were gone; weeping shadows; men with eyes as red as embers; even a beautiful girl made of broomsticks and cobwebs, who sang for the dead king in a voice like settling straw—all came to say their farewells. As the hours crept by, as wind and rain lashed the rooftops outside and the flames of the lamps guttered in the death chamber, Barrick came to understand, not the full depths of what was being expressed in that room, but something of what it meant to be one of these people. He saw that the procession was more than the individuals and what they had to say, or the movements they made to show their grief. Instead it was a collection of shapes and sounds in time, each separate yet as connected to the whole as letters in a word or words in a story. Time itself was the medium, and somehow—this was only a gleam of understanding, like a tiny fish in a stream, and to grab for it was to see it disappear altogether—somehow the People, the Qar, lived in time in a way Barrick’s mortal kind did not. They were both of it and outside it. They mourned, but they also said, This is what mourning is, and how it should be. This is the dance and these the steps. To make either less or more of it would be to lift it out of time, like lifting a fish from the river. The fish would die. The river would be less beautiful. Nothing else would change.

The candles at last flickered out. New tapers were lit, and this itself seemed but another part of the dance, another bend in the river. Barrick let it all flow over him and through him. Sometimes he found himself knowing before someone spoke, or sang, or presented their silent tribute, who they were and what they had brought. Other times he was lost in the strangeness of it all, as when he had been a child and had listened to the wind skirling around the chimneys and under the roof tiles of his home, overwhelmed by suggestions of meaning that he knew he could never grasp, by the eternal mortal frustration of being so small against the uncaring vastness of the night.

He surfaced at last out of a darkness full of dwindling song and shadow. The great room was empty. The king’s body was gone. Only the queen remained.

“Where… where is he… ?”

Saqri was as still as the statue she resembled, gazing at the empty dais. “His husk… is being returned. As for the truth of Ynnir… he has chosen to give his last strength to wake me, and now he and his ancestors are lost to us forever.”

Barrick could only stand, uncomprehending.

“And so we move a step closer to the end of all things,” she said as she turned toward him, although she barely seemed to see him and spoke as though to herself. “What is your place in it to be, mortal man? What is written in the Book for you? Perhaps you are meant to keep a shadow of our memory alive, so that when we altogether vanish, still a dim, confused recollection might trouble the victors. Do we trouble you? Have you an inkling of what you have destroyed?”

So fierce, so bright—like a fire! a voice inside him whispered, but Barrick was too angry to pay it any mind.

“I have destroyed nothing,” he told her. “Whatever my great-grandfathers did is nothing of mine—in fact, it has cursed me too! And I did not choose to come here—I was sent by your… porcupine woman, Yasammez.” A little of his confusion suddenly fell away, as though someone had wiped a layer of grime from an old, shiny thing. “No, I did choose to come here, at least in part. Because Gyir wanted me to. Because the king called me, asked me… urged me. I didn’t ask to be born at all, and I certainly didn’t ask to be born with Qar blood burning inside me. It almost drove me mad!”

The expression on the queen’s perfect, eggshell-delicate face did not change, but she was silent for a while.

“She did choose you, didn’t she—my dear one, my love, my ancestor? ” Saqri moved a step closer to him, lifted a hand and brushed his face. “What did she see?” Although she was no taller than Barrick and slender as a reed, it was all he could do not to shrink back from her touch. Her fingers on his brow, like her husband’s kiss, were cool and dry. “Did Yasammez mean only to taunt him? She never cared for my husband—not as I did. She thought he was too lax a protector of the People, that he valued doing what was right over doing what was necessary.”

But they are the same, something murmured in Barrick’s thoughts. The queen yanked her fingers away from his face as though she had been burned. “What trick is this? ” Her hand shot out again like a striking snake, then flattened with surprising delicacy over his eyes, pressing firmly on the space at the center of his forehead. “What trick… ?”

A moment later she staggered back, the first less than perfectly graceful movement he had seen her make. Her eyes widened. “No. It is not possible!”

In this place of ancient knowledge and timeworn ritual, such obvious surprise frightened Barrick. “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”

“He is… he is in you! I feel him but I cannot touch him!” Something that now lived inside Barrick was unmoved by her consternation, even amused. “He said he would try to pass the Fireflower to me.”

“No!” She practically shrieked it, although he realized a moment later it was only the difference from her usual measured tone that was so startling. “You are a mortal. You are a whelp of the creatures who raped us… murdered us!”

We are all children of both the good and evil that has gone before us.

Ynnir? Is that you? Barrick tried his best to catch at the thought, but it was gone again. He realized that the queen was standing directly before him, her eyes so intent that it almost hurt to face them. She clutched his arm; her grip was astoundingly strong.

“What do you feel? Is he there, my brother… my husband? Does he speak inside of you? What of the Forerunners, do you feel them as well?”

“I… I don’t know ...” And then Barrick felt it swimming up from the depths and for a moment his limbs, his tongue, his head was not his own. “We are here, all of us,” said his mind and his mouth, but Barrick himself was none of it. “It is not what we expected and many of us are confused… many others are lost. Never before has the Fireflower passed like this. It is all different ...” Then the alien presence fell away and Barrick commanded his own limbs once more—but everything had changed, he knew. Everything was different and it always would be.

The queen continued to stare at him but her eyes now seemed far away. Then she simply folded, her white robes rustling faintly as she slumped to the ground. Shadows coalesced from the corners and hidden places of the great chamber, servitors who had waited silent and unmoving all this time. They surrounded her, then bore her up and carried her away.

Barrick could only stand and watch them go, alone with the tribe of incomprehensible strangers who lived now in his blood and his thoughts.