Shadowheart

29. A Little Man of Stone

The fires burning in the mainland city and the Xixian ships still smoldering on the water made the night almost as bright as dawn. Some of the ships had burned to the waterline, unrecognizable hulks that still hissed steam and spat sparks into the dark sky.

I never dreamed I would come back like this, Briony thought, watching the mainland recede as Ena plied the oars. All around her boats slid toward the castle like water beetles converging at one end of a pond. Eneas and his men had been loaded onto wherries in twos and threes, the horses onto barges, and now almost twenty score small Skimmer craft were making their way back across the bay to Southmarch.

Neither Briony nor Ena were much interested in conversation; the short journey passed in silence until the first of the boats neared the ruins of the causeway, now nothing more than a short spit of land between the great outer gate and the edge of Midlan’s Mount. Briony let Ena help her out onto the slippery stones.

“But where do we go?” Briony asked. The huge Basilisk Gate looked down on them like a frowning giant. She had never thought about how it felt to come to this place and see such a daunting thing—always before it had been one of the last signs that she was returning home. “How do we get inside?”

“Not the way we Skimmers go, my lady,” said Ena, smiling. “That’s our secret, and in times like these it’ll remain our secret. But you have no need for secrets, Highness! You have come back to your own house!”

“Not everyone here will be so glad to see me,” Briony said, but Ena was already pushing her boat back from the rocks and into safer waters.

“Take care, Queen Briony! We will meet again!” the Skimmer girl called.

She wanted to shout, “I’m only a princess,” but thought better of making so much noise. The other Skimmers swooped in to deliver their passengers to the causeway; then, when all Eneas’ troops were unloaded, they swung back into the open water. A song rose up among them, deep and barely audible above the crash of the ocean against the rocks. It was in no language Briony knew, and she only guessed it was a song because it had a sort of tune that went up and down like the waves themselves. Who were the Skimmers, really? That Saqri creature had said something about them being the kin of the Qar, but that seemed impossible. The water people were part of Southmarch and had been so for centuries, long before and long after the Qar had been driven into exile beyond the Shadowline.

Eneas appeared out of the evening mist, so tall and stern that for a startled moment she thought he was her father. “Princess, are you well?”

“I am, sir, thank you.” Dawn was still hours away; they had no light but the glare of ships burning on the bay and fires on the distant mainland. “This seems a rather uncomfortable spot to make our camp.” She gestured to the mighty walls jutting out above them, the gate itself as tall as a tall tree all carved in the stony coils of its namesake. “Do you have a plan to get us inside?”

“Well, we are a little late to the inn, but perhaps we can wake the porter.” Eneas called to one of his men, and a moment later a trumpeter had taken out his horn. At a second word from the prince, he began to blow a brazen battle call. Startled, Briony could only put her hands over her ears and shrink away.

Moments later a head appeared atop the gate, then three or four more, helmeted guards crouching so low they were scarcely more than bumps above the battlements like a baby’s teeth nudging through its gums.

“Who goes there?” one of them called, so high above them atop the wall that the wind almost tore his words away. “One of the autarch’s men, hoping for a dram of water to put out your fires? We’ll send it down to you, but not in a way you’ll like!”

“No Xixians, we!” cried Eneas. “We are allies! Let us in!”

“Allies! Not likely!” the man shouted back. “Just blew in on the wind and landed in front of the Old Lizard, did you? Think we’ll let you in? Then you’re a madman, that’s what you are.”

“A madman and a madwoman!” the prince shouted back. “Here is one who thinks himself the rightful heir of Syan, and another who believes herself mistress of this very castle!”

“For the love of the gods!” Briony told him in a horrified whisper. “Eneas, are you mad? These are Tolly’s men!”

“Perhaps,” he said cheerfully. “But perhaps not. Let us find out.”

“What foolery are you at, man?” demanded the fellow on the wall. “Mistress? Your mistress is likely a slattern and you are certainly a drunk fool, fisherman. Get back in your boat and go away before we feather you and your lady properly!”

One of the Syannese soldiers already had an arrow on his string and was preparing to dispatch the guard when Eneas held out his hand. “Leave him be,” he said quietly.

“But, Highness… !” the soldier protested. “Did you hear… ?”

“I heard.” Eneas raised his voice. “It is you who is feeling the breath of Old Knot on the back of his neck, fellow. I am Prince Eneas of Syan. Open the gate! We are allies of your true king!” He turned and said quietly to Briony, “That should start some interesting conversations!”

More heads popped up along the top of the massive gate, and several men held up torches, peering down into the darkness below for a look at the visitors. Briony could only hold her breath and pray for Zoria’s continued protection. The gatehouse above it, and the monstrous towers on either side probably housed a pentecount of men or more. Eneas might have far more men than that, but they had no protection and nowhere to go if the archers began firing on them. The Skimmers were gone and there was no other way off the narrow piece of land in front of the gate.

“That is the Syannese prince!” one man atop the gate shouted. “I’ve seen his banner! That’s him!”

“Liar!” another screamed. “Or traitor!”

“Open the gates!” someone called. “Let them in! They sank them Otarch ships!”

“I’ll kill the first man who goes near that windlass… !” a man cried, and then many voices began shouting at once, and even the figures lined up atop the gate suddenly dissolved into chaos. To Briony’s horror, a figure came flying off the top of the gatehouse, ten times a man’s height in the air, and hit the ground in front of Eneas and his men with a horrible moist thump.

Flames rippled across the top of the gate and in the narrow slits in the towers on either side as men with torches ran in and out. One of the Basilisk Gate’s huge bells began to ring out an alarm, then fell silent again almost immediately, as though the bell ringer had met a sudden, violent end. Torches began appearing along nearby sections of the wall as the struggle at the main gate caught the attention of the other guard posts.

“Form up!” Eneas told his men. “Shields up—the arrows may begin flying any moment!”

Briony was only too happy to lift her shield over her head, although it was not long before her arms were aching so badly she would almost have preferred being shot. A few arrows did come sailing down, but more or less randomly, and not from atop the gate itself, as though a few scared soldiers on the walls were merely firing out into the darkness.

At last silence fell, then the great gate creaked open; Eneas held his men back when they would have surged through. The portcullis shuddered and rose, and a handful of figures with torches stepped into the cobbled opening, a space wide enough for a dozen men to ride through.

“Is it truly you, Prince Eneas?” one of the torchbearers asked, taking a limping step forward and holding up his torch, which rippled as the breeze from the bay whipped through the open gate.

“It is. Do I know you?” Eneas strode forward. Briony hurried to stay with him—his confidence, at that moment, seemed better protection than any Syannese shield.

“No, sire. You wouldn’t. But we true Southmarchers are happy to see you. Was it you burned the Xixy ships?”

A crowd of guardsmen quickly surrounded Eneas and his men, but to Briony’s relief the mood was more festive than combative. Several dozen were climbing down from the nearest guardhouses to see what was happening, but most of the fighting was already over. At least a dozen men sat sullenly on the ground with their backs to the wall, being guarded by men with spears. Half a dozen more lay nearby and did not need to be watched, as their contorted limbs and the blood on their tabards made clear.

The soldier who had spoken saw Eneas and his men looking at the dead. “They were Tolly’s men, those scum. One of them tried to ring the bells. The rest would have been off to warn the Protector and his bullyboys—they’ve all gone to ground in the royal residence. What is happening, Sire? Have you come to chase the damned Summerfielders out? May the gods bless you if you have, Highness.” He peered out past Eneas and the others, squinting as if he could make out what was happening on the far shore. “What about that autarch? What happened to his ships?”

“These are long stories,” Eneas said. “And my men will need food and drink and a place to sleep.”

“Of course, Prince Eneas ...” the leader began, but then Briony stepped out of the shadow of the wall and into the torchlight.

“I will not enter my own home in secret,” she said. “You men have done more than open the gates for the Syannese—you’ve let the Eddons back in as well.” She pulled off her helmet and hoped they could still recognize her with her hair cut short.

The men around her heard a woman’s voice and turned, staring. The leader, the man with the limp, lowered himself to one knee. “Praise the Three,” he said. “It’s King Olin’s daughter.”

Murmuring, the other men, who had been gathering around her, began to get down on their knees.

“Do not bow,” she said. “Look at me—please don’t bow! I don’t want to make my presence known yet. Not until we learn how things fare here and decide what to do next.” She would have preferred that they had remembered her name as well as her father’s, but the hope and even happiness on the faces of most of the men she could see was reward enough. “All of you who can hear me, come now. Let no one leave. Set some men to watch the gate again while you others follow Prince Eneas and me.”

“The inner keep is Hendon Tolly’s armed camp, Highness,” one of the guards said. “You’re safe here in the outer keep, but most of Tolly’s supporters are with him in the residence. They have at least as many men as your Syannese, Princess, and they also hold many of our women and children.”

“All the more reason that we should move slowly and not make a great parade,” Briony said. “Take us to a place where our soldiers can rest.”

Several of the Southmarch guards let out a cheer, but the others silenced them. The limping man who had welcomed them looked up at Briony.

“Is it truly you, Princess?” he asked.

“It is. And my father is alive, too. The Eddons have not given up their throne—or their people.”

“And will it all be well, then? Things will be well again?”

She looked at him and suddenly the weight of who she was, and what she still had to do pressed against her like a great stone on her chest, so that for a moment she could not speak. “That is beyond my power to say,” she managed at last. “But I will do everything I can to make it so.”

Something about seeing his sister still troubled Barrick, although he could not say exactly what that something was. It was not emotion—at least not the sort of confused, ill-defined feelings that had been so common in him before the gift of the Fireflower—but it made it hard to concentrate on what Saqri was saying about Lady Yasammez.

“… So she will meet us in the Great Delve.”

“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t Yasammez come up with us to fight the Xixians? She lives for war!”

Saqri’s thoughts had something of both unhappiness and anger in them, but those she chose to express were straightforward. “I imagine she wished to see what I would do with the command and the Seal. Perhaps she had matters of her own to deal with as well.”

“Like what?” A swirl of Fireflower memories tantalized him but he was learning how to do what Ynnir had taught him; to simply be and let them swim around him like fish.

“Dissension among her close advisers, I suspect. You know about the disagreement between Yasammez and my husband. What you may not know, or may not have been able to sift from what the Fireflower has given you, is that the distinctions are not so simple as to be divided into two camps only.”

“Tell me.” But what he said was closer to “Bring me to your thought.” He found that in his own head he was now using Qar ideas nearly as frequently as his native tongue.

“From the first, great Yasammez warned that we should sweep the mortals from the land before it was too late. But her great age and long experience have changed her, and her hatred of your kind is no longer as deadly as it once was. However, there are still many others of our people, some of the wilder folk, Tricksters and Elementals, who would happily see your kind vanish from the earth forever. ...”

“But then why did Yasammez send me to King Ynnir?” Barrick asked. “Does that mean she’s changed her mind about my people somehow? Or that she thought keeping me alive could… could help the Qar?”

Saqri let him feel a blank, cloudy thought, another kind of shrug. “I do not know. I have tried to sense her mind on this but she keeps it hidden, even from me.” And now she let him feel a little of the pain that caused her. “So much has changed. Once Yasammez was more to me than my own mother ...”

She did not finish the thought, and Barrick did not press for it. Too much hurt and confusion was there, things he could not understand, feelings so naked and private in a being of such immense composure that he did not want to go farther.

“So we face our final hours, Barrick,” Saqri finished at last, “and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories.”

The dark lady met them in a place the Funderlings called the Old Baryte Span, her vanguard carrying torches that made the veins of quartz in the walls flash like lightning. Barrick could not help wondering if this great show of light was for him, since most of the Qar saw as well in dark passages as the little people who usually walked here.

As Yasammez stepped down from the crude rock stairway onto the cavern floor, Saqri raised her hands in greeting. “We are together again.”

“Yes. We are together again.” Yasammez turned her somber face toward Barrick. “You have had to fight against your own people now. Do you still wish to stand with us?”

“My own people?” It took him a moment to understand she was talking about the Xixians, the autarch’s soldiers. “They are nothing to me—invaders. Intruders. If I could kill them all with one swing of my sword, I would.”

Yasammez looked at him for a long moment, silent and calculating. “Time is short,” was all she said.

The council was surprisingly brief. Barrick had grown used to the Qar taking days to decide or do anything, but it seemed the passing of the Seal of War to Saqri had brought a great change: Yasammez offered little in the way of advice and objected to almost nothing, letting Saqri make the decisions and give the orders.

“We must try to beat the southerners to the Last Hour of the Ancestor in the uttermost deeps,” Saqri said when she had heard from all her lieutenants. “But they are too many for us to stop them by main strength. Even if Vansen and his drows are still alive and we could attack the southerners from both sides, the autarch has too many soldiers. Fighting is beside the point, anyway. Time is what is important now, and they are already deep below us, at the doorway to the depths.”

Fireflower thoughts and memories swirled in Barrick’s head, but the silent presence that had been Ynnir led him to those that mattered, each as delicately precise as a note picked out on a lute. He began to understand. “But Crooked… is dead.” He shook a little at the storm that realization raised inside him—all the meanings, the memories, the ancient hopes and miseries. It was hard even to say it. The god whose blood ran in him and in Saqri was dead. The god who had fathered Yasammez, and whose own parentage had started the Godwar… Barrick ignored a cold wind of irritation from Yasammez and some of the others. “He pushed the old gods through and then sealed the way behind them. But the autarch wants to release them again!”

Saqri nodded. “And like most mortals, he has no idea of how dire many of these… beings are, how long they have waited outside the walls of nightmare ...”

“And how fiercely and greedily they are watching for their chance.” Yasammez stood, her black armor covering her like a shadow, so that for a moment it seemed her face rose in darkness like the moon. “Whatever sins mortal men have committed, I would not wish such horrors on the earth itself, which is blameless. It is time. We can wait no longer. What is your wish, granddaughter?”

Saqri paused as if the Porcupine’s abruptness had caught her by surprise. “We need a better way.” She turned to the Ettins. “Singscrape, you and others have been working here while the rest of us fought the southerners. What have you found?”

Hammerfoot’s son spoke in a rumbling voice like a slow avalanche. “Tunnels that will lead us down to the naked wound of Crooked’s last and greatest effort, and from there to the ultimate depths, Mistress. Some of the way must still be cleared, and we will have to fight when our way crosses the autarch’s line of descent, but if we strike swiftly and work tirelessly, we may yet beat the humans to the Last Hour of the Ancestor.”

“Let it be so, then.” Saqri let out a breath, the closest thing to a sigh Barrick had ever heard from her. “Tomorrow is the last day—perhaps the last day that ever will be. Let none of us say that he or she could have given more.”

Daikonas Vo watched the parade of monsters with dull fascination. He had been stumbling in darkness for so long that the glare of their torches made him blink and shy away. What did they want? Were these truly pariki as the Xixians called them—the fairies of his own mother tongue? What were they doing here beneath the castle? He had thought the autarch had driven them all away…

Vo shook his head to clear away some of the confusion. Did it matter? He had been wandering in darkness for so long he could scarcely remember who he was. Only the hot pain that had spread from his gut and now ran through his entire body like poison reminded him of what had happened to him, why he still breathed and walked when everything inside him urged him to lie down and accept the sweet relief of death.

If even death would be a relief, that was. Because in the dark, lost hours Vo had begun to hear his mother’s voice again, whispering the stories of the gods to him, warning him of the serpents and other shadowy demons that would hunt him after he died and keep him from the bosom of Grandfather Nushash, the sun.

And weren’t these grotesques marching below him through the underground caverns proof that such things could and did exist even in life? Bat-winged, hyena-headed, some covered with rough scales like the lowest desert snake… and their eyes! Glittering, glowing eyes that burned like coals. Surely they could see him even in his stony hiding place high on the cavern wall where the narrow trail he had been following had suddenly ended, a hundred feet above the cavern floor. So many times he had almost fallen to his death in this dark, ancient hell—there must be a reason he still lived! The gods existed and had taken pity on Daikonas Vo. There could be no other explanation. And when he completed his task they would honor him. No beasts would hunt him in the dark lands of death. No serpents would devour him.

The things below had been still for a long while, immersed in some silent ritual. At last, though, they roused themselves and began to make their way farther into the depths, toward what must be the same ultimate goal as Daikonas Vo’s. He would follow them, he decided. To one who had been wandering so long in darkness even the distant light of their torches would be enough to lead him, their stealthy passage loud enough to guide him without his coming too close and being discovered.

As if to remind him what the penalty for such clumsiness would be, a burning pain made him grimace and bend himself double so that he almost tumbled from the ledge. The agony did not pass for long moments.

The girl with the red streak in her hair, the girl who had tried to murder him, was waiting in the depths. Great Sulepis was waiting there, too. Even the gods were waiting there for Daikonas Vo. He could not disappoint them.

As the pain ebbed and the last of the immortal monsters passed out of the cavern he began to climb carefully and quietly down from his high place.

After traveling for so long by dark, narrow ways that Barrick fell into a waking dream, Saqri at last signaled that it was time to make camp. For a while now they had been following a ledge around the lip of a great, nearly circular chasm that seemed only a little less wide than the old inner walls of Southmarch, and which fell away far beyond the light of any torches.

“This is the wound,” Saqri said as she stood watching her householders preparing the camp. “This is the scar of Crooked’s last struggle.”

“This? This hole?” It did not match with the Fireflower memories that drifted up through his thoughts like bubbles. “We are there… ?”

“No.” She moved closer to the edge. “If you dropped a stone, it would drop for long, long moments still before it rattled to the bottom. But far down, past many twists and turns of this great rift, that low place waits—the Last Hour of the Ancestor. So this is the beginning of the last part of our journey. When we have prepared, we will begin the climb down.”

“All the way to the bottom?” Barrick thought of the stone dropping and dropping through darkness and could not imagine descending such a distance. “There aren’t ropes long enough for that in the whole world!”

Saqri allowed herself a tiny smile. “We will go down a little way to the next tunnels, then use them. Later we will return to the wound again. It will take time, but at last we will reach the place where our enemies… and our allies… are gathering.” She made another gesture with her palm facing down—Water Enters Soil. “You have some little time now, manchild, so rest. I will send for you when we are ready to move on.”

He did his best to follow Saqri’s advice, but his own disquiet and the continuous murmur of the Fireflower voices made him too restless. He rose and walked among the Qar, watching them work, marveling at their different shapes and types despite the Fireflower chorus assuring him that all was ordinary and familiar. He did not speak unless one of the Qar spoke to him, still uncertain of his place among these strange and ancient people. He thought he saw resentment on many of their inhuman faces, curiosity on some others, and it occurred to him that his presence was at least as disturbing to them as it was strange to Barrick himself.

What am I? I’m certainly not their prince, but I’m no ordinary subject, either. I have the blood and the memories of all their kings inside me, but I know less about them than I know about the peasants in far-off Xis.

He made his way at last to the edge of the rift and stood a long while in silence, trying to make sense of such a great hole in the earth. How could his family have ruled this place for generations and know so little about it? Or was it only Barrick himself, hung and smoked in his own misery, who had been oblivious?

“Master?” someone asked. It was a Qar term of carefully chosen resonance—it meant not so much a leader or superior as a foreigner whose status was not yet known. Barrick turned and found a trio of goblins standing behind him, looking up with solemn, shining eyes.

“Yes?”

“We have been in the side tunnels, doing the bidding of the queen in white. While there, we smelled a man. A human man.”

For a moment he thought they were insulting him obliquely, perhaps suggesting that he bathe: the Qar were much more interested in cleanliness than Barrick’s own people, he had noticed already. “A man… ?”

“Yes, Lord. Like you, but different.” The goblins nudged and glared at each other, then the one who had been chosen as spokesman tried again. “Older. A little smaller. Will you come and see?”

Barrick let himself be led away from the lip of the great chasm. “What have you done to him? Is he a captive?”

The goblins looked shocked. “No, Lord!” said the spokesman. “We would do nothing without your word ...”

“The queen was busy,” said one of the others, earning a glare from the one who had been talking. “And we are frightened of the dark lady.”

“Quiet, fool,” muttered the third, but it was unclear to whom she was speaking. Only the whispered knowledge of the Fireflower allowed him to discern which goblins were male and which female.

They led him up a winding path through the Qar forces until they were just beyond the camp. Here at the edge of things, where the light of the torches was dim and the shadows long, Barrick was reminded again of how little he had seen of the sun since he had first set out on this blighted adventure.

I should have stayed under the open sky as long as I could.…

His thoughts were interrupted by a memory of Briony and himself as children, running along the bright hillside of M’Helan’s Rock, knee-deep in white meadowqueen blossoms as the sea boomed and hissed below. The thought was as painful as a dagger, a cold stab in his heart. He felt the Fireflower memories swarm up and cover it like butterflies alighting on a bush, but for the briefest moment he had a twinge of doubt. Was the Fireflower keeping things from him, somehow? Separating him from his own life?

A moment later all such speculation vanished as another group of bare-foot goblin soldiers appeared, half a dozen at least, prodding diffidently with their slender, sharp spears at a man twice their small size. For half a moment Barrick thought it might be one of the Xixian soldiers who had become separated from his troop, but the man’s round face was as pale as Barrick’s own…

Barrick stared. The man stared back at him.

“My prince… ?” the man said at last. “Are you… do you… ? Is that truly you, Prince Barrick?”

It took longer for Barrick to remember. “Chaven,” he said at last, speaking the name out loud. His voice was dry and ragged from disuse. “What are you doing here, physician?”

“Prince Barrick—it is you!” The man stared as though newly awake; a moment later, as if something had slipped inside him and his feelings could now move freely, he suddenly lurched toward Barrick with arms wide. Barrick stepped back from the embrace. “But you are so tall, Highness!” Chaven said. “Ah, I suppose it has been almost a year ...” He shook his head. “Listen to me babble. How do you come to be here? How did you survive the war with the fairies?” He gestured to the goblins, who were watching the exchange with deep suspicion. “Are you a prisoner? No, you have made them your prisoners somehow ...”

Barrick found himself increasingly impatient with this stocky little man who would not stop talking. “I asked you what you are doing here. You are in the middle of a Qar camp and we are at war. You do not belong here.”

Chaven stared at him. “Why so cold, Highness? Why so angry? I have done nothing but good for your family in your absence—I helped to save your sister’s life!”

Barrick was awash in confusing ideas, the voices of the Fireflower and his own memories. He did not even know himself why he was angry with the physician. “I will ask you one last time, Chaven—why are you here, sneaking around on the outskirts of our camp?”

“Sneaking? I ...” The scholar shook his head, then fell silent. “I will be honest, Prince Barrick—I do not know. I… I confess that I am a little confused. I seem to be lost, too.” He looked around him slowly. “Yes, where am I? Last I remember I was with Chert and the others ...”

The name meant nothing to Barrick. He was about to turn his back on the man when one of the goblins pulled at his sleeve. “He is hiding something, Master. We saw it when he approached—there, under his robe. It is a little man of stone. ’Ware lest he try to hit you with it ...”

“What? Nonsense!” Chaven cried, but he seemed more baffled than offended. He wrapped his arms around his middle as if he meant to protect his belly against an attack.

“What are they talking about, Chaven? Show it to me.”

“But… it’s not ...” Frightened by the look in Barrick’s eyes, Chaven reached into his robe and lifted out the thing he had been hiding. It was a small statue of a man with an owl crouched on his shoulder, crudely carved in crystal that was streaked with pale pink and gray and blue. The Fireflower voices sang loud and harsh in his head, as full of confusion as Barrick himself.

“I’ve… I’ve seen that statue before, somewhere.” He stared at it, then glanced up to Chaven, who still looked half awake but fearful, like a man dragged out of bed into a completely unexpected situation. Then it came to him, like a fire racing through dry kindling. “It was in the Erivor Chapel at home. Someone stole it.” Barrick’s face felt as if it was someone else’s—he had no idea what expression he wore. “I stole it. And Briony and I threw it into the ocean. How could you possibly have it?”

“I don’t know, Highness!” The physician shook his head violently. “No, I do know—of course I know! The Skimmers brought it to me. Some of their oyster divers found it and… and they thought I might tell them if it was worth anything. I bought it from them.” He looked up at Barrick, his face full of calculation but also something deeper and stranger, a kind of animal terror. “I had never seen anything like it—an image of Kernios Olognothas, the all-seeing Earth Lord. I… I wanted it so very much.”

“You wanted this heavy statue of the dour god of death so much that you carry it around with you through these depths? What are you doing here under the castle at all, man? What are you hiding?”

Chaven cringed a little. “My prince, you are frightening me. I will tell you everything, I promise! Answer all your questions, yes. Just take me into your camp and give me some water to drink. I find that I am very dry. I’m not certain how long I’ve been lost in these lonely tunnels ...”

“You will do more than come back to the camp,” Barrick said. “You will meet Saqri, the queen of the fairies, and answer her questions as well. And if you are very unlucky you will also meet Yasammez. Some of them call her Lady Porcupine. She will likely make you wet yourself.”

Barrick stared hard at the physician for a moment, then thanked the goblin sentries and dismissed them. When they had scuttled away, he turned back to Chaven. “But first ...”

The physician’s mouth was hanging open. “You spoke to them—but you did not say a word that I could hear. How did you do that?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Barrick waved his hand. “First, before we go back to the camp, you will leave the statue in my tent for now. I don’t think I want Saqri and the others to know about it just yet.” He took Chaven by the elbow and directed him back along the rocky path that circled the great hole at the center of the cavern.

“I… I don’t understand, Highness,” said Chaven.

“No, you don’t.” Barrick gave him a little push to speed him up. “That’s because you don’t have the blood of gods and monsters running in your veins like some of us do.”

30. Slipping on Blood

“The last hours are truly upon us now,”said Malachite Copper. The high-ranking Funderling was looking less handsome every hour, his armor dented and dusty, his hair wild and scorched short on one side where a flare of Xixian war fire had burned him. “When the southerners dig through all that rock we dropped in the middle of the Maze, we’ll have to make a stand. We’ve slowed them badly these last days, but once they push through here, there’ll be nowhere else we can hope to stop them.”

Vansen took a tiny sip from his waterskin. The blasting powder the Funderlings had used to block the autarch’s march as they slowly gave ground through the Maze had also cracked the stone of the ancient building’s aqueduct; they no longer had fresh water or any notion of when they would get some again. “How much longer do we need to hold them?”

“Not long” Copper said. “I looked in on the monks carrying the hour-candle a short while ago to learn the time. Midsummer’s Eve is over now, Captain. Upground, Midsummer’s Day has already dawned. Today, we will live or die, succeed or fail.”

“I wish it were such an even thing—a toss of the coin, live or die.” Vansen frowned; it made his jaw hurt where one of the Xixians had knocked his helmet off his head with a spear thrust, but he had been fortunate not to lose his eye. “But I think the chances we live to see the day after today are much smaller than that, friend Copper.”

A short distance away Cinnabar Quicksilver was tossing and murmuring in shallow sleep. He had been felled by one of the Xixians’ powder blasts in the Initiation Hall at the center of the Maze. A dozen other Funderlings had died but Vansen and Sledge Jasper had reached the wounded magister in time to drag him and a handful of other survivors out alive. The fever that had come with Cinnabar’s wounds had been the greatest danger but it seemed finally to have broken. Now he lay on a makeshift litter here in Revelation Hall, the last roofed section of the Maze. Only the open Balcony lay behind them, then below it and beyond stretched the great open spaces of the cavern that contained the Sea in the Depths and the island of the Shining Man.

Wardthane Sledge Jasper limped over and lowered himself to the floor beside them. His face was a mask of dried blood and dirt, his hairless head crisscrossed with cuts and dappled with bruises: Vansen thought that he looked like he had been trying to knock down walls using nothing but his own hard skull.

“It’s a short walk to the end of the road,” Jasper said matter-of-factly. “I just came back.”

“The Balcony?” Vansen asked. “I know, I’ve seen it ...”

“We’ll be able to hold them less than an hour or two after they break through into this hall… and our spies say they’re coming soon. Hundreds and hundreds.” Jasper looked to where a group of weary Funderlings was piling stones for the last of the defensive barriers they were building across Revelation Hall. “At least we won’t have to go far when we do retreat again.”

“Vansen… ?” Cinnabar was awake on his litter and stretching out his hand. “Captain Vansen… ?”

“I’m here.” He crouched down beside the Funderling magister. One of Cinnabar’s legs was badly broken. Vansen thought that even if some miracle saved him from death at the hands of the Xixies, there was little chance the Funderling would keep the damaged limb.

“Where is… my boy?” Cinnabar asked.

“Calomel is well.” Vansen leaned forward and took his small, rough hand. “We just made him get some rest and something to eat. He’s been at your side all day.”

“Truly? Truly he is well?” Cinnabar’s eyes swam with tears. “You are not telling me this only to keep a dying man happy?”

Vansen shook his head. “You’re not dying, Magister. The fever has broken and the worst is behind you. And I swear on my soldier’s honor that Calomel is in good health—well, as good as any of us on short rations and short rest. He’s a fine, brave little lad and he will be angry we sent him away just before you woke up again.”

Cinnabar at last let himself be convinced. He lay back; soon he was sleeping again.

“And what will happen at the end?” asked Malachite Copper suddenly. “I have never thought much of such things before. Will we lie in darkness for a thousand years, as some say, or will we immediately be raised up again to stand before the throne of the Lord himself?”

Vansen could only shake his head, angry again. If the stinking Qar had held to their bargain, it might never have come to this. He felt a scalding surge of hatred toward the fairies—that creature Aesi’uah, for all her seeming kindness, had looked him straight in the eye and told him that the Qar would not desert their allies!

But I suppose in a way she told the truth, Ferras Vansen decided. After all, how can you desert what you never truly joined?

“I’m going to put my head down now,” he said heavily. “Grab a few moments’ sleep. One of you be good enough to wake me if some of the autarch’s men happen by, will you?”

Olin Eddon groaned. His pale face was dappled with sweat.

Pinimmon Vash bowed respectfully to the walking dead man. “If there is anything else you need, Majesty, you have only to ask.”

“Other than having my arms untied, you mean.” Olin had lost weight rapidly in the last days and his cheeks were hollow, blue-shadowed above the tangle of his unkempt beard. His eyes, though, were still so bright that Vash found it discomforting to meet the man’s gaze.

“There is no one to blame for that but yourself, King Olin.” Vash realized even as he said it that he must sound like some old Favored of the Seclusion scolding one of the lesser princes. “Surely you cannot expect to walk free after trying to kill the Golden One.”

Olin laughed bitterly. “If you had any wit, you and the rest of these Xixian sheep would have helped me. The monster might be dead now.”

Vash could not help feeling a thrill of relief at the mere notion but could not show anything of it, of course. “You are a fool, King Olin. He is the sun of our sky. Every Xixian thanks heaven for the health of our autarch every day.”

“While making plans for what will happen when someone finally achieves what I failed to do. Speaking of that, how is the scotarch?”

For a moment, Vash thought his old heart would crack like an egg. His gaze darted wildly, but none of the soldiers or royal functionaries except Olin’s guards were close enough to have heard. Still, who was to say that in his anger the northern king might not spew such fatal nonsense again in front of the Golden One? In his terror, Paramount Minister Vash began to give serious thought to how he could kill the autarch’s prisoner without anyone knowing.

“Did you speak to him as I suggested?” Olin pressed.

All gods curse this man! His persistence was insane! “Do not even talk to me, Majesty. Do you seek to make my master distrust me? It will not work. He knows my loyalty is complete.”

“It can’t be.” Olin was smiling now. He was proud of his smile: the guards had knocked out one of his teeth. “You are too clever a man for that, Vash. Why would someone who has lived as long as you yoke his fortune to a madman like Sulepis? I am certain you have done what I said, and I am certain that your mind is full of new ideas ...”

Vash looked around frantically. Would this horror never end? Of course he had spoken with Prusus, the crippled scotarch, a man nobody had even suspected had the power of speech. Olin was right in one thing, of course: Pinimmon Vash had not lived so long by being a fool, and if there were things he did not know about the man who might replace Sulepis Am-Bishakh then Vash needed to know them. And he had learned much that surprised him… but he was not so stupid as to discuss any of it with this walking corpse.

“I know nothing of what you say,” he told Olin. “And I do not wish to know anything of it, either. Ah!” He had finally seen someone of high enough status to be recognized. “There is High Priest Panhyssir—someone whose conversation makes sense.”

“As you say,” said Olin. “Dig your hole, then, Minister Vash. I hope you dig it deep, because there will be much killing when the end comes and few enough places to hide.”

Vash was tired of holes and he was tired of Olin Eddon. He turned his back on the northerner. “Panhyssir! A moment of your time ...”

“I’m sorry, good Lord Vash,” said the priest as he marched by with a small entourage of robed followers. He waved a thick hand. “I cannot stop to talk. Very important work for the autarch is before me, and the time grows short.”

The ass. At that moment, Vash nearly broke his staff across the high priest’s ugly, self-satisfied head. He stood for a moment composing himself, then hurried after Panhyssir, saying: “I will walk with you, old friend, and leave Olin to the pleasant company of his guards.”

Vash generally found getting around difficult, especially in the first stiff, aching hour after he rose in the morning, but fortunately the high priest Panhyssir was fat and no faster than a Mihanni tortoise. Vash caught up to him only a short distance away, then immediately had to duck his head under the low lintel of a doorway leading into one of the side passages. These were ceremonial precincts, that much was clear, so the doors and ceilings of this maze were not as low as they might have been—Vash could only shudder when he thought about what it must be like to live among these terrible little creatures in their horrid, dark, cramped little city. A man his size would be forever on his knees…

But soon enough it will be over and we will go back to Xis and I will never have to see these miserable, dank places and ugly creatures again, he reassured himself.

Panhyssir had slowed a little. The tone of his voice suggested this was a great sacrifice. “What did you want, Vash, my friend?”

“Simply to ask you a question, good Panhyssir, but I would rather ...” Vash paused to duck under a low place in the passage which the quartermaster corps had marked with a splash of paint,”… talk to you in private somewhere, instead of gasping for breath here among the common herd.”

“Ah, so you do not find it as invigorating as the rest of us do, being on the front lines of battle with our Golden One?”

Vash scowled at Panhyssir’s wide back. The fat, self-righteous fool! Vash had heard the priest complaining many times during this ill-omened voyage, fulminating about the absence of his regular cook or the danger to his health from damp and chilly northern airs. Once, Vash had even heard the high priest claim that the weeping of the captive children in the hold disturbed his afternoon nap. Invigorating, indeed! “I do not have your wonderful constitution and boundless joy in adventure, old friend, that’s true,” he told the priest. “But my reluctance is more to do with matters I would not air among our inferiors.”

“Oh, well then, follow me. I shall have a few moments to speak when we reach the Sanctuary.”

Pinimmon Vash almost groaned out loud. The chamber the priests had chosen for a Sanctuary was two floors up, a walk of several minutes. “You are too kind,” he said. The new Sanctuary had been one of the larger chambers of the maze complex, this one near the top of the front end of the rabbit warren the northern Yisti had built for themselves and which the autarch’s troops had only liberated a few days earlier. He gritted his teeth and hobbled along behind the priests.

Vash was interested to discover that the Golden One’s latest prisoner had a position of honor in the Sanctuary second only to that of Nushash himself: her cage was in the center of the room, not far from the draped cabinet that held the ancient gilded wooden effigy of the god. The girl—Kinten, Kwinten, her name did not matter, she was only the daughter of a minor priest—was kneeling in the straw in the middle of the cage with her wrists tied behind her and her black hair hanging over her face—sulking, no doubt. Still, Vash knew it was her because of the streak of violent, unruly red in her hair.

“You will pardon me for a moment, Minister Vash,” said Panhyssir, all formality now. “This must be punctual. Every day, at dawn, midday, and again at evening.” He laughed. “Although, of course, sunrise and sunset are purely intellectual experiences here in these caves.”

Caves, thought Vash with a shiver. As if anyone could call something as vast and ancient and strange as this underground world by the mere name of caves! Had Panhyssir seen nothing of these bedeviling depths, with their huge, echoing spaces, their monstrous painted shapes and carved spells? Caves were shallow niches in the ocean rocks near the Vash family summer home. This was an entire world.

The girl’s cage was unlocked, but she did not move. One of the young priests brought a steaming bowl to Panhyssir. The high priest passed it beneath his nose for a moment, taking the merest sniff of the rising vapors, then nodded with his usual grandiosity and handed it back. The younger man carried it to the cage and held it out for the girl, then went through a little dumbshow pantomime when she would not take it, as if he could not be bothered to speak to such a creature.

Panhyssir moved over beside Vash. “As usual, we will have to threaten to kill one of the other captives if she doesn’t cooperate. She wishes to protect the children the Golden One has gathered, so she will give in after a short while. It is the same every time.” He laughed. “Ah, but no service is too aggravating when it is a service for the Great Tent himself, am I right, Minister?”

“Of course, of course,” said Vash, watching the girl. She did not look like the whole thing was merely a daily ritual: she looked desperate and badly frightened. In truth, Vash did not like having to harm children, at least not any more than was absolutely needed for proper correction. This whole business of the Golden One’s mysterious plan was becoming more distasteful by the day.

Vash shook his head, annoyed by his own woolgathering. “The thing is, High Priest Panhyssir, I was wondering whether you had been experiencing any of the same… communication problems that I have?”

The other man looked back at him, eyes flat, expression carefully smoothed. “What exactly do you mean, Paramount Minister Vash?”

“Every day I send my letters back to the main military camp on the surface, giving orders to my subordinates, answering questions of protocol from those wishing to communicate with the Great Tent himself in some way. I am sure you do much the same.”

Panhyssir shrugged. “Most of my priests are here,” he said, sweeping his broad hand around the Sanctuary, which had been so filled with candles and ornaments and religious statuary now that it did look little different from one of the great Nushash temples back home. “There are priests of the Great God ministering to the troops of course, but they only rarely need guidance from me.”

“Perhaps it has not been as apparent to you, then, as it has to me.”

“What hasn’t been?”

“That my letters are not being answered. It’s almost two days now since I’ve had a reply from the main camp. I inquired of the courier corps and they said their men have set out for the surface the last two days but haven’t yet returned, and that no one else has come down from above, either.”

Panhyssir’s face was still carefully neutral, but Vash thought he saw a flicker of apprehension. “Ah. Still, I am sure it is nothing. A confusion of duties, perhaps, or even a mere physical impediment like a rockslide ...”

“Then why haven’t our messengers come back to say the way was blocked?”

“I couldn’t say. And it is something to be aware of, Brother Pinimmon. But not, I would say, something to fret about overmuch.”

The girl was weeping now, and Vash was distracted. The young priest was bent over her, whispering angrily. Now that his eyes were used to the light in the Sanctuary, Vash could see that not all the methods of persuasion used on her had been mere threats. She had bruises on her face and upper arms as well, and doubtless others hidden by her shapeless robes.

“I… I’m not certain I agree, High Priest Panhyssir. It could just as equally be ...” Vash was still staring at the unhappy girl. “Why does she make such a fuss?”

“What? Oh, because the Sun’s Blood potion tastes foul, I suspect. We do not have the leisure of giving it to her in smaller amounts because time is short.”

Vash shook his head. “I do not understand. Sun’s Blood… ?”

“In case she must be used in the ritual in place of the northern king. He is of the direct bloodline of the gods, only a few generations displaced.” Panhyssir nodded his head gravely. “She is of mongrel stock and the blood of Habbili in her is much thinned, so we must bring it back to a point of concentration, and quickly.” The girl groaned, a noise of true distress. Panhyssir smiled a little. “Good. She has drunk the potion. You do not want to be here when the visions take her. It can be a little upsetting for a layman. Screaming, thrashing, you can imagine.”

Vash, who had presided over dozens of tortures and executions (not particularly by choice but by the requirements of his position) raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yes, it sounds dreadful. Thank you for sparing me. But I still would like to finish speaking of that other matter ...”

“Other… ? Oh, yes. And this problem with communication between the camp aboveground and our forces here worries you? Perhaps you should talk to the antipolemarch. Surely he would be aware of any difficulty.”

Vash nodded. “Yes, that is a good idea. Because I can think of more sinister reasons the messengers might not be getting through ...”

Now it was the high priest who raised an eyebrow. “Sinister? Truly? Such as what?”

“There might be hard fighting on the surface. Or a force might have come down from the castle through the Yisti city, and has now cut our supply lines.”

Panhyssir stared at him for a moment. When he laughed, it was as sudden and loud as a cannon shot, and everyone in the room except the gagging, weeping girl turned to look at him. “Cut our supply lines! What, that force of tiny soldiers? With what, toy swords and broomstick horses to ride?” He grabbed at his stomach as if it hurt. “Oh, Vash, my distinguished friend, I hope you will forgive me when I say that it is clear you have very little knowledge of war. We have crushed the resistance here so thoroughly that they will be trying to surrender to every stranger who passes for years after we are gone!”

Angry and ashamed, but as usual showing nothing, Pinimmon Vash bowed and thanked Panhyssir for sharing his wisdom. As he went out, he could still hear the girl coughing and sobbing in her cage.

Vansen scrubbed himself as well as he could with sand before he put his armor back on. It was a soldier’s habit he had learned from Donal Murroy, his old captain—take any opportunity to get clean that you can find. Most of the others hadn’t bothered, and Ferras Vansen didn’t like that. It wasn’t the smell of sweat and blood and less pleasant things that bothered him—a soldier quickly became used to the stink of many men together, especially in confined places like the Maze—but he feared that it meant his untrained Funderling soldiers, who had fought so long and so bravely against hopeless odds, had nearly given up.

Ferras Vansen didn’t blame any of them. Sledge Jasper had lost nearly half his original troop of warders, men he had trained himself. Malachite Copper’s household guard had been halved as well, and among those dead were Copper’s own brother-in-law, hacked to death on his back as he screamed for help; if Copper survived, he would still have to give his wife that dreadful news. Many of the other Funderlings were monks who had never expected to leave the temple again in their lives, let alone be forced into a war against Big Folk, and the rest were volunteers, young Funderling men who had not even joined the Stonecutter’s Guild yet.

Vansen watched a pair of monks as they carefully strapped Cinnabar to his litter under the watchful eye of the magister’s son Calomel. The past days had taught the Funderlings that retreats were often sudden, uncalculated affairs, even with Vansen’s experienced leadership, and since retreat was the only thing guaranteed in this campaign, they did their best to prepare for it ahead of time. The monk Flowstone was crouched near them, leading a few of the other Metamorphic Brothers in prayer; when he had finished, Ferras Vansen called him over.

“I am sorry if I have treated you more harshly than you deserve,” he told the young monk. “In truth, you have done well. I’m sorry you and your brothers have to go through this.”

Flowstone tried to smile bravely, but it didn’t entirely work. “Our faith teaches us that the past and present are nearest each other at moments like this, and so of course it is painful to be one of those caught in the folds of history. That is when we are closest to the scorching flames of the Eternal.”

Vansen wasn’t at all sure what that meant. His ideas about the gods had never led him much beyond what the priests had told him, coupled with a certain doubt about the good sense of any complicated hierarchy, even a heavenly one. He nodded, which was the best thing he could think of to do, and changed the subject. “We can only defend the last chamber—the Revelation Hall as you call it—then we will be forced out of the Maze entirely.”

“Captain!” One of Dolomite’s men trotted up, sweating. “They are breaking through the last of the rubble! The sentries say they will be on us soon.”

Vansen felt it like the last note of a triad—something he had been expecting, almost needing. Soon he would not have to fear his own mistakes any longer. Soon he would not have to watch good men die. He had given everything he had. There could be no shame in that… could there?

“Everybody to the back of the hall!” he said, pitching his voice to be heard by as many as possible. As the farthest who could hear him called to those who could not, Vansen added, “Douse any torches and get everyone behind the first barricade. We’ll make our stand there.”

Jasper grinned tightly and looked at the monk Flowstone, who appeared more than a little queasy at the prospect. “We will indeed,” the wardthane said. “We’ll give ’em something they’ll be talking about in Funderling Town and Xis itself for many a year!”

Fear ran through the hall like a ripple on a pool, but no one hesitated; within only moments they were moving in a ragged but orderly way toward the foremost barricade.

Flowstone looked up at Vansen, and his mouth trembled. “We’re all going to die in this hall, aren’t we?” he said quietly. “The same place where I was initiated—the place where I became a man.”

“Nobody knows when their time has come or what the gods plan.” Vansen shrugged. “Least of all now, when even the gods seem baffled. A year ago I thought I’d certainly die behind the Shadowline. That didn’t happen. Who knows what comes next, Brother Flowstone? Only the Sisters of Fate. Tighten your helmet strap and have a sip of water. You probably won’t have a chance at another for a while.”

Pinimmon Vash had no idea what to expect of the event. It seemed like one of his master’s typical whims—some sort of ceremony, apparently religious, but with a full slate of the autarch’s Leopard guards in attendance. Vash made certain that Panhyssir was informed so that the sanctuary would be ready.

To Vash’s inestimable relief, the northern king for once was nowhere to be seen. The girl with the red streak had been removed from the chamber as well, so that only the shrine of Nushash remained of things that might steal attention from the autarch—not that anything could truly compete with Sulepis. In his ceremonial golden armor and high-crested falcon helmet the tall ruler indeed seemed something far beyond a mere man. The autarch’s eyes even seemed to catch and reflect back something of the smoldering torches, shining almost orange beneath his crown’s golden beak. Two dozen of the autarch’s Leopards stood before, beside, and behind him, making a sort of human cage that briefly gave Vash a bizarre glimpse of the autarch imprisoned. Yet Sulepis stood nearly a head taller than even the biggest of them: the cage of men seemed scarcely enough to contain him.

Vash didn’t know himself what the autarch was planning. He had fulfilled all that was expected of him, and now waited with ragged nerves to discover it. He sometimes thought it must be the same to be a bird as to serve a capricious, deadly master like Sulepis. The winds shifted, a warm updraft became a downdraft that hurled you toward the earth, and all you could do was fight to keep your wings out and pray you would level out once more.

The autarch called out to the Leopard guard officer. “Did you bring them, as I bade you? Are they here?”

He bowed, shaved head gleaming with oil. “Waiting outside, Golden One.”

“Good. Send them in to me now.”

Two Leopards went out. The rest of the guards did their best to remain at strict attention, but they were clearly curious as to who might be such a risk that so many guards were present at once. Soon, three large women were led into the sanctuary. They were all Xixian, by appearance, and each woman was as tall and heavyset as almost any of the Leopards; also, all three were hard-eyed and sullen. The guards’ eyes grew wide to see them. Some of them must have wondered whether the autarch planned one of his strange jokes.

Sulepis waved his long, gold-tipped fingers and the desert priest A’lat appeared bearing a box of carved ivory. At a nod from Sulepis and despite his blind appearance, the priest walked directly to each of the women in turn and gave her something from the box. As the priest returned to the autarch’s side, Vash saw that each of the muscular women now held something that looked like a piece of dull crystal about the same size as a honey-sweet.

“You are Khobana the Wolf, are you not?” the autarch asked the tallest woman, whose hair was chopped shorter than that of most men. “The one who was sentenced to execution for killing her husband and family?”

A sort of sneer curled her lip. “Yes, Golden One.”

“I remember you. With your bare hands, yes?” He nodded, pleased. “Now, you three each hold a great gift—one that will make you as fearsome a fighter as one of the gods themselves, as powerful as Xosh the moon god who slew Okhuz, the god of war. And if you survive to return it… it will also buy your freedom.”

The women stared at him, mistrustful as wild animals. Vash was unsure of what was happening, but he could not help remembering that as powerful as Xosh Silvergleam had been, he had been slain in turn by another, stronger god. It was something Pinimmon Vash thought about more and more, these days: the servants of the powerful often came to a bad end—and nobody mourned them.…

The autarch had continued. “… And although in ordinary times such weak resistance would mean nothing—less than nothing—because I now have need of haste I cannot allow these mongrel Yisti and their March-man general to balk me any longer. That is why you hold those kulikos stones in your hands.”

Kulikos? Vash shivered. He had heard enough of the old stories to know such powerful magicks would bring death to many—and eventually, to their bearers as well.

As he warmed to his subject, the autarch’s voice rose and echoed. “With the stones and the spells A’lat has taught you, you will be true she-demons! You will tear my enemies apart as if they were mice and rabbits, and they will run weeping before you. You will leave nothing in your wake but blood, and when the sun has passed through the sky one more time in the world above, I will stand before the god himself and make his power mine. And you three will be among my most honored servants!”

Khobana the Wolf was the first of the women to drop to her knees. “Hail, Sulepis!” she said. “Hail, Golden One!” The other two echoed her cry.

“Hail, indeed!” the autarch said, laughing.

31. The Gate to Funderling Town

“It’s foolish and I won’t let you do it,” Brother Antimony told him. “With all respect, Master Chert, I can’t. Cinnabar and the rest would never forgive me.” He blanched. “Oh, Elders, and think of what Mistress Opal would do! She’d have my hide for a cleaning rag!”

“Unless you’re planning to tie me up and sit on me, young man, you can’t stop me.” He scowled. “Don’t make it harder. Do you think I’m not terrified?”

“But… but it’s a war up there!”

“It’s a war down here, too. Our friends are fighting and probably dying this moment. I owe it to them to do what I can.”

“But what makes you think Brother Nickel will listen to you anyway? He is stubborn, Chert, and he hates you.”

“He won’t listen to me—but he’ll listen to the Astion.” He finished tying his pack closed and stood up, slinging it over his shoulders. “Nickel is a nasty piece of work, but he is not a traitor. Neither is my brother, much as I dislike him. And they have Guild Law on their side.” It still galled, though, the way his older brother Nodule, the clan magister, had walked in and immediately taken Nickel’s side. “No, if we want to be ready to save our people, we will have to do it the correct way, the Funderling way—with all permits correctly chopped and filed.” He patted the big youth on the arm. “Keep the work going any way you can, Antimony. Work in secret if you can. They will likely not bother you if I’m gone, and I’ll make sure they hear about it.”

“But what about your wife and son… ?”

“I’ll deal with them, lad. Cinnabar and the others are down in the depths facing certain death. I can at least have the courage to tell Opal what I plan to do, face-to-face.”

Antimony clasped Chert’s hand with the worried look of someone sending a friend off to nearly certain death.

“You what? Of course you will not! In fact you will have to walk over me to get out this door.” Opal threw herself across the doorway of her temporary quarters beside the gunflour-works. The women who shared it with her had all slipped out when they heard the first of Chert’s words, sensing the storm that was brewing—even the redoubtable Vermilion Quicksilver. Chert wished he could have followed them.

“It’s no good, my old darling,” he said with a stern resolve he did not feel. “I have no choice. I’ve told you why. If I wait any longer, it will be too late.”

“All the more reason. It was a wild, dangerous plan to begin with, so why risk your life for it?” She folded her arms across her breast. She wasn’t going to budge without a fight, that was clear. In that moment he loved her for it even as he began to wonder whether he would have to knock her senseless to escape.

“Just listen to me, my love,” he begged.

“No and no and no… !” She broke off, distracted. Flint had wandered out of the back of the cavern rubbing his eyes, his hair still mussed from sleep. “Oh, child, were we shouting?” she said in a completely different tone. “Go back to sleep. Mama will be in soon. I’m just having a little discussion with your wicked, wicked Papa.”

“Let him go, Mama Opal. I… I dreamed about it. The Shining Man was on fire—it was hot as the sun! Everybody was screaming. Let him go.”

“What nonsense is this?” Opal frowned and tried to turn him around. “You had a bad dream, child. Back to bed.”

“No.” He held firm. He was bigger than Chert now, almost the size of the young giant Antimony, and could not be so easily moved. “Papa Chert has to go.”

Chert took a few steps forward and touched Opal’s arms. “The boy has been right before… about many things.”

Her expression was not of anger but naked terror. “No! Not again! I won’t let you go off again. Do you know what it’s like for me… ?”

Chert shook his head. “I can only guess. But I know that you miss me like I miss you.” He took another step, put his arms around her even though she stiffened in his embrace and turned her face away. “Please, my only love, don’t make this so hard for me. I would not do it if I didn’t feel I had to, but lives and more depend on me—perhaps all of Funderling Town!”

She pulled herself away but kept her back to him. “Then just ... just go. But do not expect me to weep quietly and wave farewell like some dutiful wife out of a story. Go and be cursed!”

“No!” The thought horrified him. “Don’t send me away with that on my head, Opal.”

“Get out.” She shrugged off his embrace, slapped at his hands when he tried to touch her again, and still would not meet his eye. “Go!”

He kissed the boy on the forehead, ran his hand through the child’s flaxen hair, then left the makeshift dwelling and turned toward Funderling Town. Opal was right about one thing—it would be a long and dangerous trip, with the Earth Elders only knew what kind of monsters and enemies between him and his destination. He felt as if he waded through chest-deep water, his feet sticking and sliding on a muddy bottom.

“Wait! Chert, wait!”

He turned to see Opal leaping up the path behind him, the hem of her skirt clutched in her hands so she didn’t trip. Before he could say a word, she reached him and threw her arms around him, squeezing her small, compact body against his so tightly that for a moment he lost his breath.

“I take it back, I take it all back,” she said through tears. “I take back what I said! You are my man, Blue Quartz, and I love you. But if you let something happen to you then I will put a curse on you that will make you hop and jump like a rat with fleas even as you stand in front of the Elders themselves! I swear it!”

He did not waste breath trying to come up with anything to say to that, but only held her for a long time. After they finally kissed and murmured their good-byes Opal turned and went back down the path without looking at him again.

Any hopes Briony might have had of a swift conquest of her family home did not survive the first hours of their incursion. Hendon Tolly’s loyalists, caught by surprise when Briony and Eneas arrived at the outer wall in the middle of the burning of the autarch’s ships, quickly dropped back to the inner keep. Berkan Hood and his soldiers pressed hundreds of castle folk into involuntary service, forcing them to hoist cannons rescued from the Qar’s attack up to the top of the inner keep’s walls, and by the time the sun rose on Briony’s first morning back in Southmarch, those guns had begun to boom from the towers of Raven’s Gate.

“We have our own demi-cannons atop Basilisk Gate and the outer walls,” Eneas said as they sheltered with his lieutenants in a merchant’s tall house on the North Lagoon. From the window of the uppermost room they could see the smoke of the guns curling along the top of Raven’s Gate, but at the moment Hood and his defenders didn’t seem to know where their enemies were and were firing wildly. The morning air off the ocean was warm and damp and salty as blood; the weather seemed to have changed from spring to late summer in a day. “We could leave some of them in place against a return by the autarch’s troops and have the rest brought to bear on the inner keep by tonight.”

Briony shook her head. “Tolly has surrounded himself with innocents. I won’t fire on my own people.”

Eneas nodded. “I sympathize, Princess. Perhaps I even agree, but I am not certain you can afford too much care. If what your father told you is correct, we have only until midnight tomorrow before the autarch… well before he does whatever it is he plans.”

“But the autarch is deep beneath the castle. That witch Saqri told us.”

He shrugged, a pragmatic warrior out of his depths. “I am certain you remember what the fairy queen said better than I do, but I remember that she told us, ‘Every battle here matters.’ She said there were strands of danger everywhere, like a spider’s web, and that no one could know for certain which strand touched which.”

Briony loosened and retied the strip of cloth meant to keep the sweat out of her eyes. The mere thought of being ruled by the fairy queen, the creature who had stolen her brother, filled her with fury. “I don’t care. I will not turn the guns on my own people unless they have taken up arms for Tolly. But from the distance a cannon shot will travel, that’s impossible to know.”

Lord Helkis, the prince’s friend and chief commander, cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, Princess Briony, but this is no ordinary siege. We cannot wait them out. From what we are told, Tolly has been stocking the residence with supplies for months. Do you think we can make them surrender by wagging our fingers at them?”

“Miron,” said Eneas warningly.

“No, Your Highness, it must be said.” The young nobleman turned to Briony again. “I will speak what my liege cannot, either because of his feelings or his courtesy. If the fairies are right, Princess, then you will doom your own people by this faintheartedness.”

“Miron! You go too far… !”

“No, Eneas.” Briony lifted her hand. “He is giving you what any good councillor should—the truth as he sees it.” She turned to Helkis. “Yes, my lord, it is a dilemma. But I will not let anyone fire willy-nilly into the heart of my castle. Tolly has gathered many of my subjects around him. Even among the soldiers, a large number of those fighting probably believe they are defending the keep against the autarch or the fairies or some other foreign invader. No, I will not return to my home and spill any blood that I needn’t spill.” She frowned at a sudden thought. How many times had her father said, “Even a good king will always have blood on his hands ...”? More than she could count. Briony had thought he meant simply that wars could not be avoided, but now she was learning the truth: Olin had been saying that almost every decision a monarch made would cause suffering for someone. “Please, let me consider this problem for a short time, if you would be so good,” she said when Lord Helkis would have spoken again.

“Would you like a moment to yourself?” asked Eneas.

“That is exactly what I would like, Your Highness,” she said gratefully. “But I will not evict you from your own rooms. I will walk a little.”

“But not beyond the yard of this house… !”

“Of course not, Prince Eneas. You have my promise.”

She made her way downstairs past the sentries and other soldiers, bemused as always not by the way they evaporated from in front of her— Briony had been born into a royal family; she was used to deference—as by the way they steadfastly avoided meeting her eyes. This was a new thing. Only the most fearful or guilty had looked away from her before, and ever since she had reached womanhood, she had become used to men sizing her up with the unconscious insolence of horse-traders. So what had changed?

These are Eneas’ men, she realized. And they think I belong to their prince.

It was a realization that disturbed her more than it should have.

She reached the ground floor and made her way across the crowded courtyard to the gate. The merchant who owned this house had been a wealthy man—Briony believed she had met him at a few court functions, although she didn’t remember his face—and his property was large, more than adequate for Eneas and his command staff. She made her way up the stairs of the small gatehouse.

It was beyond strange seeing what had become of the outer keep in her absence, horrifying as any nightmare. The Qar’s brief invasion had all but emptied it, and though a few residents had filtered back out after the fairies had withdrawn, they had quickly found themselves under fire from the autarch’s huge cannons and so had fled back to the inner keep again.

The outer keep had once been as pretty and thriving a city as any north of Tessis, but now it seemed lifeless as a pile of charred bones. Entire buildings had toppled into spars and brickwork or burned away until only their chimneys remained, solitary as grave markers. Scarcely any of the tallest buildings still stood, and those that remained upright were blackened and deserted. Briony could not look at the wreckage without her eyes filling with tears.

But that will do you no good, woman, she told herself. Keep your thoughts on what you need to do. Concentrate!

The problem was clear. From here on White Bank Road, she could not see much of the old walls of the inner keep, although she could see the towers of Raven’s Gate clearly enough and the shapes of soldiers atop it, scurrying like ants on a garden wall. But the inner keep’s walls were high and nowhere could they be quickly breached. Whether traitor or not, Avin Brone had always been a useful tyrant about keeping them in good condition and the gates and guard towers well staffed.

Briony couldn’t help but wonder where Brone was at that moment, and what he would do if he knew she lived. How deep did his treachery run? Had he made common cause with Tolly, or would he at least support her to get the castle back into Eddon hands? That was something to think about, if they managed to breach the walls of the inner keep: Brone didn’t know that Finn Teodoros had spilled his secrets. He didn’t know that Briony knew all about him.

But it did her no good now unless she could get word to Brone on the other side of the walls and he really would support her. After all, he might just as easily lead her and Eneas into a trap. Might Tolly have some kind of hold over him? It was so hard to know, because Brone himself was so full of shadow. “He is the man who does what I cannot,” her father had sometimes said, but never told her or her brothers exactly what he meant. Now Briony Eddon was beginning to suspect.

Thinking of Brone and his countless subterfuges reminded her of something—a night long ago, or so it seemed now, after Kendrick’s death but before everything had gone completely wrong, when he had summoned Briony and her brother to his chambers. It had been the same night Finn Teodoros had read Brone’s plans to have her family imprisoned and destroyed, but that was not what had sparked in her memory.

Father’s letter… ! A page of that letter had been stolen, and that night Brone had given it back to them, saying he found it among his own papers and claiming his innocence. Briony doubted that innocence now, but it was the letter itself she remembered. It had said something about protecting the drains of the inner keep because Olin feared vulnerability there. Could that help her now?

Her heart fell as she remembered that Brone had resolved the problem the king feared, covering the drains with massive iron grates whose holes were too small for even the slenderest child or slipperiest Skimmer to pass through. In fact, the Skimmers themselves had sworn to her only hours earlier that there was no way they could enter the inner keep. Her beloved father had unwittingly made certain her only chance at rescuing his throne was prevented.

Another idea came to her then—an odd idea, the sort of thing that would have Eneas frowning and doubtful, but thinking about the Skimmer-folk had brought it to her and the more she considered it the more it seemed her only chance.

She turned her back on the gate so suddenly that she bumped into one of the Syannese knights, who dropped to a knee, full of apologies. “None of that,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Sir Stephanas, Your Highness.” Like the others, he wouldn’t look directly at her. It irritated her.

“Well, go find me half a dozen of your brave fellows and tell them all to put on ordinary clothes—the deserted houses must be full of them. Then meet me here in an hour’s time.”

“Clothes… ? Houses… ?”

“Oh, dear, Sir Stephanas, I hope it is my accent that is at fault and not your brains. Yes, put on the clothing of ordinary people—but bring your swords. In the meantime, I’ll tell your master the prince that I’m sending you on a little errand.”

Chert made his way carefully around the temple. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of having to confront his brother or Nickel again—or at least so he told himself—but rather because he had no time to waste on conversation and the sort of small-minded niggling he felt sure he would get from the temple’s guardians. So he snuck through the great fungus gardens in front of the temple, then around the kitchen side where the smells from the malt house, especially the smoke of the oasting fires where the brew-moss was still being dried even in these terrible times, gave him a sharp pang of regret. When was the last time he had sat down and simply raised a cup with friends? When was the last time he had done anything except struggle to keep his family alive and to help out Vansen and the others fighting this terrible war? A man should not have to live like this.

But when gods and demigods fight, Chert reminded himself, an ordinary man is lucky if he can stay alive at all. He said a prayer to the Earth Elders and struck out for the grounds behind the temple and the path to the Cascade Stair.

It took him the better part of the morning to make his way up the long, circuitous route to the Silk Door and the outskirts of Funderling Town. The roads were quite deserted. He walked down the broad expanse of Ore Street and saw not a single worker returning from a job in the outer tunnels, no women coming back from the drying caverns or peddlers with handcarts trying to find a last customer before the midday meal. Were all his neighbors really so frightened? Chert thought that was strange when the fighting itself was so far away.

He stopped at the Salt Pool to have a look around but saw no one, not even little Boulder, and he began to wonder if he even wanted to travel through Funderling Town itself. What was going on here? From what Opal had told him, a tennight or so ago things had been mostly unchanged, the numbers reduced but the life of the town going on much as normal.

He found a lamplighter asleep sitting up in a back alley off Gem Street on the outskirts of the guildhall district. Chert shook him awake.

“What goes here?” he asked as the fellow sputtered his excuses. “Quiet! I don’t care what you were doing! What goes here? Where is everybody?”

The lamplighter, who had by now realized he was in no immediate danger, beckoned Chert down beside him. “The question is, what are you doing, mate? Have you got permission? A Guild pass to be out at this time of the day?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Since the Big Folk came—didn’t you know? Nobody can be in the streets of the town unless they have permission from the Guild.”

“Hold on! The Big Folk? What Big Folk?”

The man did not much want to talk, but he also clearly didn’t want Chert making a loud fuss, either. He explained quickly that when the southerners’ boats had caught fire in the bay (the first of this astonishing news Chert had heard) and newly arrived Syannese soldiers had unexpectedly conquered the outer keep, some of Hendon Tolly’s still-loyal soldiers, led by Durstin Crowel, had forced their way in through the Funderling Gate. When the Highwardens and other Funderling leaders had protested they had been imprisoned in their own guildhall.

Chert’s plan to find a sympathetic Highwarden who would grant him the Astion to complete his project had just become immeasurably harder, if not absolutely impossible. There was only one other way to achieve his aims, one he had briefly considered and then discarded as too dangerous, but he saw little choice now.

As Chert sat considering this wretched news, the lamplighter seized the chance to make his escape. Chert didn’t try to stop him—he had far too much to consider already. Should he try to find someone trustworthy among his own folk, navigate his way through all the inevitable fear and mistrust under very the nose of Durstin Crowel and his bullies? Or should he try to make his way out the gate of Funderling Town into the aboveground castle in search of another very particular kind of help? But even if he found his way out, the second idea would still be a long shot.

It seems I have become the master of unlikely schemes, he reflected.

It hurt to think and Chert had already spent many hours walking. He was exhausted and hungry; if he was going to be killed, he decided, it might as well happen now when he already felt wretched. He got up and made his way down Gem Street as inconspicuously as he could. The stone trees and their many carved residents looked down on him from the famous ceiling as he made his way toward the Funderling Gate.

The familiar outlines of the gate looked very different now, even from a distance. Certainly, the array of guards, their tent, and the barricades of broken stone they had put up made it clear that the purpose of the gate had become less that of ceremonial transition and more that of keeping some people out and other people in.

At least a dozen guards from the castle waited there, dug in well back from the opening to the outer keep. Chert could hear the reason for their caution—cannon fire, not frequent, but enough to make him wonder whether he shouldn’t turn around and go back. But who was firing at whom? Was it the Xixians, still trying to break the defenders’ spirits? Or maybe those same defenders were shooting back at the Xixians, or maybe even at some Qar, if any of the fairy folk had ventured back aboveground.

It is a play, he thought. But not a comedy like the sort Chaven has told me about, with disguised princesses and runaway lovers. This is one of those great epics of disaster that he likes so much, with shouting and bloody bandages and kettledrums for gunfire. The kind you’re always grateful are happening to someone else.

Chert crept a little closer to the gate. Despite the noises of destruction from beyond the cavern’s mouth, the guards were still going about their business of denying exit to the ragtag crowd of Funderlings begging for their attention.

“I told you little rats, only Guild work gangs go through,” growled one of the guards, a man whose greasy face and bad temper suggested he had been interrupted in the middle of his meal. “Nobody else.”

“But two of our folk came back injured from working on the old walls this morning,” shouted a man at the back. “They will need replacements.”

“Then they will choose them when they come back tonight,” the shiny-faced guard declared. “What are you in such haste about? Don’t you like living in New Graylock?” He laughed and looked around to share the joke with his comrades. “New Graylock, eh?” He turned back to the supplicants. “Now piss off, or we’ll give you little naturals a spanking you won’t like.”

The crowd of Funderlings groaned and grumbled but showed no immediate signs of dispersing. Chert felt like groaning, too. How was he to get past this guard post? It was as hopeless as trying to find a sympathetic Highwarden who still had the authority to grant him an Astion.

Outside the cannons began to bark again. Chert was about to retreat to a safer spot and consider what he might do next when something abruptly smashed against the outside of the cavern with a crash so thunderously loud that it made his earlier thought of kettledrums seem childish. Half the opening came down in a moment, huge shards of stone flattening the makeshift guard post, crushing the tent and anyone still inside. Fragments spun through the air, knocking down other soldiers and Funderlings. Those of Chert’s people who had not been badly harmed immediately picked themselves up and fled deeper into the safety of the cavern entrance. Clouds of dust hung in the air, but Chert could see the guard who had spoken only a moment before, now bloodied and lying in a strew of rubble, twitching feebly.

Now or never, he thought. The Elders have shown me the way, I hope.

Of course, it could also have been that the Elders were showing him which way not to go: the devastation was astounding. The front of the gateway cavern had become a chaos of broken stone and swirling dust, and the cannons were still crashing outside.

Chert ducked his head and ran forward, stumbling over loose rocks. He had to step over a body buried under shattered stone, pale skin smeared with dirt and blood. He could not even tell if it was a Funderling or one of Durstin Crowel’s guards.

When he got out into the open, he kept his head down. The cannonball had struck the facing of the ancient cliff above the entrance to Funderling Town, just beneath the high, pale wall of the inner keep. The dust thrown up by the bombardment was nearly as thick here as inside the gate, but Chert was still struck by the sudden immensity of having sky over his head again for the first time since he and Flint had gone to the Drying Shed.

I can only pray to the Elders that the Rooftoppers will…

His thought went unfinished.

“Here he is!” cried a loud, unfamiliar voice, then someone pushed him to the ground from behind and yanked off his pack. “Got him.” A moment later, with Chert still pressed facedown against the stones, his captor pulled something like a sack over him. A few jerks as it was made tight, then a moment later he was lifted up and carried away at a fast, bouncing pace.

“Let me go!” he said. “You don’t understand! I have something important to do—lives are at stake… !”

“Shut your mouth and keep it shut,” growled his captor, and thumped the sack so hard against something that the little man’s teeth rattled. Chert didn’t try to speak again.

32. A Coin to Pay the Passage

Rafe could not have been happier. His seventeenth Year-Moot had finally come and his father, the headman of the Hull-Scrapes-the-Sand clan, had given him beautiful black Sealskin to be his own. Rafe had long dreamed of this day—the day he could finally earn the necklace of a man! No longer would even his most impressive feats be undercut by the scornful words, “He still paddles his father’s boat.”

He had already made a name for himself, not just as a fisherman but also as a warrior. Had he not been one of the first to take fire to the ships of the southerners? Had he not braved the terrors of the Old Ones more than once, landing right on the Porcupine’s doorstep as he conveyed nobility back and forth from the Mount? Now Sealskin was his at last. All the years of his childhood, he had dreamed of this day, keeping her always waterproof and slippery as an eel by painting and repainting her hull with pitch. And most important, all that he earned now would no longer go into his father’s great jar. He would have his own jar, and soon enough his own house. Then he would take Ena away from her brute of a father and make her his wife. When they had enough money, they would marry and he would never again have to listen to any voice except hers and the ocean’s.

He slipped out through the secret way that led from the Western Lagoon and out to the sea road to Egye-Var’s Shoulder—M’Helan’s Rock as the drylanders called it—but Rafe did not plan to go anywhere near the Drying Shed nor any other part of the island. Clan curfew was an hour gone, and the last thing Rafe needed was to get into trouble again his first night as a man. He didn’t think his father Mackel would go so far as to take Sealskin back—he would be reluctant to shame the clan that badly in front of his rival Turley Longfingers and the Sunset-Tide folk at the Little Moot—but Rafe knew the old man would probably be very rigorous with whatever punishment he chose instead, which almost certainly meant a beating. Rafe didn’t want another beating. So although his heart felt as full as a bellied sail, he would not be singing or cutting capers on this, his first voyage with his own boat.

The southern ships had stopped burning, although many of the floating wrecks still leaked smoke into the dawn sky. Rafe swung widely around one of them, trying to decide whether it was one of those onto which he himself had thrown spears wrapped in flaming rags. He had never done anything more exciting in his life (except perhaps for some of the things he and Ena had got up to) and still could not quite believe he had even been allowed to do such a thing. But the Skimmer clan leaders, those stodgy old fellows like Turley Back-on-Next-Year’s-Tide, had suddenly changed: a single mysterious audience with some of the Old Ones and they had become warriors. Who would ever have guessed? Rafe had asked his father several times what had changed things so, but all Mackel would tell him was: “They have reached out a hand. We are forgiven.” When he asked, “Forgiven of what?” his father had told him to shut his blowhole and go catch some fish.

But what did such things matter anyway? No matter who won this war, it meant nothing to Rafe. If he had to, he would pack up all his belongings, set Ena on Sealskin’s bench, and together they would paddle away somewhere else, upcoast or down. Perhaps it was time for the Ocean Lord’s folk to return to the Vuttish Islands? He and his sweetheart could surely find a deserted skerry and live out their lives there in happy solitude…

Musing on this and other fantasies, Rafe guided his boat in and out among the flotsam of the burned ships, looking for things to salvage. He had discovered a floating cask of southern honey this way the night before, the wood only lightly singed and the insides still protected by wax and cotton cloth, a find that had delighted his father who said he could get several silver coins for it at the least. In fact, Rafe felt sure that the goodwill caused by that discovery was why Mackel had finally told him the boat was his. Reminded of his good fortune, he patted Sealskin’s strong but delicate frame. The next cask of honey would be for Rafe himself to sell. Perhaps he could buy Ena a wedding necklace.

He passed through the ghost fleet and made a wide swing along the coast below the Marrinswalk headlands. The sun was coming up soon, and he knew he should not be staying out so long. Daylight would make it harder to sneak back in. He supposed he could pretend to have fallen asleep in the boat shed while cleaning Sealskin. He had certainly done it enough times in his youth.

Rafe’s planning was interrupted by something moving on the shore. He stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing—something tall that stood almost at the waterline and was shrouded in cloth that whipped fitfully in the freshening breeze. What was it? Some bit of useful wreckage that had floated ashore and that another scavenger had found and might be coming back for? Was that why it was covered by that tattered cloak? Did someone really think that was enough to claim it as their own?

Rafe swung his bow toward the shallows until he could not get any closer and still remain in the boat. The thing standing where the water splashed up onto the rocky strand was man-shaped, although still motionless but for the ragged, windblown cloth that covered it. Was it a statue? Or had some lonely wanderer died here, so slowly that he had remained standing? Rafe had found corpses on the beach before, most of them drowned, but others as unmarked as though they had come to such a lonely spot just to die. He had never found one still standing. A superstitious shiver went through him.

Then the figure turned.

Rafe gasped and paddled the boat back from the shore. It had been the movement of something that ived—something that stood on this lonely stretch of shore by choice.

Even as he stared, the figure slowly lifted one hand and beckoned to him. Rafe could only stare. The thing raised its arm higher and made a gesture that was broader but still stiff, as though the creature in the billowing cloak was very old or very weak. There was no question that it was gesturing at him.

“What do you want?” Rafe called. “If you value your life, don’t you meddle with me! I’ll break your pate for a laugh!”

The figure only beckoned to him again. Rafe’s curiosity began to get the better of him. He plied his oar deftly and shot closer. As his boat bobbed beneath him, he examined this apparition, or at least what little he could see of it. The stranger wore a dark, hooded robe, ragged on the edges, which covered his face, and his hands appeared to be bandaged in old, dirty bits of linen so that no skin showed. Again, a shiver of dislike passed through Rafe. The boom of the surf died down for a moment, and he could finally hear the stranger’s voice, or at least a rasp of loud breathing. It was a disturbing sound, but it proved that the creature was no ghost.

“What do you want of me?” he asked again.

Rafe could only see the faint gleam of the stranger’s eyes as he pointed to Rafe’s boat, then slowly extended his bandaged hand toward the castle in the middle of the bay. The meaning was quite clear.

“You want me… to take you there?” He laughed and hoped it sounded braver to the stranger than it did to him. “Are you joking, man? Why should I take you across the water? If you are a spy for the southerners, you can’t be a very good one, with your bandages and your gloomy looks—like something out of a Kerneia parade!”

The man only pointed again.

“I asked you why? Why should I?”

The hooded stranger lowered his hand. After a moment he began to fumble with the knot of his robe. Rafe decided he did not want to see what was under this creature’s cloak and began to back-paddle his boat to put a little more distance between them, but the specter was having trouble getting the robe untied. Rafe stopped and floated, paddle dripping in the air. What was this absurd creature doing?

The stranger finally succeeded in opening the knot of his cloth belt, but instead of stripping off the cloak he only pulled something out of the knot and held it up in the thin but growing dawn light, pushing it in Rafe’s direction as if to hand it to him across the distance. Rafe could only stare. It was a gold piece as big as a bull squid’s eye.

“You’re saying you want to give me that,” he said at last. Even to his own ears, he sounded a bit breathless. “To take you over to the castle. Over there.” He pointed. The cloaked figure did not nod or say anything, but thrust the coin toward him again. “Very well then, if you say so. But, remember—I have a knife!” He reached down and lifted his fish-gutter. “So don’t try anything or you’ll regret it.”

It took no little time to get the stranger into the boat. The man was crippled or at least he moved that way, with limbs that seemed stiff and brittle as icicles, but Rafe managed to get him seated on the bench at last and then took the gold. The man’s bandaged hands were filthy, but the coin itself was shiny, real, and very beautiful. Payment made, the stranger promptly lowered his chin to his chest so that his hood covered his head completely, and then seemed to sleep.

Rafe paddled hard, trying to get back before the sun rose too high above the hills. He would have to find a place to let off this rich madman, then hurry home. Of course, even if his father found out and gave him a whipping, Rafe didn’t much care—he was rich himself now. He could buy Ena not only a necklace but also the grandest dress the lagoon had ever seen, with more shells on it than there were stars in the night sky.

It was strange how the hours crawled past when your freedom had been taken. Qinnitan was realizing that she had been some sort of prisoner for much of her life, first in the Hive, although they had treated her kindly, then in the Seclusion. Finally, after one brief, heady taste of freedom in Hierosol, she had been recaptured by the monster Daikonas Vo. She had then managed to escape even him, but it seemed the gods themselves did not want her to be free, so here she sat, despite all her efforts, bravery, and sacrifice, the doomed prisoner of the world’s most dangerous madman.

She shifted, trying to find a less painful position. With her arms tied behind her back, there was no such thing as comfortable. Around her, the High Priest’s lackeys came and went, paying no more attention to Qinnitan in her cage than if she was a piece of furniture or the remains of a meal.

No, she thought, like a sacrificial animal. The knowledge of her suffering was far less important to them than her place in the upcoming ritual.

But what upcoming ritual? What did the autarch plan for her and for poor Olin, the northern king? She had listened carefully to every word uttered in her vicinity, especially by that bloated old monster Panhyssir, but she still had no real idea what the autarch planned.

Despite her determination to say nothing, she couldn’t help letting out a moan of despair as the priests’ potion began to act. Oh, sweet honey of Nushash, here it came again—that horrible burning crackle running from her head to her tail, like a bolt of slow lightning. In her memory the stuff Panyhyssir called “Sun’s Blood” had become only another indignity of her time in the Seclusion, but now she was forced to experience again how truly vile it made her feel, the terrible thoughts it put into her head. She could feel her mouth force itself open in a silent scream, feel her fingers curling and cramping until she could no longer keep her tattered robe wrapped around her. Qinnitan perceived herself crumpling to the floor as if she observed it from a great distance, then she watched the world turn sideways and disappear into the blackness of her closed lids.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It was the slow throb of her own blood, the hot red river that, thanks to the priests’ potions, now mimicked the god’s own holy ichor. She could feel it moving sluggishly through her body, filling her as melted silver might fill an intricate mold, until everything that was Qinnitan-shaped had grown turgid and trembling, poured full of the deadly, exalted Sun’s Blood.

And now something in the darkness became aware of her. It did not rise up so much as it uncloaked itself, and that cloak was the darkness in which the thing lived, just as a great whalefish lived in water or a monstrous thunderstorm lived in the sky. It was too big to live—it didn’t make sense!—but at the same time she felt she understood it, almost was it.…

But the more Qinnitan felt of its monstrous, cold interest, the more terrified she became. It drew nearer, and its very presence made her ripple and spread like an oil stain—any closer and she would surely come apart! But it did come closer, and suddenly Qinnitan understood that the god-thing wanted something from her—something she had not felt before. Always, she had sensed its predatory interest as just that, as something hunting, with herself as the hapless prey, trussed and left to the mercies of this merciless thing. Now, she realized with a quite different sort of horror that it didn’t want to devour her, not in any ordinary sense. This impossible thing wanted to use her, to inhabit her so that it could cross the void and return to the land of the waking and the living.

Qinnitan knew she would never survive sharing her place in the world with something so powerful and uncaring—every moment it lived inside her would burn part of the real Qinnitan away. But that was exactly why they fed her the Sun’s Blood, she realized: to prepare her as a vessel for the god, to make her a more hospitable home for this hideous presence which had not walked the earth for thousands of years. And she could do nothing to stop it. When midnight came, either she or King Olin would be offered up as a shell for this dreadful thing to inhabit.

Shrieking without sound, Qinnitan began to swim up through the blackness, desperate to escape. Patient as death itself, the thing let her go; after all, it only had a short time to wait before it would get everything it wanted.

Hands quickly but efficiently tied behind his back and a sack pulled over his head, Chert now was hurried across uneven ground. Cannon fire still boomed above his head but it was growing a little fainter. From the sound of the sea, he guessed he was being forced toward the North Lagoon. The men who had captured him spoke little among themselves, and although they did not spare him any kindness, they were no rougher than they needed to be, which made him decide with a sinking heart that they must be soldiers. That meant they were Tollys’ men, and the swiftness with which they had grabbed and captured him suggested he had been recognized.

He staggered and nearly fell again as he understood that he might never see Opal again, or Flint, or Funderling Town. If he was to be executed, he might never see anything again but the inside of this noisome sack.…

Chert stopped and planted his feet. “I won’t go any farther until you tell me where you’re taking me,” he said, ashamed to hear how his voice quavered. “If I’m to be killed, at least tell me why. At least tell me who my murderers are.”

“Keep moving, half-size,” growled one of the men and gave him a shove in the back that sent Chert staggering forward once more. The man had an accent Chert couldn’t place—perhaps he was a Kracian mercenary. Chert had heard rumors Hendon Tolly had been looking for help abroad since it became clear the Qar were headed toward Southmarch.

At last he was pushed into a doorway, feet crunching across a floor made of strewn rushes, then rough hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him down onto a stool. An instant later the sack was yanked from him. When he had finished blinking, he looked at the strange figure in the chair opposite. At first the armor made him think it was a man, a young one from the look of his face, but he realized a moment later it was a woman looking him up and down with calm interest, her golden hair cut short and her serious face smeared with dirt in what Chert could not help thinking was a most unfeminine way.

“Only one?” the woman asked. Chert was certain he had seen her before somewhere. “All that time and you only brought back one? What if he doesn’t know?”

“None were coming out!” protested one of the men, whose accent was less pronounced than the others’. “You saw it, High… I mean, my lady. Tolly’s men have it sewed up tight, and they were keeping them all inside today. But just now someone dropped a cannonball on the Kallikans’ front porch and this one hurried out, so we grabbed him.”

“Funderlings. Here, in Southmarch, they are called ‘Funderlings,’ Stephanas, not ‘Kallikans.’ ” She turned back to examine Chert once more. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I hope they didn’t treat you roughly. They are rough men, but I told them to be careful.”

“They did not hurt me… but I can’t say I was given much choice about coming.”

“No, you weren’t. Because I need your help and I need it badly.”

And then he knew her, at once and in a rush, and the words came out without any further thought from him. “Fracture and Fissure! Whatever you want, Princess Briony. I am at your service. It is good to see you back in your home again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It is not my home again—not yet. Who are you?”

“Chert of the Blue Quartz. We met once before, on the day your brother killed the wyvern. You… you nearly ran me over with your horse.”

“Merciful Zoria, I remember! That was you?” She laughed, and for an instant was once more the young girl he had seen that day. “Do you really mean that you will help me?”

He shrugged. “Of course. Your father is our king, Highness. Is he coming back, too?”

The girl’s mouth set in a grim line. “If I have any say about it. But just now he is somewhere beneath our feet, a prisoner of the Xixians.”

Chert’s stomach lurched, and he had to suppress a groan. “I know too much about the Xixians already, Highness! They have pushed down past Funderling Town and are chewing their way into our sacred Mysteries like worms through an apple. I will be happy to help strike a blow at those southerners—just tell me what I can do for you.” But even as he spoke these brave words, he could hear Opal’s voice in his head: “Stop showing off for the Big Folk, Chert Blue Quartz. You have work of your own to do and time is dripping away!”

“Well, these men and I are not fighting the Xixians just yet. ...” The princess looked as though she wished it was otherwise. “My enemy is closer to hand—Hendon Tolly. But the prince of Syan and I cannot get our soldiers into the inner keep because the walls are too strong. I am kept at bay by my family’s own castle!” Her laugh was sour.

“And what can I do?” he asked, but he was beginning to see the shape of things.

“I wanted a Funderling, Chert—any Funderling. I did not know it would be you. I need a way to get into the inner keep, and quickly.” She fixed him with a surprisingly sharp, hard stare. “You see, I’ve learned things. I am not such a simple creature as I was when last I lived here. I met the Kallikans of Tessis, your relatives, and found that they keep secrets from their monarchs. I’m sure your folk have secrets they have kept from my family, too.”

“Secrets… ?”

“Passages beneath the castle, perhaps. Tunnels. Hidden doors? Things that the Big Folk—isn’t that what you call us—that the Big Folk aren’t supposed to know about? But now I need to know, Chert of the Blue Quartz. How can I get enough men into the inner keep to open that gate and let the rest of our soldiers through?”

He had reached a moment of decision, that much was clear. She was asking about the Stormstone Roads, even if she didn’t know them by name. Everything in him that was conservative and cautious warned that this was not a decision he should make himself. After the hundreds of years his people had kept those passages secret from the Southmarch royal family, even the present extraordinary situation did not give him the authority to make such a decision. But he had his own mission, and there was no longer any way he could get back in time to try something else.

“Will you give my people back their Funderling Town if you succeed? Tolly’s men have occupied it.”

Briony smiled. “Without a moment’s hesitation. You have my word on it as an Eddon.”

“Then I’ll do my best to help you. You have my word as a Blue Quartz on that.”

Her smile grew a little wistful. “It seems we both have weighty family names to live up to, Master Chert.”

It was full dark when they reached the spot between the new walls and the castle’s great outwall, a warren of small alleys between the ends of the East and West Lagoons where only the poorest lived because the walls loomed so high on either side that the sun only reached the streets for an hour or two each day, even in summer. Chaven’s observatory was out of sight on the far side of the new walls, but the Tower of Spring stretched high above their heads. Chert imagined Tolly had a watch posted on its uppermost floor, but felt reasonably sure they were too close to the tower’s base to be seen from there.

“Still,” he whispered to Briony, “your men should keep their voices down. Sound bounces off stone in unexpected ways.”

He led them down a tiny street and into a deserted house at one end of it, praying that he had remembered the location correctly, a hidden passage he had occasionally used when he wanted to depart Chaven’s house without leaving the upground castle entirely. He was gratified by the surprise on Briony’s face as he revealed the trapdoor hidden in what looked like a room piled with builder’s trash.

Chert led the princess and her soldiers down a stairwell to a passage. A short while later they reached the basement door of the observatory where one of the soldiers slipped the latch with his dagger, then they were inside.

Chert looked around at the hangings and remembered when he had hidden here with Chaven from Hendon Tolly and Brother Okros. That seemed so long ago! Briony looked as though she had memories of her own. “And this is truly part of Chaven’s house?” she whispered. “Incredible!”

“The last time I was here, there were guards,” Chert warned her.

There were guards still. One of them, probably returning from a trip to the jakes, stumbled on the Syannese soldiers as they emerged from the stairs onto a ground-floor landing. The guard lunged at Chert with his spear, almost spitting the Funderling like a suckling pig, but Princess Briony’s Syannese soldiers surrounded the guard and cut him down before he could call out.

“Tolly livery,” she said quietly, prodding the dead man with her shoe. “An ugly sight. I have seen it everywhere since I returned.”

They encountered no one else as they made their way through the observatory. Chert did not take Briony and her soldiers out the front door, but led them out from a lower floor and along one of the other secrets of the observatory, a narrow passage that opened into the basement of a small building within the walls of the inner keep some distance from the physician’s house. “Even Chaven himself isn’t aware that I know of this one,” Chert said. He didn’t mention that it was actually Flint who had discovered it on one of their earlier visits.

“Our entire keep is riddled with tunnels like a rabbit warren!” Briony said in astonishment. “Not meaning any offense, Master Blue Quartz, but I thought I could not be surprised by anything else.”

“We aren’t rabbits,” Chert said. “But we are small and we like to dig.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” she replied. “Just now, I am very happy with my Funderling subjects and their delving!”

The streets of the inner keep were all but empty, which was especially strange so close to Midsummer, when ordinarily the streets would have been full of revelers, but soldiers stood in numbers atop each of the cardinal towers and even in the shattered upper stories of Wolfstooth Spire.

“Now I must go, Highness, with your leave,” Chert said as they stood in the shadows of the passage from the observatory. Briony’s men had extinguished their torches and waited for her on the stairs just below.

“Go? I had hoped for more of your help, Chert Blue Quartz.” The princess did not sound pleased, and he feared her anger because he truly had no time to waste.

“And I would gladly give it, Highness, but I have an errand of my own—one just as important as yours, if I do not overreach myself to say so, perhaps even more important. An errand for your people as well as mine. But time grows short.”

She considered his words. “Yes, time grows short—it doesn’t take the wisdom of the gods to know that. Do what you must. I hope if we both survive we can have a proper talk someday about this night’s doings, Chert of the Funderlings, because I still have many unanswered questions. For one thing, you seem very familiar with the plan of the royal physician’s house ...”

“I… have been there before. A time or two.”

“I thought so. Will you promise me that talk, then?”

“I’d be honored, Highness. But as you said, it can only happen if we both survive. Be careful, Princess. Your people do not want to lose you so soon after your return.”

She laughed quietly. “And I feel sure your people would want you to be careful, also. Go with Zoria’s blessing.”

“And the Earth Elders protect you, Highness.”

A moment later she had trotted down the stairs, quiet as a cat, leaving Chert alone on Chaven’s doorstep.

The moon was high in the sky, mostly full, a lopsided white grape that shed so much light, sharp-eyed Chert felt quite conspicuous as he made his way across the inner keep in the shadow of the walls. The crashing of the cannons had finally ended, but he could still hear the sentries atop the walls shouting insults down at the Syannese in the outer keep.

The castle was quite different than he remembered—so much damage in such a small time! Rubble lay everywhere, and the once-beautiful greens had disappeared beneath dozens of refugee encampments, but the makeshift village abruptly ended at the hill on which the royal residence sat, enforced by a ring of armed sentries, an arrangement which made it plain that Hendon Tolly did not welcome peasants setting up housekeeping on his front doorstep.

Staying to the shadows, freezing at every unfamiliar sound or movement as though he really were a rabbit, Chert made his careful way across the inner keep beneath the rising moon, its great yellow bulk becoming smaller and colder as it climbed the sky. A lone bell in a residence tower was chiming midnight when he reached the Eddon family’s ivy-covered chapel on one corner of the Throne hall. It was the only place he could think of to come for what he needed. But even after almost being blown to flinders by a cannonball and being thrown in a sack and kidnapped, the worst part of his day’s work was still ahead. He had to climb to the roof.

Puffing so hard he saw little flashes before his eyes, so damp with sweat that even the cool night air could not ease it, Chert at last managed to pull himself over the wide, leaded gutter and onto the roof tiles. For long moments he could only lie on his back gasping for air. At last he was able to sit up again, wiping his forehead with his hands. The rooftop was empty but for the billowed moon perched between two chimneys as though someone had washed it and hung it out to dry.

He raised his voice as loud as he dared and called, “People of the rooftop! Subjects of Queen Upsteeplebat, it’s Chert of the Funderlings—a friend! I need you!”

Nothing happened. He tried again, certain that down in the darkness of the courtyards or across the narrow streets someone must be listening, perhaps even hurrying off to report what they heard to Tolly’s soldiers, but there seemed to be no movement on the rooftop. At last, just when he thought he might lie down and rest for a while and then try again when the moon had dropped behind the nearest tower, he heard a rustling sound and looked up to see a tiny shape crouching atop the roofline above his head, silhouetted against the parchment-colored moon.

“What be your business with Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty?” demanded the tiny fellow. Chert crawled a few yards up the roof before answering so that he could keep his voice low. The little man watched him with what Chert imagined was amusement at how this monstrously large and clumsy creature kept its belly pressed against the roof as though a stray wind might sweep it up and blow it away.

The Rooftopper was a Gutter-Scout, but not one Chert had met before. Still, he seemed to know the Funderling’s name. After listening to what Chert had to say he just nodded his head, said, “Tha must be waiting,” and then dropped down the far side of the roofline out of Chert’s sight.

Chert sighed and settled back, taking out the bit of bread and fungus he’d packed for himself. Tha must be waiting, Blue Quartz, he told himself, mimicking the little man’s calm words. Tha must. After all, we wouldn’t want to hurry just ourselves because it’s the end of the world, now would we?

33. Spearpoint

“We cannot waste time fighting the autarch’s troops from behind,” Yasammez declared. Her thoughts were weighty, hard and cold as metal. “Time is short. This is no ordinary siege. We have already broken their chain of supply, but the southern emperor does not care.”

“Then our only hope is to continue downward as we have planned.” Saqri spread her fingers. “With good luck we might slip past to the Last Hour of the Ancestor before them.”

“Where we’ll still be outnumbered,” Barrick pointed out.

Yasammez barely glanced at him. “We do not fear mortals in any numbers.”

“Still, speed is our only hope now,” said Saqri. “And our way down requires us to cross the Xixians’ main path of descent below the Cavern of Winds. If the defenders are still holding back the southerners farther down, then that main tunnel will be full of Xixian soldiers and we will have to fight our way through the junction. It is a wide space, less than ideal for our purposes, but if we can cut our way through them we can make our way to the great pit itself where we can descend much more quickly.”

“We will slice through them, never fear,” Yasammez said. “We will be hard as a spear’s point. The Fire of the Book has tempered us.”

Even as the Fireflower filled his head with memories of the Book of the Fire in Void and ideas about the Always Fire that had caused it to be written, as well as a thousand other things as dear to the Qar as their own names, Barrick realized that Yasammez had reminded him again of his old tutor Shaso dan-Heza. What she had said about making their army into a spear’s point was almost exactly the same as something Shaso had told him more than once.

“An army is a tool, boy. A good army is a very useful tool indeed. It can be hard and heavy where it needs to be, as difficult to breach as a piece of well-made armor. But it can make itself sharp as a spear’s sharpened tip so that it can pierce another army just as a spear can pierce a breastplate, no matter how strong. When you narrow the force, you make the force greater where it strikes, you see ...”

It was an odd thing to find Shaso looking back at him from the chilling, ageless eyes of Yasammez, but that did not make it any less true. Both warriors would have died before they would do something they considered dishonorable, but both could make mistakes because they were so certain of their own truths.

Which meant that Shaso had probably been innocent of Kendrick’s death all along, and he, Barrick, had been wrong. It had been just as Briony had said after all. For the first time he wished he had spoken to his sister, really spoken to her. A pang of something he didn’t recognize at first bloomed inside him, an ache of loss so sudden and powerful that it took his breath away.

Homesickness. Barrick was astonished. At this late hour? After he had changed so much? This place was not his home, nor had it ever truly been so, he was certain of that. The castle, the people—he felt nothing for them. So where did this strange yearning come from?

“We should stop talking and go,” he said out loud, earning a look of chilly annoyance from Yasammez. “Time is short. Nothing would be worse than looking back on wasted time and mistakes we didn’t need to make.”

“Ah, friend Chert,” called the tiny man on the white rat as he appeared over the crest of the roof. “Told Her Majesty, I did, ‘Not seen the last of ’un, I haven’t.’ And here tha be.”

“Beetledown.” Chert couldn’t help smiling. “You look well. That’s a very handsome rat.”

“Un’s from the queen’s own stable,” he said proudly. “A reward, like.”

“I’m glad to see you’ve been treated as you deserve. Would the queen let you do one more thing for me?”

The little fellow tilted his head. The rat began to groom. “Tell me what tha needst. I will go to my queen and ask.” He straightened a little. “We Rooftoppers fight alongside of the Old Ones for the first time in many hundred years, you know. After all this time!” He began to explain some of his recent deeds of heroism, but Chert cut him off.

“It’s good to hear the Qar have finally decided to take a stand, but what I’m asking of you may be the most important task of all.” He quickly explained his need to Beetledown, who seemed less than enthused. “And then bring the Astion back to me at the place I’ve drawn on this map, quick as you can.” He handed the little slip of parchment to Beetledown. “If I’m not there yet, give it to Brother Antimony.”

“So important, truly?”

“Truly.”

Beetledown did not look entirely convinced, but was polite enough not to say so. “Then so will it be, friend Chert. I can do nothing without queen’s permission, so let us go.”

“Of course. Lead the way. Just remember that I’m not a very good climber.”

“Not very good?” Beetledown laughed. “Like a dog with one leg, to put truth to it.”

A man who needs a favor, Chert reminded himself as he inched his way across the treacherous tiles, should under no circumstances squeeze the little fellow who will do that favor into a jelly, no matter the provocation.

The Qar’s attack took the Xixian soldiers by surprise, fairies pouring without warning out of what must have seemed just one more side tunnel out of the hundreds the southerners had passed on their way down into the depths, a crevice scarcely large enough for the bulky Ettins to squeeze through. In fact, it was Hammerfoot and his cousins who burst out first, roaring and waving their weapons, inspiring such fright that some of the startled southerners fell down with stopped hearts. After that it was blade on blade as the Qar fought to keep the much larger Xixian force split so the fairies could forge a path through to the other side of the large passage and the cross-tunnel waiting there.

For a time the blood flowed like rainwater in gutters as the desert warriors and the most warlike of the fairies, the Ettins, the Unforgiven, and the Changing tribe, hacked and ripped at each other in near-darkness. Although a few of the Ettins fell, swarmed by soldiers as a beetle might fall to attacking ants, the giants still dealt terrible casualties among the southerners until a Xixian commander, or at least the highest ranking of their soldiers in that cavern, pulled most of his men back to the far side of the passage. He had brought up archers and now they sent flights of arrows hissing toward the Qar, who fell back behind the gigantic shields and rocky hides of the Ettins, still unable to cross the broad passage.

Barrick, still trapped in the side tunnel but close enough now to see what was happening, wondered how they could possibly survive this. Unless they fought their way through to the other side, the Qar were trapped between the Xixians who had already passed this spot and those above who were on their way down. No matter how many of the southerners Saqri’s fighters killed more would just flow back into this place until the Qar were finally overwhelmed and destroyed.

Why didn’t Saqri let Yasammez lead the way? The dark lady’s name was a byword for destruction; even without the Fireflower, Barrick knew the stories told by the survivors of her destructive advance across the March Kingdoms, how she had singlehandedly unhorsed and slaughtered the defenders of all the towns in her way, sometimes fighting half a dozen or more by herself and killing each and every one. But the Fireflower told him more—much more. Its voices sang to him triumphantly of Yasammez Aflame, the Scourge of Shivering Plains, the daughter of a god! And in images of so distant a past that even the memory of the Fireflower had dimmed a little, he saw the Yasammez of the elder days, glowing with green fire that hung about her head as she fought, so that she breathed it and spewed it out again in little streaks and sparks. In the stark instant of the lightning’s flash at Silvergleam’s hall, when all the field of war, men and Qar and even the gods themselves seemed to be frozen together as one thing, she had stood twisted in a spray of blood, the headless bodies of her enemies flung tumbling away by the force of her blow. That was the weapon that Saqri kept sheathed. Why?

Barrick could not begin to guess, but he knew as well as he knew his own name that the women of the Qar’s highest house, and especially those who took the Fireflower, were no less subtle than their husbands. It was better simply to trust the queen of the Fay…

But feel free to ask questions, a sly thought suggested to him. It might have been Ynnir, faint as a bird chirping at the top of a tall tree. Just be prepared to defend yourself afterward—a queen does not like to be second-guessed!

And then the first wave of Xixian arrows had spent itself. In the moment that followed Saqri’s troop leaped forward toward the center of the passage, into the flail of shadows and torchlight. Barrick was among them this time, caught up in the remembered glories of the Fireflower, shouting out things that even he did not understand.

Contorted faces, blades, the clank of metal on armor, or sometimes the weirdly thrilling chunk of an edge biting flesh—Barrick was terrified, but at the same time he felt hard as stone, cold and clear as diamond. The memories of a hundred kings were in him, some as warlike as Yasammez herself. Their ghostly voices sang with joy and their blood seized and pulled in Barrick’s veins. He did not resist these spirits, but let them lead him in a complicated series of strikes and defenses that his thoughts could not at first keep up with. He used Hawk’s Tail to catch a falling blade in the crossed metal of his sword and dagger, then kicked out and crushed the knee of the Xixian soldier. Even as the man toppled and Barrick whirled past, he dragged his blade backhanded across the man’s throat, then tightened his grip on the suddenly blood-slick hilt, ducked the strike of a second man, and came up under his chin with the dagger—Spiked Fist—so near the man’s face that he could hear the southerner gasp and then feel the man’s dying breath leap from his body.

Spin, sweep with his sword to catch an enemy’s hamstring, step on the man’s throat as he went down, and then direct the spear thrust of another away with his arm-shield. Barrick found himself shifting deeper and deeper into an unthinking dance, as if he were nothing but a line of heat passing through the cavern in a complicated filigree of motion, like the mark a burning brand swirling through the night air could leave on the eyes for moments after the torch itself had passed. But although he nearly lost himself in the wash of sensation, the rush of memory, and the demanding movements, he could not ignore the fact that as many of the enemy as he killed or disabled, and as many of them as his comrades destroyed, still more were always coming, flowing into the passage from either direction like the immense weight of seawater that must surround the land beyond these stony depths.

Might as well try to kill the sea itself. Saqri, where are you?

Here, manchild. Behind you and nearer to the southerners who had already passed through the cavern, but now have come back to join the entertainment. There was a wicked joy to her thoughts he had not sensed before—war agreed with her, it seemed.

They are too many! For each one we kill three more come to take his place!

They have always been too many for us, the humans. Your people outbred us long ago. With the gods gone, you see, your folk have no predators…

He had no idea what she meant. But what do we do?

We persevere. It wasn’t words but a feeling, the immensity of Qar suffering and the immensity of Qar stubbornness encapsulated in a single impression of resigned struggle. But remember, we do not need to defeat all these men; we only need to cross the cavern and enter the far passage. Then we will leave them behind to toil down the tunnels like ants while we drop from the sky upon their leaders!

She’s mad, Barrick thought as he fought for his life. This place has driven her mad. His loneliness, so much a part of him that he seldom noticed it anymore, rose up and threatened to choke him. Only the urging of the Fireflower voices reminded him that life still continued—a life that the two southern soldiers rushing toward him wanted to end.

Shark’s Fin. Catch the attack on the hilt of his sword. Spin into a two-handed slash, driving one man back long enough for Barrick to get his arm-shield up in the other’s face. Rip with the dagger. Spin and block.

Shaso would have loved this, he thought. Hopeless odds. No choice but fight or die. And no time to argue…

He let himself step back into the dance again. After all, there was nothing else he could do. Several of the Xixian torches had fallen, and the shadows in the passage were widening, deepening.

Soon enough, Barrick thought, we’ll be fighting in utter darkness, like dead men struggling in their graves…

It was all Utta could do to hold the frail older woman down. Still in the grip of the dream, Merolanna struggled so determinedly that she almost threw the Zorian Sister across the room. “No no no no… !” the duchess moaned, slurring her words so that it was more like an animal sound than the voice of a dignified noblewoman. “Let go they let go… !”

“Merolanna!” Utta leaned close to the duchess’ face so the woman could hear her even in the depths of whatever dream had seized her. “Merolanna! You’re having a nightmare! Wake up!”

“Don’t go! You can’t trust… he won’t ...” Her voice trailed off. For a moment she sat hunched in the bed, eyes closed as though she listened to some distant but important sound. Utta took the opportunity to pull the coverlet back up over Merolanna’s pale legs. “You can’t… !” the old woman said again, but this time with the confused sound of someone beginning to wake.

“All is well.” Utta let go of her and sat up, taking Merolanna’s cold hand in her own. “You have had a bad dream, Duchess. Wake up now and see that everything is well.”

“But it’s not.” Merolanna’s eyes fluttered open. She fixed Utta with a stare that was frightened but not the least bit groggy. “It’s not well. Nothing is well. He is coming for them.”

“He? Coming for… ?” Utta shook her head. “It was just a bad dream, dear. I told you. You were kicking like an angry horse.” She raised her hand to the side of her face, which was beginning to ache now. “Throwing your elbows around freely, too.”

“I am sorry.” But Merolanna looked as though Utta’s sore cheek was the last thing on her mind. “It was… it was not just a dream. It was too real. The gods sent it to me!”

Utta took a deep breath. “Do you want to tell me?”

“I… I’m not sure I can. It was so frightening, that’s what I remember most.”

Utta couldn’t help thinking the duchess actually looked better than she had in weeks; perhaps the excitement of the renewed fighting had actually revived her spirits a bit. Utta had seen it in older women who had seemed ready to die, but responded to conflict—not war, but a struggle of some other kind, family or money troubles. Some people turned their backs at such times and death quickly took them, but others—and perhaps Merolanna was one of them—seemed to come back like a flower saved by unseasonal rain.

“Just try.” Utta was awake now herself. After midnight, she thought. Outside, the cannons had finally stopped firing and the shouting had ended, at least until dawn when it would no doubt start again. Midsummer itself would clearly be another holy feast day spoiled by this endless war.

“It was Kerneia,” Merolanna said suddenly, as if she had been thinking about holy days, too. “That was it. It must have been, because the people were in the street, all dressed in black and waving bones. But it was the cart, the great holy cart that frightened me so. It was closed, as it always was, but there was something inside it. Something alive, hidden inside that great black wooden box that sits atop the cart. All up and down the street the ropes were being pulled tight to get the cart moving, but I was the only one that knew something was wrong—that it wasn’t just the god inside, but something worse, something… worse.” For a moment, it truly seemed to come back to her and Merolanna’s face twisted in a grimace of fear, but her gaze was distant: she was not seeing Utta or her own bedroom at all. “And all the children… there were children in the street! Little ones, I don’t think they even knew what was happening, you know how they are when they’re young. Just… excited. And the ropes creaked and the wheels creaked and that big black cart began to roll… The Kernios priests were all over the cart, sitting on top of it, hanging off the sides, but none of them saw the children! I was the only one who saw them!” Suddenly her eyes reddened and filled with tears. “I tried to tell them… ! I tried to say, ‘No, don’t, there are children in the way,’ but nobody could hear me!”

Now Utta took Merolanna’s other hand, too, and warmed them between hers while the woman snuffled quietly. “There. It’s all well. It was only a dream.”

“But it w-wasn’t… !” said Merolanna. “That’s the problem! It was too real, too… it wasn’t just a dream.”

“What do you mean, dear?” Utta wanted to go back to bed. In another few hours the fighting would start again, and she would spend another day waiting for a cannonball to collapse their small corner of the residence. She wasn’t even certain who was fighting whom anymore, and it was nearly impossible these days to find anyone who knew any more than she did. “You really should go back to sleep ...”

“It wasn’t a dream, Utta. It was a vision—the sort the oracles have. I know it. The children are in danger. All the children. The gods want me to save them!”

It was all Utta could do at this point to keep her temper. It was one thing to humor a sick old woman, or even to be her unpaid companion, another thing entirely to have to sit exhausted at her bedside in the middle of the night and listen to her comparing herself to the Blessed Zoria. “It sounds terrible, dear Merolanna. We’ll certainly talk about it in the morning. The gods know you need some sleep. ...”

And only the gods would be able to say whether the dowager duchess got any. In the early morning, when the return of daylight brought the first crash of gunfire and shouting, Sister Utta awoke to discover that sometime after she herself had fallen asleep again, Merolanna had got up, dressed herself, and vanished from the residence.

It seemed to Barrick he was fighting a hundred battles at once, battles of memory and battles of very present danger all pressed together into one head-splitting mass. He and the Qar survived surge after surge of Xixian troops, which kept pouring inward from either end of the main passage as though a river of soldiers had flooded its banks.

He found the queen resting for a moment, which showed how long they had been fighting. He had never seen the Qar anything but tireless, although he knew from the Fireflower voices that they could indeed grow weary. She was protected by Hammerfoot’s huge son, who had reddish, bumpy skin like crumbled bricks. The Ettin turned at Barrick’s approach and nearly took his head off with a swipe of his rocky hand.

“Peace, Singscrape,” Saqri told him. “It is the manchild.”

“What makes you think I didn’t know that?” asked the giant.

“Why doesn’t Yasammez fight?” Barrick demanded. “And where are the Elementals? They could paint this whole cavern with fire and we’d drive these southern animals out in a moment.”

“The Elementals… are not under my control at the moment.”

Shocked as he was, Barrick could also feel a history of discontent and wounded fellowship, but Saqri was hiding her darkest thoughts from him. The Fireflower had fallen almost entirely silent. “And Yasammez… ?”

“She is too important to waste here, long before our greatest need. No, I need her strong.”

“But if we can’t get across this passage… !”

“We will. I have been waiting for the moment when our foes are most precariously balanced. Even as we speak, a confusion has fallen among the southerners coming down from behind. The Tricksters have distracted them. The Xixian archers in this room have also nearly run out of shafts. We have a short time to do what we must.”

And before Barrick could ask any more questions, Saqri sang out a single high-pitched note. Simultaneously, he could feel her in his thoughts, as did every other Qar creature in that part of the deeps. “Now strike for the far side!”

From that moment on, Barrick Eddon had no more time to think. The Qar surged forward in what looked at first like a ragged and uncoordinated mass, but by the time the Xandian troops realized that it was very well coordinated indeed, the fairies had stabbed into the southerners on the far side of the cavern like a well-honed spear, with the monstrous Ettins and corpse-white Unforgiven at the forefront, spreading terror. The Xixians did their best to hold, their sergeants shrieking at them to dig in and not give up a step, but no pair or even trio of ordinary men could stand up against one of the Deep Ettins hand to hand, and now the giants were crashing through the Xixian lines together, their massive clubs and axes flailing. With each blow, one or two southerners were smashed to the cavern floor or tossed into the air, helpless as rabbits caught by a mastiff; those who fell were cut down by the Unforgiven or swarmed by the glowing Children of the Emerald Fire, who slit throats as easily as if they murdered oblivious, sleeping men.

Still, it was a near thing. Once the southerners had absorbed the shock of the new attack, they rushed back in from the sides even faster in an attempt to block the opposite passage with their own bodies and thus keep the Qar bottled in the main tunnel.

Barrick was fighting only a few paces behind Saqri now, doing his best to guard the queen’s back. She moved forward in perfect balance, blocking and then attacking with the precision of a temple priest enacting an ancient ritual, and the Fireflower voices inside him rejoiced and yet also fretted to see this queen, who to them was all queens, matching herself against warriors twice her bulk and still succeeding. Barrick could not watch her for longer than a moment or two without risk to his own life, but Saqri moved like a white flame, slipping in and out of the deepest shadows so swiftly and so brightly that at moments he thought he could see her swan form flickering about her.

Only a last few defenders still blocked the entrance to the far cross-passage. At a word in their heads from Saqri, the Ettins fell on them and within moments cleared an opening. The last of the Qar force now hurried across the main passage and followed the rest into the cross-tunnel, the physician Chaven and the less warlike Qar near the back. Yasammez and her black-clad guards came last. The god’s daughter did not even look at Barrick when she passed, her cloak pulled up around her neck and head, her face like a thunderstorm.

When everyone was in, Yasammez’s guards turned to hold the doorway—the Xixians had regrouped outside and were now trying to push their way into the passage. “We cannot have them behind us.” Saqri’s voice echoed in Barrick’s skull. “Hammerfoot, my friend, are you badly wounded?”

The giant took a few steps forward, forcing others to flatten themselves against the corridor walls. The edge of his great shield was hacked and pitted, as was his helmet, though his eyes still gleamed beneath the visor. His rough skin was shiny with dark blood from a dozen or more deep wounds. “Passing well, my queen.”

“It is for you and your kin to hold this passage now. We cannot do what we must do if the southerners are behind us. I need time, Hammerfoot, prince of the deeps.”

“Daughter of the First Flower, my sons and I will give you as much as our last breaths can buy,” he said. “Come, Deeplings!” he bellowed, and several of the great Ettins moved up to join him, Singscrape and a half dozen more; in a moment they had taken the place of Yasammez’s guards, their big bodies filling the tunnel as though they had rolled there in some ancient avalanche. “Go, now,” Hammerfoot rumbled, even his thoughts so deep and strong that they made the bones of Barrick’s head quiver.

Saqri turned away. Her eyes were dry. “Forward,” was all she said to the rest.

Barrick looked back at the Ettins. Hammerfoot was sharpening his great ax blade against a stone. He saw Barrick and lifted a massive pointing finger in a sort of salute.

“Keep the queen alive as long as you can, manchild,” the giant rumbled. “Do not waste our deaths!”

Barrick turned to follow the rest of the Qar down into the hot depths.

34. Coming Home

Midsummer’s Eve was over and the morning sun of fateful Midsummer’s Day was high in the sky, but the castle was still not theirs, and only the gods knew what was happening in the depths beneath their feet.

Briony and Eneas hurried the rest of the Temple Dogs in from the outer keep through Chert’s secret way and fast-marched them through the empty streets behind Raven’s Gate, deserted since the cannon fire had resumed. Briony half expected an ambush to erupt from the Throne hall but the damaged building remained as silent as the immense graveyard beside it. Was Hendon Tolly really so certain he could defend the royal residence against all comers? Or did he plan to use her subjects as hostages and stall her until he could escape? Briony had no doubt that Hendon Tolly knew an Eddon rode with the Syannese soldiers. It must be clear to him that his reign was over, but he was waiting for some final throw of the dice. She had imagined every way the coming confrontation might play out, from the dramatic foolishness of challenging the usurper to single combat to simply having him filled with arrows the first time he showed himself, even under a flag of parley, but the more she considered, the more she doubted she’d have the restraint to deal with Hendon face-to-face. The thought of his satisfied smirk had haunted her dreams for months.

Briony, Eneas, and the Temple Dogs, their numbers swelled now by Southmarch soldiers, crossed the edge of the great commons and halted by the small, mostly empty lake to assess the defenses. It was strange to see the royal residence caparisoned for war—almost pathetic, like some ancient nobleman forced into armor at a point when he was long past it. The great lawns and gardens were gone, and only torn, naked earth remained; the lower floor had been covered in boards and piled stone to protect the windows, and the turrets at each corner of the vast, square building had been turned into cannon nests. Briony wondered how long the guns would stay silent. Several hundred of Eneas’ soldiers were still fit for battle, but if they had to take the residence under cannon fire and arrows from the guard posts on the roof this would be a long, difficult siege, the last thing Briony wanted. Still, she could see no other choice.

“We must give them a chance to surrender,” Eneas said in a low voice.

“No. Hendon will only parley to buy time. He is a devil. We will have to take the residence. That is the only way.”

“And I say we will not.” Eneas’ voice rose a little. “My lady, I do not doubt that you know this Tolly fellow well, but I cannot risk my men’s lives without giving the defenders a chance to surrender. You said it yourself. The innocent must be spared. If you fear to see Tolly himself, stay back with Helkis and the others.”

She felt her cheeks go hot with blood. “I don’t fear to see him, Eneas, but if you parley with the dog who stole our kingdom, I can’t promise I won’t put this blade right through his grinning face.”

“You will not do that under my flag of truce,” he said, his voice hard. “You will not, Lady.”

Her teeth were clenched so hard her jaws hurt. “Very well. I will stand back and stay silent. Call for your parley.”

To her surprise, the man who came out of the front door of the residence under a white banner made from a bedcover was Sisel, the Hierarch of Southmarch. The old man had not aged well since Briony saw him last, his face so thin and his cheeks so shadowed that she wondered if he had been ill.

“I come under your safe-conduct,” he said as he approached. “Prince Eneas, I believe? I have news for you.” As he came closer, his eyes lit on Briony and widened, but he did not say anything to her.

“Do you speak for Hendon, Eminence?” the prince asked. “I have terms for his surrender. Surely he knows there is no chance for him. This is Her Royal Highness Princess Briony. She has returned to claim her family’s throne.”

“To claim it for my father, who still lives,” she said as loudly and clearly as she could, so that anyone listening from atop the residence walls would hear—especially any Tollys.

“Blessed Brothers, it is you, Princess!” Sisel seemed not just surprised but frightened, as though simply by surviving this year of war he had done something wrong. “My eyes… It will be a great joy to your people to know you live… !”

“Enough,” she said. “There will be time for such things later, Hierarch. Tell us what the traitor Tolly has to say. Will he surrender and spare innocent lives?”

“But… but that is just it,” said Sisel. “He is not here!”

“The pig!” Briony could scarcely contain her anger and disappointment. “Where has he gone?”

“I am still a lord of the church, whatever else has happened,” Sisel said stiffly. “To insult my position is to insult the Trigon itself.”

“My apologies, Eminence,” Briony said, cursing inwardly. “Please forgive me.”

He gave a little nod of satisfaction. “No one in the residence has seen him since yesterday, Highness. It could be he’s hiding somewhere, or has disguised himself in hopes of escaping unnoticed—many strangers and refugees are living in the great hall these days. He may even have left the castle entirely. ...”

“Gone?”

Eneas held up his hand. “Then who rules here, Eminence? What of Tolly’s lieutenants?”

“Lord Constable Hood fled less than an hour ago. He has likely headed to the southernmost side of the keep, near the Tower of Summer. He took scaling ladders. He and his men may mean to climb out and join Durstin Crowel in Funderling Town.”

Eneas promptly sent two pentecounts of his men at speed around the residence to try to stop Hood from escaping. He and Briony and a small troop of men then followed the Hierarch back into the residence, wary lest somehow, against all seeming, the Trigonarch’s chosen might lead them into a trap, but the welcoming crowd that spilled out was real enough, courtiers and even a few Southmarch soldiers, all dirty and thin with hunger, all anxious to greet their rescuers, and all doubly pleased when they learned of Briony’s presence. She and Eneas had not gone more than a few paces through the loud and growing throng when a small woman shoved her way through, wailing like a death-spirit, ignoring Briony entirely to cast herself at the feet of the Syannese prince.

“He has taken my baby!” the creature howled. “Locked me in! Stole my little beauty, Alessandro! Stop him!”

Briony stared. “Anissa… ?”

If the princess was astounded, her stepmother was no less so, jumping at the sound of Briony’s voice as though at the howl of a ghost. “Br-Briony? Is that truly you? We… we thought ...”

“I am sure you did. What do you mean, he took your baby?”

“My baby Alessandro! Olin’s beautiful son! Hendon Tolly has stolen him! Oh, gods, someone please help!”

Now others of the residence folk began calling out their own tales of woe, voice after voice until Briony could scarcely think. “Quiet!” she shouted. “All of you! Anissa, tell me what happened—tell me everything.”

“He took my baby. He said there was blood—that Alessandros’ blood was magical, I don’t know. To summon the god. I didn’t understand him!” She began to weep loudly and would not stop until Briony shook her violently.

“What are you doing?” demanded Eneas. “Don’t hurt her.”

“She will do this for an hour, and we have no time for her blubbering.” She turned to the queen. “Anissa, look at me. If you want me to save your child you must tell me where Hendon’s gone!”

“But I do not know!” the queen wailed. “He locked me in my rooms!”

“He has left the residence,” said another, equally familiar voice.

Briony turned to find the big man standing just behind her, courtiers and soldiers having made way for him. “Lord Brone,” she said. “So, you live.”

“You do not seem very glad of that, Princess Briony, though I am glad enough to see you.” The old noble was even fatter than he had been, and looked flushed simply from the exercise of making his way down the stairs. His skin had a yellow hue that spoke to her of ill health. “Still, we have no time to argue. One of my men heard Tolly talking about taking the child to summon a god, just as Queen Anissa says. Tolly and some guards left the residence hours ago. ...”

“We saw no sign of him, and our men on the Basilisk Gate have been told to let no one out of the castle,” Briony said. “He must still be here. Eneas, give me some of your men—Sir Stephanas served me well before and I would be glad to employ him again. I will find Tolly.”

“I will go with you,” Eneas said. “In fact, it would make more sense for me to chase the usurper and you to restore order here in your father’s castle ...”

“There will be no order until Hendon Tolly is captured and the king’s son is safe. It is the Eddons who must bring the traitor to justice—and I am the only Eddon here.”

“But that’s foolish, Briony! I couldn’t let you ...”

“No, curse it!” She took a step toward him. “No! You are the prince of Syan, but you are not my husband, my brother, or my father. I’ll take good men with me—I’m not a fool, Eneas. But Hendon is mine.”

His face was tight with anger, but he did not speak until he had mastered it. “Take Helkis, too. I fear this choice of yours, Princess.”

“So do I. Sir Stephanas, you men, come—we must hurry.” But as she turned away, she saw Avin Brone move toward Eneas, the old man so tall that he had to bend even to whisper in the prince’s ear, a bulky shape like a vicious bear trying to pass as human. Briony’s stomach lurched.

“I have changed my mind,” she told Helkis quietly. “You must stay, Miron. You will do more good here than with me.”

The Syannese noble was puzzled and angry. “What do you mean, Princess? I am ordered by my prince to go with you.”

“For once, disobey Eneas and serve him better,” she said. “Do not leave him with Brone—the man is not trustworthy. It might be so subtle a thing as bad advice on whom to let go and whom to keep, but it might be something else… something much worse.” But could that really be, she wondered? Would Brone risk trying to strike down Eneas in the middle of his own soldiers? Briony wasn’t certain, but she knew she couldn’t overlook someone who had planned the death of the entire Eddon family. This might be Brone’s last chance ever to strike for power, if that was what the count of Landsend craved. “Just… stay with your prince, my lord. Watch over him carefully. If he discovers and protests that you’re not with me, tell him I overruled you.”

Lord Helkis frowned. “Very well.” He did not stay any longer, but hurried to keep Eneas and Brone in sight.

Briony swiftly led Stephanas and the other soldiers out of the residence. She had an idea where Tolly might have gone: the gate to Funderling Town was still defended by his own men, and if there was room enough in the warren of caverns beneath the castle for thousands of fairies and Xixies, there was room enough for Tolly to hide there, too. But that was precisely the problem—how could she hope to find Tolly in all those dark deeps? And what chance was there she could catch him and still find her father, too?

Tolly. The name was a curse on her tongue, foul as black bile. Would he doom her family even in the throes of his defeat? But even through all her anger and hatred a worm of fear gnawed at her: these were deadly times and she had been very lucky so far. Her enemy would never give up and would bite even at the last. Just knowing Hendon Tolly still lived cast a cold shadow over her.

An immense silence hung over the Qar encampment by the side of the great chasm, not only because so many of them shared their thoughts without words, but because so many of them had been killed winning their way here. Saqri was conferring with a few of her advisers, but it seemed a desultory meeting, more an excuse for a moment’s rest, and Barrick had not remained with them long. The feeling among the Qar, and even from the Fireflower voices inside him, seemed one of quiet contemplation and preparation for the unavoidable disaster to come.

“May I speak with you, Barrick Eddon?”

He looked up, startled by the sound of actual speech, and found the chief eremite, Aesi’uah. It is not necessary to use words with me, he told her.

“I know,” she said quietly. “But sometimes it is well not to remind others of what you can and cannot do, Prince Barrick. Then they are more likely to forget and give themselves away if they mean you harm.”

He smiled. “You are clever, Aesi’uah.”

“I would not be the chief adviser of Lady Yasammez otherwise,” she said. “In truth, it is about her I would speak—and one other thing.”

He looked around. He had wanted solitude, so they were far from any others, even the sharp ears of the Changing tribe. It seemed safe to continue. “Go on.”

Aesi’uah took a breath and hesitated as if unsure whether to continue. She would have been beautiful even by human standards were it not for the lifeless, leaden tint to her skin and the deep, almost frightening glow of her blue eyes. “My lady is troubled.”

He almost laughed, despite the gloom that lay over the cavern. The small number of flickering fires only seemed to emphasize the greater darkness. “What does that mean? We fight a hopeless battle against ridiculous odds. Your lady’s father, the god, has died, and we shall all of us probably be dead tomorrow, which will be the end of the Fireflower she’s guarded for so long. Is there truly anything to be cheerful about?”

Another woman might have flushed or stammered or even grown angry at his harsh words, but the eremite was a deep well; she waited for him to finish. “My lady has been preparing all of her stretching life for this—it is not by chance that we refer to our war with your folk as the Long Defeat. But something has changed. She is not just troubled, but ...” Here she leaned forward and lowered her voice, a gesture of such ordinary humanity that for an instant Barrick saw the truth of what he had been told, that human and Qar shared the same ancestors. “... My mistress is confused, Barrick Eddon. I have never felt such things as long as I have served her, and though I am young by her score, I have been with her since your father’s grandfather was a child.”

“Confused? How so? And why do you tell this to me instead of to Saqri, the queen?”

“Because I do not know what it means—that is why it frightens me. At a time when Yasammez should be most set in her purpose, most determined in her course, I can feel her thoughts darting like startled birds.”

“Is she frightened? Frightened of the end?”

Aesi’uah laughed, a hollow, disturbing noise. “It seems that even one who bears the Fireflower can ask a foolish question. No, she is not frightened for herself and she is not frightened for her people. All her years she has been preparing for this death.” The eremite closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, something subtly different had come into her expression. “As to Saqri—she knows. Her thoughts and Yasammez’s thoughts twine together like two trees that have grown side by side. If she finds it disturbing, Saqri gives no sign. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps it is wrong to doubt such a power as Lady Yasammez. But I am not so calm or so wise as that.”

Barrick could think of nothing to say. Even with the Fireflower, his understanding of the Qar still barely broke the surface. If he lived, he would be years learning anything real about them. “And what would you have me do, faithful servant Aesi’uah?”

“I cannot say, Barrick Eddon. I do not think at this moment there is anything to be done. But I am relieved that someone else knows.”

And that, too, was so human that Barrick could only sit, wondering at the strange world into which he had fallen.

“You said there was something else.”

“Two things, in truth, one small, one large. The first is a question—have you seen Kayyin?”

“I don’t know the name.”

“He is a… relative of Yasammez. He was with us for a long time, all through the siege. Now he is gone. Yasammez and Saqri show no concern, but it seems strange to me.”

“I can’t help, I’m afraid.” He dimly remembered the fellow now, a sort of half-Qar, half-human, or at least so he had appeared, who was often seen near Yasammez, but Barrick could not remember speaking with him.

“Ah. Well, perhaps I will have better luck with my other question. How well do you know this Chaven Ulosian whom you brought to join us?”

Barrick’s heart sped, and he was certain that the eremite must sense the difference in him. “Why? I didn’t really bring him. I found him wandering around near the edge of our camp. But I know him well from the old days. He was the royal physician of Southmarch.” Chaven was also in possession of a strange, familiar statue that he now carried in a spare bed-roll, thanks to Barrick’s feeling the object should be kept hidden, but he didn’t mention that to the chief eremite.

“I think he is more than any mere physician. As with you, I can feel the presence of more than one in him.”

“What does that mean?”

“You carry the Fireflower. You no longer seem like a single thing to me, but like a blur of different things. It is hard to explain in mere words.” For a moment she lapsed back into silent communication and he caught something of his own shimmering, refracted nature as it came to Aesi’uah. Just so, she told him. The physician is different, but still more than a single thing—or perhaps less. And now Barrick caught a glimpse of her perception of Chaven, who seemed to carry something shadowy inside him like a second silhouette. Could it be the mere presence of the statue, Barrick wondered? What was the thing? Had he made a terrible mistake keeping it hidden from his allies?

In that instant he almost told Aesi’uah, but he was too ashamed of his deception and his own fascination with the thing; his greed to keep it near him until he could understand his feelings. Instead, he asked her, “Will you tell Saqri about this?”

“I do not know.” Aesi’uah rose, crossed her slender gray hands across her breast, and bowed. “There is little time left. I wonder if I am catching at small things because I am too frightened to look at the large. It will be strange to die, knowing my entire people die with me, that no one will ever again dance on the slopes of M’aarenol or sing at midwinter in the caves above the Cold Sea. Fare you well in the hours ahead, Barrick Eddon. May your death be a swift one.”

And then she was gone, graceful and silent as a phantom drifting through a forgotten churchyard.

In the end, Briony took seven of Eneas’ Temple Dogs with her: Sir Stephanas, another knight named Gennadas, and five foot soldiers. Stephanas seemed pleased to have been asked to accompany her; Briony thought he might be imagining himself as the captor of Duke Hendon, one of the few deeds in this confusing, frightening struggle that would be understood and talked about back home.

The Midsummer’s Day sun had long since crested the sky and was heading down toward the western walls by the time they left the residence. Cannons still boomed and their missiles still crashed into walls and towers, some so close that Briony could hear the whicker of stone fragments flying past overhead, but she could not puzzle out who was firing now. Was it Durstin Crowel’s men in Funderling Town, firing into the inner keep because they knew the Syannese had taken the residence? Or was it one of the two or three damaged Xixian ships still afloat out in Brenn’s Bay, firing at the castle out of general hatred?

A more important question, though, was where was Hendon Tolly? She had assumed that he had escaped the inner keep the day before, when it became clear that the Syannese were not going to be easily turned away, but none of the Eddon supporters at the Raven’s Gate or the Basilisk Gate had seen him go. Which meant Hendon might have escaped in disguise or might still be somewhere inside the inner keep itself, waiting for a moment to sneak out in the confusion. But, as Chert the Funderling had just demonstrated, there were other ways in and out of the castle, ways she had never even guessed. Briony knew that even if she somehow survived and won back the family’s throne, she would never sleep securely again until someone had charted each and every tunnel.

The inner keep was still packed with refugees, homeless subjects from the surrounding countryside, from mainland Southmarch, and from the castle’s outer keep as well; everywhere they went they had to force their way through the stink and gabble of frightened people. Some recognized her, or thought they did—Briony did not stay to confirm their beliefs—and after a while she began wearing a cloth wrapped around her face. She did not want a vulnerable procession of well-wishers and curiosity-seekers following her in her search for Hendon.

She still could not understand why Hendon had taken the infant, Alessandros. Briony’s frightened stepmother had said something about summoning a god, and about magical blood. Her father had said something about it, too. Was Hendon Tolly a victim of the same madness as the Autarch of Xis? Worse, was it something other than madness?

Stupid woman. Stop it. All she was doing was frightening herself. She needed to find Hendon Tolly; she needed no magical terrors to give her reasons to hurry.

Several hours had passed and the light was all but gone from the sky above Southmarch. As Briony, Stephanas, and the others finished a fruitless search of the residence gardens and turned back toward the center of the keep, the wind from the ocean grew stronger. The evening was warm, but the clouds had closed in and darkened the sky. The air was as damp as if a storm was sweeping in.

The cannons were still roaring as they crossed the colonnade and stepped out into the nest of narrow streets between the armory and the Throne hall. Briony’s attention was caught by something stuck in the branches of one of the tall trees near the corner of the hall that contained the Erivor Chapel—a pale shape, reaching and fluttering as though it struggled for the housetops and freedom. She doubted it was anything significant—the castle was full of blowing scraps—but she was still squinting at it in the dying light when the cannonball struck. A slower, louder round had just passed over their heads, shrieking like one of the skeletal daughters of Kernios and disappearing into the commons behind them. A moment later, the wall of the Throne hall burst into pieces as big as hay wagons, crushing Sir Gennadas and three of Briony’s Syannese foot soldiers and spilling bodies out of the building along with the flying rubble.

Stephanas and Briony and the other two soldiers did their best to dig the men out but it quickly became clear it was hopeless. A bedraggled priest, one of the crowd of homeless refugees, came forward and began to pray over the bodies. Others worked by lamplight, trying to dig out the other victims who had either been inside or beneath the walls of the great Throne hall when the cannonball smashed it open.

Overwhelmed by the dust and the smell of blood, Briony at last wandered away to catch her breath. One of the sections of the wall had fallen only an arm’s length from her, taking Gennadas but sparing Briony. She had imagined her death would be a personal thing, something she could face bravely, like a true Eddon. She had never thought of death being so swift and uncaring, an event that could obliterate not just her but also several strangers at the same time.

Briony realized she had wandered away from the destruction, and she was shaking as though the weather had suddenly turned freezing. That wouldn’t do—she was a princess, after all. These were her people, and she had no right to walk away and leave them, however frightened she might be.

As she turned she saw something flapping just to one side—the pale thing in the tree that had caught her attention earlier. Shocked loose by the crash of the cannonball into the Throne hall, it had floated down a short way before catching in the branches again. It was a shawl or something similar, doubtless once some woman’s admired possession, lost now as so many other things had been. She walked toward it and yanked it down, only half looking, marveling that something so delicate and finely made should have survived in the midst of this destructive madness when the great stone walls themselves could not.

Perhaps there is something to be learned here… she thought absently, staring at the fine texture of the cloth. If it was a woolen shawl, it was a small one and its owners’ initials had been worked into the design of flowers and birds. No, it wasn’t a shawl at all, it was a Naming blanket, the kind children were wrapped in for the important religious ceremonies, and this one had four initials on it, which seemed unusual: OABE.

Her heart fluttered and threatened to stop entirely. She gasped for breath. Could it be? Who else but a royal child would have four names? And what would make more sense than for little Alessandros to have his father’s name, too—Olin. And Anissa’s father had been named Benediktos…

Olin Alessandros Benediktos Eddon. It was baby Alessandros’ blanket.

“Sir Stephanas!” Briony shouted. “Come here!”

The tone of her voice was such that Stephanas and the other two soldiers did not hesitate, but left the death rites of their comrades and ran to her side. She showed them the blanket, then turned and looked past the ruined wall to the dark slopes beyond, a place of tangled old trees and few lights. Even the homeless might hesitate to make their camp in such a place.

“The graveyard?” asked Stephanas. He did not sound as if he liked the idea.

“It makes sense. There are more than a few tombs there big enough to hide in—some of them go very deep.” This thought chimed strangely, but she pushed it aside. “I would bet my life that Hendon is hiding in there somewhere with my half brother.” She turned to one of the two surviving infantrymen. “Hurry back to the residence. Tell Prince Eneas where we’re going—ask him to send more men.”

“Where we are going?” Stephanas was still staring out into the dismal shadows of the temple yard. “Why don’t we wait for the prince?”

“Because it might be hours. Because we might be wrong, and if Hendon’s not here, we need to know so we can look elsewhere. Don’t you understand—he has one of my family as a hostage!” She turned back to the newly appointed messenger. “Go! Swiftly!”

He hurried off. Briony turned to her remaining two companions. “Stay close to me. I know the place better than you do.”

“We will need torches,” said Sir Stephanas.

“That’s the last thing we need,” she told him. “No light to give us away! And we will have to be quiet, too. Don’t you know anything about Hendon Tolly? He’s like a serpent—he will always try to bite.”

As they reached the ancient, leaning gate, she held her finger to her lips to remind them to remain silent, then guided the reluctant soldiers through into the land of the dead.

35. His Dearie-Dove

It was the last conversation Ferras Vansen would have expected to have.

“Moping, then, Captain?” someone asked him as he sharpened the blade of his ax. “Got a dearie-dove back home you wish you could see once more?” It was Sledge Jasper, cheerful despite a face that looked like a burned roast. His thickset right-hand man, Dolomite, squatted beside him.

“A what? A dearie-dove?” Vansen couldn’t help laughing a little. The hopelessness of his choice on that front mirrored the likelihood of him having picked the winning side in the war. He had been the gods’ fool for so long he could barely remember the time before his hopeless love had settled over him like a storm cloud.

“A sweetheart, Captain,” said Jasper with an offended tone. “You know what I mean.”

If I survive, I will tell her, Vansen decided suddenly. I will have to leave Southmarch—if they do not have my head first for my presumption. But it will be worth it. I’ll be an empty man, hollowed out and ready for something else to be poured in. Or at least prepared for an empty life afterward. “Nothing much to tell about,” he said out loud. “What’s the hour?”

“The timekeeper puts it about an hour until midday,” Jasper told him.

“Ah.” Vansen nodded. “So Midsummer’s Day is still young.” It was a bleak piece of news, since they needed to hold off the Xixians until past midnight. “As to ladies, how about you, friend Jasper? An accomplished fellow like yourself, a Wardthane, you must have someone waiting.”

Sledge Jasper made a face. “A wife. Does that count?”

Dolomite grinned. “Your Pebble would have your knackers for that, Sledge.”

“And you, Dolomite?” Vansen asked, grasping at anything that might lead the men to think of something other than what lay ahead. “Have you a dearie-dove, as Jasper calls it?”

The little man frowned. “None of the town girls understand me, Captain, to be frank. They don’t see a man like me can have ideas beyond knocking heads. In truth, I’d like to start a tavern. Save up a few copper chips for a nest egg and then go to the next Guild Market when they start having them again, find myself a girl who hasn’t already made her mind up about me. Maybe a Westcliff lass. They’re not so handsome, the Settland Funderlings, but I’ve heard they’re sensible ...”

Jasper and Dolomite went back to their men as Brother Flowstone returned and crouched beside Vansen.

“I am afraid, Captain,” the young monk admitted. “I thought I would be honored, even exalted, when the Elders called for me, but I am only frightened. I don’t want to die.”

“You would be a strange young man in the prime of your life if you did.”

“I had many… I thought things would be… different ...”

Vansen reached over and patted the monk’s shoulder. “Don’t despair—you may yet live! But whether today or fifty years from now, we will all stand before Immon’s Gate ...”

“We call him Nozh-la,” Flowstone told him.

“… We will all stand before Nozh-la’s gate,” Vansen continued, “waiting for the kind attentions of his master, the lord of death.”

“You are a poet, Captain.” The monk seemed amused despite the quaver in his voice.

Vansen, however, had been seized even as he spoke by a sudden vision, a memory so powerful that it shook him like a rat in a terrier’s jaws, and for a long moment he could barely breathe. Immon’s Gate. He had been there, or at least he could see it in his mind’s eye as clearly as if he had, the great ornate portal of black stone, tall as a mountain, part of the featureless stone of the House of the Lord of the Underworld. And all around it lay the sullen, red lights and tall, deep shadows of the City of Death. Could it be? Had he actually seen it? But when? This phantom of his mind seemed so real!

It doesn’t matter when. Or even if it was a dream. I’ve seen it. I know it. I have been to the very gates of Death’s own castle and returned. If the gods were trying to speak to him, Ferras Vansen was listening. He could almost hear rising voices like a temple choir, something bigger than himself lifting him, and for a moment he no longer feared anything.

No matter what happens to me now or later, I have not had a small life!

Something thumped at the far end of the great hall, a muffled crash that nearly extinguished the torches and sent stones rolling from the pile of rubble blocking the far entrance. Another thump, louder this time, forceful enough to slap both Ferras Vansen’s ears and deafen him for a moment, shattered his thoughts into pieces. The far end of the chamber was full of dust and skittering stone. Shapes moved where only moments earlier a thousandweight and more of rubble had been piled.

Vansen could see immediately that the autarch had not sent his ordinary foot soldiers, the Naked; instead, behind the swirl of dust and smoke, the cleared entrance was full of tall, pale shields, wedged together like the scales of a snake, an armored mass that bristled with spears like a hedgehog’s quills as it advanced slowly into the room. The men were huge and their shields were painted with the ugly, snarling head of a dog—the autarch’s most feared killers were leading the attack.

With a roar that to Vansen’s damaged hearing seemed scarcely more than a loud moan, the White Hounds surged forward into the Initiation Hall.

The afternoon went by like a thunderstorm that lasted years. Vansen and his men held the first barricade of skillfully piled stone as long as they could, but despite the protection of the high wall at least a dozen Funderlings fell. In lulls between skirmishes the bodies were dragged away and their armor and weapons redistributed. Vansen noted with grim amusement that finally, from sheer attrition, nearly all of his men were properly armed. At last, when the warders holding the far right side of the barricade had been so badly overwhelmed that the Xixians were clambering over the wall in numbers, Vansen called the retreat and the Funderlings dropped back to the second barrier.

“Now hold them here!” he shouted. “Spears up, Guildsmen, spears up!”

They held the second wall as long as they could. Time passed in a blur and the shouting became a smear of noise like the roaring ocean somewhere above their heads.

Sky and sea, thought Vansen—oh, to see them both once more! And Briony Eddon’s face! If you could love a god or goddess who would never know you, why not a princess? Was the love any the less because it couldn’t come back to you?

More Funderlings fell, even brave little Dolomite, Jasper’s sergeant; more sprang forward to fill the places of the fallen, including monks who had only ministered to the wounded. Three Metamorphic Brothers, freshly come to the front line, were set on fire by an oil lamp the autarch’s men shoved over the top of a barrier. As they ran screaming past their fellows, Vansen could feel despair welling up in the Funderling troops like a poisonous venom, stealing their strength; he knew that any instant they might all break and run for the great balcony and the whole force would be overwhelmed and slaughtered. Vansen leaned out and grabbed one of the blazing monks as he went past, burning his hand, and then threw himself on top of the shrieking man, doing his best to smother the flames with dirt and his own body. Vansen sat up to see the other Funderlings watching him in numb surprise.

“Stop staring!” he bellowed. “Help these men! Call the healers. And protect your barricades!”

Startled back to something like sense, the Funderlings dug in afresh. Others caught the burning monks and wrestled them to the ground to extinguish the flames, then dragged them to the back of the hall. When the Funderlings did give way some time later and fell back to the third barricade, it was under discipline and at Vansen’s command.

They could not hold the third barricade for long, nor the smaller fourth. The Xixians continued to swarm into the huge chamber, and as they cleared the stones from between the columns, they were able to bring more and more soldiers against the Funderling positions. The southerners could use arrows now, too, and although these did little damage against those who crouched behind the barricades, it was different for the Funderlings at the rear of the chamber. Young Calomel, Cinnabar’s son, was shot in the back as he tried to drag his father’s litter to a safer spot. As the monks carried off the wounded youth, Vansen and the others could only tell the sick and fretful Cinnabar over and over again that his boy would be well, though none of them truly believed it.

Soon the ground was slick with blood, the ancient stone flags as treacherous as ice. At least a half dozen more Funderlings died defending the fourth wall, many of them from the ranks of the warders, Vansen’s most experienced fighters. The little men were fighting bravely and the terrain was to their advantage, but the autarch’s officers could bring up wave after wave of soldiers who were not only trained and equipped, but fresh to the fight as well.

As the doomed afternoon and evening wore on, Vansen pondered the increasingly grim arithmetic of their defense. He had known they could never hope to do more than slow the Xixians, but it was plain now that without a miracle they couldn’t hope to hold even an hour longer. At this pace, he and his Funderlings would lie dead to a man long before midnight.

“Fall back!” he shouted. “Back to the last barricade!”

He and several warders stayed to protect the retreat. Funderlings tumbled past him as they scrambled for the rear, their faces pale and haunted. Scaffolders, quarrymen, carvers, not a one of them had been a soldier, but here they were, giving everything they had to defend their tiny piece of country, and everything was indeed being taken from them. It was all Ferras Vansen could do to keep his rage and sorrow from overwhelming him.

As Vansen and a few others fell back to join their comrades, a Xixian arrow caught Sledge Jasper in the back of a leg. He stumbled, falling behind the rest, and in that moment one of the Xixian soldiers saw his chance: the southerner sprang out into the no-man’s-land between the two walls and drove his spear into Sledge Jasper’s back as easily as skewering a fish in a drying pond, then leaped back with a shout of delight as Jasper took a step, crumpled, and fell.

Before he could think about what he was doing Vansen had clambered back over the wall and rushed to his fallen comrade, meeting the surprised Xixian’s defensive thrust with contempt. He yanked the man’s spear out of his hands so hard that the Xixian took a helpless couple of steps toward him, which let Vansen bring his ward-ax around in a great sweep to crush the man’s helmet and the head beneath.

More Xixians were scrambling toward him now, ducking the rocks being thrown by Vansen’s men from behind the last barricade. Vansen scooped up Jasper, whose small, stocky body was heavier than he expected as well as slippery with blood, and ran to the barricade. He delivered the wardthane into waiting hands, then dragged himself over to momentary safety as a flurry of arrows snapped against the stones all around him.

He bent to the wounded man but it was too late: Jasper had stopped breathing. His eyes were open but saw nothing. Vansen felt a cold hatred seize his guts and squeeze them.

“The Elders’ blessings on you, Sledge,” he said quietly.

The Xixians had not attacked again, but he knew they soon would. Vansen turned to the other Funderlings, who watched him with wide-eyed fear or exhausted despair. This last wall had been built smaller and higher than the others in this narrowest part of the cavern, with the hall’s only exit behind it. He made a quick estimate of how many men he still had—perhaps two or three hundred able to fight, no more. Even so, most of them were wounded, and Vansen himself was covered in blood too, much of it his own. He thought of several things to say, discarded them all.

“Sit up straight, men,” he told them finally. “Be pleased, not ashamed. We have nothing else left to do today except make a brave death. We have already made certain that these southerners, twice your size and ten times your numbers, will never be able to speak the name of the Funderlings or of Revelation Hall without sorrow at their losses and surprise at who caused them.”

A small murmur ran through the huddled men, including what might have been a ragged cheer or two.

“Enough of this talking,” Vansen told them. “Cinnabar is still here—he’s just a little under the weather, but he still breathes. And Malachite Copper? He’s here in his best suit—aren’t you, Master Copper?”

The Funderling cleared his throat. “Here indeed, Captain.”

“And Wardthane Jasper will be in the line outside Nozh-la’s Gate with the rest of our friends who’ve gone ahead, watching to see what you do in the next hour. So don’t disappoint them! Up, men, up!”

As they struggled wearily to their feet, Vansen raised his voice to make sure even those in the back could hear him. “Put your shoulders against each other and lift your spears, men. Those who still have shields, keep them up and locked with your fellows’. Don’t give ground except back toward the doorway… and whatever you do, do not break unless you hear me calling the retreat. More than our own lives depend on it.”

“ ’Ware the wall!” someone shouted. The Xixians had brought up a ram and had begun trying to knock down the barricade. Suddenly, the Funderlings were all up and hurrying into place as if the moment of quiet had never happened. Vansen saw a face appear near the top of the wall and took a swing at it with his ward-ax. The Xixian soldier dropped away unscathed and went looking for a spot where the defenders were not so tall. After that, Vansen had little time to do anything except avoid being killed.

Something bad had happened to Ferras Vansen’s left arm; he could no longer lift it above his shoulder. Something else bad had happened to his leg. He could still stand on it, but every time he shifted his weight he felt weakness and pain pierce his knee like a hot needle.

Xixian rams had knocked holes in their last barricade in several places; beyond, Vansen could see manlike shapes and the flicker of torches. Another part of the barricade now shivered as more stones worked loose and tumbled to the floor, one of them crushing an already wounded man’s leg. The fighting had grown too fierce even to pull the injured out of harm’s way. Vansen had never been so exhausted in his life, not even in the lost months behind the Shadowline—it took all his strength simply to remember where he was and what was happening around him. Still, the ladders coming over the top of the barricades at either end were no dream, and the men climbing them were as real as Death itself.

Nearby, several of the Naked warriors leaped down from the top of the barricade, swinging their curved swords and hand-axes. He realized he was staring like a drunkard while men died—his brave, brave men.

“It’s time!” Vansen shouted. “Back through the door! We’ll make our stand on the Balcony. Fall back!”

This time the distance was short. Vansen actually grabbed men and tugged them back from the fighting, but many others had been waiting for this moment and were already hurrying toward the doorway at the back of Revelation Hall in a retreat so ragged that some fell and others stepped on them. More and more Xixians were swarming over the final barricade.

“Hurry!” Vansen picked up someone’s spear from the flagstones and used it to keep the attackers at bay as the last of the Funderlings extricated themselves. He had taken so many wounds today that at any other time he would be with the other injured being cared for, but as the biggest man among his troops he knew that he was always being watched: Vansen remaining upright through all the waves of attack had done much to keep his own men in fighting spirit. But Vansen also knew that the time had come when strategy meant nothing. Each man must now sell his life for as brave a price as he could, but they would never know whether it had been enough.

Vansen and Malachite Copper and a few of Copper’s household troops were the last to retreat through the doorway and out onto the great slab of stone the Funderlings called the Balcony, which stood on the edge of the stony cliff that held the Maze. A hundred feet or more below the Balcony spread the gigantic underground chamber of the Sea in the Depths, although to call that immensity a chamber was like calling Three Brothers Temple a shack, or mighty Hierosol a village. The cavern was almost as wide as the inner keep itself, and its height was unknown. If the great cave had a ceiling, it was lost in darkness above them and could not be seen even from the high balcony of the Maze.

And at the center of the cavern lay the shining, still surface of the Sea in the Depths—“the Silver,” as he had sometimes heard the Qar name it. Veins of glowing stone threading through the walls of the massive chamber gave a faint but steady light, so that even from the Balcony, Vansen could see the thing that the autarch apparently sought and had already killed so many to reach, the gleaming crystalline monument called the Shining Man, standing on its island in the middle of the silvery underground sea.

“Look out, Captain—here they come!” shouted Malachite Copper. Vansen sighed and turned his back to the stone railing, then stepped forward so he couldn’t easily be pushed over. Some of his men would probably choose that way out by the end, he knew, rather than die on a Xixian spear. He couldn’t blame them, but that way would not be his.

Smoke billowed from the doorway of the Revelation Hall onto the balcony. For a few moments, Vansen thought it was dust again, that the Xixians had knocked over the entire barrier, but even so it seemed too big a cloud. Several figures stepped out of the rolling murk, their dark silhouettes somehow magnified by the smoke so that they seemed monsters, not men.

But it was a monster, he saw a moment later with sinking heart, or at least it was no longer anything human. Big and getting bigger every instant, the thing was a writhing shadow, uneven and unstable.

It growled out something that almost sounded like words, a horrid deep rasp. Two more just as terrifying stepped up beside it, one of them still with a hand to its mouth as though it were eating something. All three seemed man-shaped whirlwinds, as if the dust and debris of the chamber were being drawn up to spin through the air and circle them, covering the creatures like moss growing on a stone but a thousand times more swift. The shapes grew wider and even taller. As Vansen stared, dumbfounded, he heard Funderlings shrieking in terror behind him.

“Curse their Xixian devilry!” Vansen groaned. “Copper? Where are you? I need your men and their spears!”

He did not wait, but hurled his own ward-ax at the nearest of the creatures. The weapon only bounced off the swirling, shadowy mass, as ineffectual as a snowball against a siege tower. Vansen tore a spear from the hand of a staring, dumbfounded Funderling and advanced toward the things, jabbing at them as at an angry boar, but the demons did not give ground. The three shapes had grown huge now, bulky and irregular, but they still walked on two legs as they waded forward, swiping at the defenders with clawed hands big as serving platters. They moved surprisingly quickly, too—the first nearly beheaded Vansen with one swipe.

“Help the captain, you sons of the Guild!” called out Malachite Copper. “The Elders are watching you—don’t let him fight alone!”

And then other Funderlings began to push their way in beside him, jabbing bravely at the things and ducking blows from the stony talons if they were lucky; but several were sliced in half as they stood, and another was thrown into Ferras Vansen by a backhanded swipe of a malformed hand with such violence that it knocked him spinning. Vansen struck his head against the base of the Balcony’s stone railing and when he tried to sit up so he could rise and fight, all around him seemed to waver as if seen through fathoms of water.

A tiny white shape dropped down from out of the darkness above, but Vansen could make nothing of it, any more than he could of the weird, liquid roar of the devil creatures as they mowed through the shrieking Funderlings. An instant later, he realized he was staring at a small, slender woman dressed all in white armor who stood just in front of him, the rope down which she had climbed still dangling beside her.

“We of the People have served you poorly, Ferras Vansen,” she said in a voice so sweetly calm he was half-certain he must be dreaming it all. “Now we will try to make up for that, at least in some measure.”

She was Qar, that was obvious, but he had never seen her before. He wondered again if he might be dreaming… or dying. “Who… who are you?”

“My name is Saqri. I must go now.”

Other shapes were falling down out of the darkness all around him, many figures sliding down on ropes and jumping to the Balcony before swiftly springing forward to attack the clawed demons. Vansen tried to get up, but the world spun so briskly that he fell back and did not try again to rise; it was all he could do just to lie on the stone and listen to the weirdly musical sounds of desperate battle, the clang of stony claws on smooth Qar armor. Flashes of light made the carved walls of the Maze jump out in sharp relief and revealed dozens—no, hundreds!—more Qar as they dropped down onto the Balcony like graceful spiders.

One of the demon creatures died with a Qar arrow in its eye all the way to the feathers. It thrashed and gurgled wetly for a long time until the life finally leaked out of it. Another stumbled as it charged and was then jabbed with fairy-spears until it went mad and tumbled over the railing—it roared like receding thunder all the way down. The last, as far as Vansen could tell, was set on fire somehow from within and died in a smoking mass in the middle of the balcony, leaving a corpse that looked like a chimney hit by lightning.

Vansen sat up, his arm and leg throbbing horribly, trying to make sense out of what was happening. Where were the rest of the autarch’s soldiers? Why had they stopped attacking? Had his Funderlings actually defeated the Xixians with the last-moment help of the Qar?

A tall warrior in gray Qar armor came toward him across the balcony. “Ferras Vansen,” this newcomer said, crouching at his side. “By the gods, I never thought I’d see you again. Never.” The stranger took off his helmet and for a moment Ferras Vansen could only stare at the shock of red hair in aching bemusement.

“Barrick… ?” he said at last. “Prince Barrick? Is it really you?”

The prince gave him a cold, serious gaze. He looked ten years older. “Yes, it’s me, Captain. How are your wounds? Will you survive?”

“I… I expect so ...” Vansen shook his head in amazement. “But how do you come here? How did you escape from the shadowlands?”

A human expression, a little smile, twisted Barrick Eddon’s lips. “I’m sure we both have many stories to tell ...” he began, then another Qar woman hastened up, one Vansen recognized. It was Yasammez’ gray-skinned adviser, Aesi’uah.

“Captain Vansen,” she said. “It is good to find you alive.” She turned to Barrick. “Saqri says we cannot delay. It is a feint, as she feared. They are already gone.”

“What?” Vansen struggled to get up. He hated this feeling of weakness. “Who is already gone?”

“The southerners,” Aesi’uah said. “This last attack by the autarch’s Stone Swallowers was meant to destroy you and your men, but he was not waiting for you to die. There are long stairways back in the Maze which lead far down, then cross under the Sea in the Depths to the island where gods fought and died—the place where the Shining Man stands. The autarch and his priests and soldiers stealthily went that way while we fought. They have slipped past beneath us.

“Despite all your bravery and all our haste, Captain Vansen, we have lost.”

36. When the Knife Falls

“It is a handsome thing, is it not?” Hendon Tolly held it up so Matt Tinwright could see it; but in fact Tinwright could see almost nothing else: the blade was so close and its presence so alarming that his eyes nearly crossed. The knife was as long as Tinwright’s forearm and palm, its slender jade handle inlaid with unfamiliar golden symbols, as was the even slenderer blade. “It is Yisti work, I was told, from the southern part of Xand,” Tolly said. “A ghostmaker, it is called. We will see if it is also a godmaker.” He laughed, but it seemed perfunctory. Tolly was pale and sweating, as if, despite his usual air of confidence, the events of the last few days had shaken him very deeply. “Just think, poet! A thousand years or more it lay in a Hierosoline tomb, and you will be the first to wield it again in all that time. That is something worth making a rhyme about!”

The knife was so close that Matt Tinwright was beginning to think Hendon Tolly might be about to test it on him, despite his promises. Tinwright looked to the soldiers, three hardened men in Summerfield colors, Tolly’s handpicked guards, but they would not even meet his eye. The protector’s madness was as clear as a large livid bruise on pale skin. No one wanted to endanger himself by catching Tolly’s attention.

“What do you w-want me to do… ?” Tinwright didn’t even want to touch the knife. The green handle and the tomb-patina made it look envenomed.

“Follow me, of course.” Tolly lowered the knife and pointed to the steps leading down into the Eddon family vault. The sun was well behind the hills now and the opening seemed a gateway to the void itself, the naked emptiness that came before the gods. “We have work to do, fool, and midnight is only hours away. If we are to beat that brown dog Sulepis to the prize, we cannot wait any longer.” He turned to one of the guards. “When Buckle arrives, send him down to me at once.”

The guard nodded. Tolly turned back to Matt Tinwright. “Come, now. Bring the child. Haste!”

His stomach roiling so he feared he might vomit, his head full of confused and fearful thoughts, Tinwright wrapped the blankets a little tighter around the squirming royal heir and followed Hendon Tolly down into the tomb.

Tolly led them to the old vault, which lay behind the first outermost chamber where Okros Dioketian had died and Tinwright himself had been caught by a returning Hendon Tolly. The old vault was larger and higher than the front chamber, a hollow, six-sided mountain of stone, each of the six walls honeycombed with niches, and each niche holding its own stone or lead box. Most of the old coffins bore no images of the dead, and few even had inscriptions; those who slumbered inside, many of them kings and queens of Southmarch, had now become nameless and faceless.

“No one has been buried in this room for hundreds of years,” Tolly said, walking slowly around the hexagonal chamber with his hands behind his back like an idler out for a stroll. “Kellick built the outer chamber, it is said, which means that great Anglin himself must be here, crumbling in one of these hidey-holes.” He looked up to see whether he had shocked Tinwright with his blasphemy. “But nobody knows which!” Tolly laughed. “No matter how famous in life, when you are dead, you are nameless clay!” The baby in Tinwright’s arms was beginning to cry steadily now, the hitching sobs becoming a single wail. “By Perin’s beard, poet, will you give that cursed child a shake?” Tolly said, frowning. “Make it be quiet.”

Matt Tinwright held the small creature gingerly. What did someone like him know about comforting an infant? “Does he have to be here, Lord?”

“What are you babbling about? Of course he has to be here—we cannot perform the ritual without him! Might as well try to have a dinner with no roast!” Tolly closed his eyes as if he could bear no more, but he kept them closed for longer than Tinwright would have expected, and when he opened them, they had a perilous cast. “I said, silence that child.”

Tinwright could think of nothing else to do except to give the tiny creature his finger to suck. It was a trick he had seen Brigid use on her sister’s child to quiet it. Little Alessandros continued to hitch and sob for a while even with the finger in his mouth, but gradually grew silent.

Tolly thrust out his hand, and one of the guards handed over a sack he had been carrying. “Where is that other fool? He should have been here by now.”

“My lord… ?”

“Shut your mouth, poet, I am not talking to you. Well?”

The guard who had handed him the sack squirmed beneath his master’s bright, disturbing glare. “Buckle? I’m sure he’ll be here right quickly, Lord Tolly. ...”

Tolly silenced him with a mere movement of his hand. “Enough. Go and wait outside for him, both of you. I would talk with Master Tinwright.”

The guards, only too willing to leave the Old Vault, hustled away. Tinwright heard their footsteps going up from the new vault to the surface. When they died away he became uncomfortably aware that he was trapped far beneath the ground—in a tomb, no less!—with a dangerous madman.

“It’s almost time,” Hendon Tolly said after some moments had passed. “Did you hear the bell as we came down? That would have been ten of the clock. The Syannese must have taken the residence by now—much good it will do them!” The lord protector laughed. Of late he had stopped trimming his beard and paying close attention to his clothing. Now, ragged and almost untended, Hendon Tolly no longer looked like the mirror of Tessian court fashion. “They will strut and imagine themselves as conquerors, just as that Xixian dog beneath our feet dreams himself to be the chosen of the gods—but they will both be wrong! Because I will beat them to the post. The goddess’ favor will be mine!”

Tinwright could no longer keep track of what his fearsome master planned to achieve with his dreadful sacrifice. Sometimes he talked as though the goddess Zoria would serve him personally, other times as though he himself would become a god. Tinwright might have marked it all as the ravings of one moonstruck, but he had felt the cruel power that lurked in Tolly’s mirror, had felt it stalking him like a hungry wolf. He didn’t want to feel it again and he certainly did not want to hurt a child, royal or not. But what else could he do? Run? Even if he got away from Tolly, the sentries were just outside.

Better to let Tolly kill him, perhaps. If they fought, at least his death might be swift. He could go to the gods with the knowledge that he had refused to do an inexcusable thing.

He squeezed the baby tightly against him, which made the infant burst out crying again.

“My lord,” Tinwright began, “I can’t… I won’t ...” but even as the words came out of his mouth—and admittedly, they were not loud to begin with—Hendon Tolly silenced him with an imperious hand.

“Quiet. Do you hear that?” He cocked his head. “There. That fool Buckle has finally arrived. You will enjoy this, poet. A little surprise planned just for you.”

“F-For me… ?” But now he could hear it, too, a commotion in the other vault, the sound of people moving, of boots on stone and a woman’s voice, protesting, pleading…

Oh, gods, has the monster brought Queen Anissa to watch what happens to her child? Was there no limit to Tolly’s depravity?

The soldiers dragged the struggling woman into the room. When he saw who it was, Tinwright’s knees almost buckled beneath him.

“Ah, and here is that last member of our convocation,” said Tolly cheerfully. “Lady Elan, how I have missed you. You were a cruel, fickle girl to let me think you had run away.”

Elan M’Cory stopped fighting against the guards who held her arms. “You’re a monster, Hendon—a goblin! A demon!”

Tinwright could only stare. The world seemed to be falling in on top of him.

“Nonsense, my dear.” Hendon was at her side in a moment, then pressed her cheek with the blade of the jade-handled knife as the guards held her. He pushed a little too hard and a thread of shining red appeared. “Our friend the poet will do everything I say because he will not want to see harm come to a single hair on your lovely head. Did he not go to great lengths already to hide you from me?”

Tinwright felt as though his insides had turned to sand and cold water. “Oh, gods help us, how… how did you find her?”

“Oh, the gods will be helping you soon enough, never fear.” Hendon Tolly’s glee was mounting by the instant. “I have had you followed every time you left the castle, little poet. You may have thought yourself clever with your twisting courses, but all you have done is make my soldiers tired and angry—you fooled no one. Honestly, did you really think to hide a noblewoman of Summerfield in your sister’s hovel?”

Tinwright turned to catch Elan’s eye. “I’m sorry. I never thought ...”

“Enough.” Tolly lingered a moment to sniff at her hair and face like a cat at a fleck of carrion. “Ah, I hope he does what he says, my dear,” he whispered loud enough for Matt Tinwright to hear. “I pray no harm must come to you. I want you back, you see. I have missed marking your white skin and I have missed the sounds of your suffering. It is like a sickness, this longing of mine. ...”

“Do nothing that he wants, Matt!” Elan called to Tinwright. “I was already a dead woman when we met—I was a corpse from the first time he touched me ...!”

“But our poet is not made of such cruel stuff,” Tolly said. “He will do what he is told. He will help me perform the ritual in place of poor, foolish old Brother Okros. He will sacrifice the child.” Tolly came to Tinwright then and touched the king’s child on the forehead with his dusty white finger, leaving a mark. “Because if he does not, he will watch me take the skin off his beloved Elan before he dies.”

She heard something moving around in the dark—a dark too deep for even her strong Funderling eyes—and sat up.

“The Tortoise ...” a small voice was whispering. “Then the Knot… and the Owl… the Last Hour of the Ancestor, which deep in the ancient days was the door to his house… the signs are so clear that surely even a fool could see them ... but why ... ?”

“Who’s there?” Opal cried.

A moment of silence passed before the answer came. “It’s me, Mama Opal.”

“Flint? What are you doing, boy?” She elbowed herself up out of the narrow cot and felt for the warmstone. When it was in her hand it began to glow a faint pink, enough to let her see around the room. To her dismay, Flint stood before her dressed not in his nightshirt but in daytime clothes and boots, a cloth sack in his hands.

“What in the name of stone and stonecutting are you doing? What is that sack for?”

“I was only putting some food in it. Some bread and a few dried winter mushrooms.”

“What… ? Oh, I see—you’re going somewhere, or at least you think you are.” She sprang out of bed and put herself between him and the door to the monks’ dormitory where they slept. “But I won’t let you.”

Flint looked at her, his expression calm but solemn. “I have to, Mama Opal. Please let me go.”

“Go where? Why do you do this to us, boy? To me? Haven’t we been good to you?”

He flinched as if something hurt him, surprising her. “Yes. You have been better to me than anyone else ever has! I’m not running away, Mama Opal, or getting into trouble. I’ve just realized that there’s something I must do. It… came to me.”

“What came to you?”

“I… I can’t tell you. Because I don’t entirely know. But I know where it starts, and this is it. I must go.”

Opal was close to despair, her anger melting away as fear supplanted it. “But where? This is foolishness, child! Where could you go? There’s a war outside! The southerners might come down on us any moment with swords and spears. You’ll be killed!” She came toward him, her hands now clasped before her breast. “Don’t say such things, my rabbit. You’re not going anywhere. Come back to bed. Sleep—it will all look different in the morning. You had a dream, that’s all, and it seems very real.”

“No.” His voice was not cold, but neither was it comforting. “No, Mama Opal. This is the dream. And I am beginning to wake.”

“Why couldn’t Chert be here… ?” Flint was taller than she was now, but it didn’t matter: the thought of trying to restrain him had never seriously crossed her mind. She threw her arms around him. “Please, my sweet boy, my son, don’t do it. Don’t go. I’ve already had to see your… to see my husband off on another bootless errand. ...” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The boy put his arms around her in an awkward embrace. “I’m sorry, Mama Opal, but I have to.”

She leaned back a little and looked keenly, sufferingly at his face. “You’re not like anyone else, are you? It’s no use trying to make you something you’re not.” She laughed, a bitter, heartbroken sound. “I’ll never see you again. The Elders gave you to me only to snatch you away again—a sort of joke.”

“You will see me again.” The confusion had left his voice. “I promise that. And you have done so much more than you know. You have saved me.”

She stepped away from the door. “Go on, then. I’ve never been able to stop either you or Chert from doing what you must. Can you really not tell me where you go?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Not yet. But I will know soon. Be brave, Mama.”

She had long ago set down the warmstone; deprived of her hand and its coursing blood, its light had by now all but faded. Only the faintest rosy glow touched Flint as he opened the door into the hallway and stepped out into the echoing darkness.

Through the last several days Qinnitan had heard the fighting only distantly, as though somewhere in the endless, rocky deeps two ghost armies were fighting and re-fighting some ancient battle. When they passed through large caverns, the screams and shouts came to her unexpectedly, carried on the confused currents of air that drifted through the labyrinthine tunnels, and for a terrifying moment it seemed that soldiers were dying only yards away, around the next bend. She could not help thinking of the covered colonnades around the marketplace where she had run as a child, where in certain places you could hear the whispered bickering of merchants halfway around the square.

How had that little girl—barefoot and laughing, chasing her neighbors through the bazaar—become this pathetic thing, a caged creature that would never again see the sunlight, like the birds the copper miners carried down into the darkness with them?

The gods are punishing me—but I did nothing. It filled her with fury. I am innocent of any wrong and so was poor Pigeon! It is the gods themselves who have done this to me!

Qinnitan moved closer to the hardwood bars of her prison and pressed her face against them. She could dimly see the northern king’s cage a few yards away, swaying on the shoulders of a half dozen bearers just as hers did. The feet of the men carrying the cages crunched on the path of broken stone the autarch’s slaves had prepared. Sulepis had commanded a wider road be built down into the earth despite all his haste, simply so that he and his men could travel more comfortably. Qinnitan had seen some of the tons and tons of stone being carried out past her. It numbed her thoughts, this willingness to put a thousand men to work for days, killing dozens in the process, for a path that would be used once.

“Do you like our road, King Olin?” she called out.

“Is that you, Mistress Qinnitan?” They had talked a few times, whenever their cages were near enough. Her command of the northern tongue had improved during her time in Hierosol. She was embarrassed by how wordless she had been at their first meeting.

“Who else?”

She heard him laugh a little. Some of his bearers looked up at her, their faces full of resentment that the prisoners should talk and joke while they worked so hard.

But I think you would not really change places. Out loud she said, “The Golden One makes a big road down into this mountain. Doesn’t he fear the mountain will fall on him?”

“He doesn’t seem to fear anything,” said Olin. “In another man I might admire that, but I think your Golden One does not believe anything can happen except that which he desires.”

“Not my Golden One,” she said. “He is a pig—a mad pig!” She repeated it even louder in Xixian for the benefit of the bearers. Several of them stumbled in frightened surprise.

“I wish you would not do that,” Olin said.

“Why? What can Sulepis do?” And at that moment she truly did not fear him or any tortures he might use on her. “We are as good as dead. Even the autarch cannot kill us more than once!”

“It’s not that. Whatever you said made the men carrying me almost drop me down this ravine. You likely cannot see it from where you are. In any case, I would prefer not to die that way.”

Because you are afraid you would be leaving me to be the sacrificial goat in the Golden One’s ritual. That was what he meant, she knew. But she only said, “I apologizing, King Olin. I try not to do it again.”

They bumped along for a little while before she said, “Once you say I remind you of your… daughter? Is that the word? Your girl-son?”

He laughed again. She could not quite see him now. The nearest torch was behind him, and his face was in shadow. “My girl-son. It is funny you say that, because she has never liked having to wear women’s clothes.”

“Truly? She is like a man?”

“Only in that she wants to use her own wits instead of relying on a man to think for her.” Olin’s voice warmed. “You would like her. From what you have told me you two are much alike. Like you, she has escaped from her enemies again and again.”

“You have pride of her.”

“Yes, I do. And of her brother, too, although I haven’t told you about him. He was given more to bear than any grown man should carry when he was only a child.” The king went silent for a little time. “I have done him wrong, Qinnitan. That is my greatest sadness. I don’t fear death, but I hate that I will not see them again.”

“Until Heaven.”

“Of course. Until Heaven.”

Qinnitan woke from a thin sleep when the bearers set down the heavy cage, groaning and mumbling like oxen given the tongues of men. The torchlight showed they were in a strange, narrow passage, the roof only a few arm’s lengths above Qinnitan’s head. The paramount minister himself, Pinimmon Vash, as old and shriveled as a piece of sandal leather lost in the desert, was giving out orders to the soldiers guarding her and the northern king.

“I apologize, King Olin.” Vash spoke the northern tongue as though he had been raised with it. “But here we must descend many steps and move through many narrow spaces. The cage and its bearers will not fit. I fear you must walk.”

“But I will still be bound,” Olin said.

“Regrettably, yes, your hands will be tied. After the recent incident… well, you understand.” Outwardly Vash seemed bored and formal, but there was something else in his manner as well, an odd brittleness. Was he afraid of these crushing deeps, so far beneath the sunlit surface, or was there something else? Although Vash hid it well, Qinnitan, who had been well schooled in the constant smiling deceptions of the Seclusion, thought Paramount Minister Vash seemed almost to be afraid of Olin. But why would that be? Clearly, despite his one attempt on the autarch’s life, the king was no longer a threat, any more than she was.

“Of course,” Olin said, and there was something subtle beneath his words as well. “What else can you do? None of you wish to see anything happen to the Golden One.”

He was goading the old man, she could tell—but why? Over what?

They took her out first as a hostage against Olin’s good behavior. Occasionally she could hear the dull roar of men fighting nearby, louder than the ghost murmurs that sometimes floated to them. So the battle was close, Qinnitan thought; that meant that enemies of the autarch were also close by. Was there any chance she could escape? She would gladly take her chances in the dangerous confusion of the fighting.

But such a chance was not to be. The soldiers handled her as though she were a captured killer: they tied her hands firmly behind her back and looped a cord around her neck before bringing her out of the cage. When they had her surrounded with soldiers, one holding each arm and one behind her, they just as carefully removed Olin from his cage.

“I feel like Brann’s white bull,” he said. “Fed and cozened all year only to have his throat slit on Orphan’s Day.” His face was ashen. “May Lord Erivor’s mercy cover us all.”

A chill passed through Qinnitan, and it was all she could do to keep upright as the soldiers led her into the narrow passage and down the ancient, rounded steps into a darkness even the torches could not fully illumine.

“Chew, man, chew! Curse you, I told you this must be done.” Tolly shoved another piece of the gritty black bread at Tinwright. “Swallow it and take more. Blood of the Brothers, are you weeping?”

Matt Tinwright wasn’t precisely weeping. Tears had welled in his eyes because he was choking and he could barely breathe. The black bread, tinted with cuttlefish ink and baked without salt or leavening, was foul and dry, and his mouth was so full of it that when he coughed pieces flew out like cinders from a fire.

“Just be grateful I couldn’t find a black dog,” Hendon Tolly said, “or I would give you a meal that would make you weep for true. Now pull on those grave rags—Okros said the summoners must dress thusly to speak to the dead lands beyond.”

But Okros died like a mouse half-eaten by a cat, Tinwright thought miserably. There was no escape from this. Any way he turned, bleak horror waited. Elan stood swaying between two guards with her face a shuttered window, so pale she might have been one of the newly dead herself, evicted from one of the coffins that lined the vault’s six walls. The infant prince Alessandros, destined for sacrifice, was sleeping restlessly in Tinwright’s arms, exhausted by his own tears.

Matt Tinwright was trapped as no one, not even the sacred Orphan himself, had ever been so utterly trapped, and no bright goddess would step in to save his soul as Zoria had rescued the Orphan’s. Tears? The ocean itself did not contain enough salt and water for all the tears Matt Tinwright ached to shed.

The garments one of the guards now pulled out of a bag stank so badly of decay that he dared not guess where they had been obtained. As Tinwright dragged them on, rotted fabric tearing at each pull, Hendon Tolly wrapped himself in a much more presentable black cloak, although it, too, gleamed with pale mold and smelled of the grave. Tinwright could not bear to think of what was about to happen. He finished wrapping the cerements around him and stood, hopeless and miserable, waiting dumbly for Tolly’s next order.

“Bring me one of the coffins out of the wall,” the lord protector told the soldiers. “There—one of the old ones. That will be our altar.”

His guards went to the dusty box he had chosen and extricated it from its niche, then carried it to the center of the vault with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Elan M’Cory didn’t speak, but her mouth tightened at the sight of it and she turned her face away. Tolly took the baby from Tinwright and laid him on his back atop the featureless lid with as little care as if the child were a sack of meal. Alessandros whimpered but remained asleep. Hendon Tolly then commanded one of the other soldiers to remove the mirror from its wrappings and place it on the stone floor beside the makeshift altar.

“Now read from the book, poet!” Tolly said. “The page is marked by a ribbon. Read!”

If he only looked at the page of the book Hendon Tolly had given him, Tinwright decided, if he only read the words that marched across the page, though they squirmed before his eyes like insects, he would almost be able to pretend that all was well. If he did not look at the hideous demons and monsters cavorting in the margins of the pages, drawn with too much gleeful indulgence to be the work of any gods-fearing scribe, if he looked at nothing but the words themselves and ignored the death that was all around him and the madness in Hendon Tolly’s every word and, worst of all, the knowledge that in mere moments he would be forced to do something so unspeakable that his soul would be damned to the deepest, darkest pits of Kernios’ gray realm for as long as time itself existed… well, then he could almost pretend that what he was doing made sense.…

“Curse you, you crawling peasant scum!” Tolly was almost jumping up and down with rage; a little bubble of white spittle had appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Read, curse you! Read it aloud! It is an invocation. It is meant to open the way to the land of the gods! Read!”

Tinwright swallowed. It felt as though something as large as a fir cone had lodged in his throat.

He gained a little strength as he went, not because his heart had grown any less leaden, but because the rhythm of the words themselves caught him up, a cadence as powerful as the pace of a marching army.

When he had reached the end of the passage, Tinwright stumbled on without realizing it, reading a few more words before Hendon Tolly angrily struck him on the side of the head, a stinging blow that almost made Tinwright drop the ancient book.

“Dog! Now take up the knife, and when I say it is time, make the sacrifice. The mirror must be smeared with the blood—that is what Okros said. But do not slit the creature’s throat until I say the proper words!” Tolly thrust the dagger into Tinwright’s unwilling hand. “Take it and hold it close. We are drawing near the hour when that cursed Xixian dog will be performing his own ritual. We must bargain with the gods before he does!” Tolly’s voice suddenly rose in a peal of laughter that was as frightening as anything else that had happened so far—a note of pure madness. “Oh! Oh! Can you imagine the autarch’s rage when he finds that I have broken into Heaven first—that I have stolen everything he coveted?”

“Don’t do it, Matt!” Elan’s voice was as ragged as Tinwright’s stinking grave-clothes. “Not the child! My life, your life—nothing is worth such a crime ... !”

He could not bear to listen to her. Each word felt like the sting of a whip. He lowered the knife until it touched the baby’s throat. At the feel of the cold metal, little Alessandros woke and began to cry again and Tinwright hurriedly lifted it so he didn’t accidentally cut the infant’s soft skin. He could not bear to look at the squirming baby, so he closed his eyes.

Nothing, he told himself. Nothing I can do. Nothing. It might as well not be happening. I could be asleep. All a dream. He groped for the child’s heaving chest until he found it, let the fingers of his free hand rest gently upon it. Nothing.

Hendon Tolly was reading now, more words from before history, last uttered in the days of the unmourned Shadow Lords or chanted over a rock tomb in the southern forests when Hierosol itself was yet to be.

It was more than an invocation they had been reading, Tinwright dimly realized, it was a challenge—a challenge to the gods themselves, the death-song of some heathen king who claimed that the grave would not hold him, that the gods themselves would not be able to restrain him.

He could hear something else behind Tolly’s words, a soft sound that nevertheless was coming from all around him, quiet bumping, scratching, as though in every box in the great vault something was stirring into movement.

Matt Tinwright opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the flickering of the torches, which bent in a sudden draft, but the soldiers were staring around wildly. The scraping grew louder, as though rats were gnawing their way out of the walls. Two of the guards suddenly bolted for the next chamber. Hendon Tolly watched them go, his eyes bulging with rage, but his chant was growing louder and it seemed he did not dare to stop.

And now Tinwright could feel something more than merely the restlessness of ancient kings disturbed in their moldering slumber. A hatefully familiar presence lurked somewhere just beyond the edges of what the poet could see and smell and hear, the same thing that had stalked him in the mirror. It was as close as it had ever been; he could feel its attention pinioning him as if he were an insect on a tabletop. It was old and strong and had as little interest in Tinwright’s mortal thoughts and feelings as he did in the hopes and cares of a stone. And it was drawing closer.…

“Bow down to me! I do not fear you! I have eaten your organs and stolen your courage!”

... said Hendon Tolly, his voice rising to a pitch that might have meant terror or exultation—or a grotesque combination of the two.

Tinwright’s gaze flicked helplessly back and forth between the ivory throat of the child and the flushed, pop-eyed face of Hendon Tolly, as apoplectically caught up in his own words as any wandering madman. A few yards away Elan M’Cory had slumped silently in a faint, but the remaining guards still held her tightly, their own faces gray with fear.

“Now!” Tolly shrieked. “Now, you wretch, lift the knife while I speak the final words! Then spill the blood and wash the mirror in it!”

Matt Tinwright’s arm rose as if it was not attached to his own body any longer, and hung above the restless child. The flames of the torches were sucked first this way, then another. Shadows capered across the walls. The rustling all around him became loud cries and stamping sounds—were the dead rising all at once? Would the living all be pulled down into darkness this day?

He could not make his arm move. He knew Tolly would kill him if he didn’t, but he just could not harm the child. Please, all you kind gods, help me ... !

Something struck Tinwright so hard that at first he thought Hendon Tolly had hit him with the heavy grimoire. He stumbled back a step and the knife slipped from his suddenly strengthless fingers and clattered to the stone flags.

Tinwright stared in horror at the arrow quivering in his own chest, so close to his face that only the feathers on the end told him what it was that had struck him. He could feel warm blood running down his belly and soaking into his foul, muddy garments. Then everything spun away and Matt Tinwright’s world went dark.

37. The Blood of a God

Greenjay, leader of the Qar’s Trickster tribe, climbed back out of the door in the stone flags with little of her usual grace. Fury sparked in her eyes. “A hundred paces below us the stairs are crammed with southern soldiers. This autarch has stolen a trick from the drows—we will have to win each yard forward with blood. We will not catch him this way, may the wind eat his name as well as his footprints!”

“He leaves us no choice,” Saqri said to Barrick. “Come, manchild—the ropes must be ready now. They will have to be our way down. Haste!”

Barrick followed Saqri back through the Maze, its passages still littered with rubble and the corpses of men and Funderlings. Saqri’s soldiers had prepared ropes so her troops could quickly descend to the bottom of the cavern and the Sea in the Depths; those who were too heavy, or simply not built for climbing, would make their way down the narrow trails that crisscrossed the rocky cliff.

Aesi’uah was waiting for them, several rope-ends in her hand like a bouquet of silvery catkins. “Most of the southerners have already made their way out of the tunnels and up onto the surface of the island,” she told them.

Barrick, whose vision was not as sharp as Saqri’s, squinted into the distance, trying to make out the dark forms across the island in the middle of the silvery sea. Behind it loomed the silhouette of the colossal Shining Man.

“Some of the autarch’s men are building boats,” said Saqri. “They have brought what they needed with them.” She frowned; it was strange to see even such a small show of emotion on her smooth face. “We have underestimated him—even Yasammez has. This Sulepis knows the ground as well as if he had scouted it himself.”

“But why boats?” Barrick asked. “He and his soldiers are already on the island.”

“Because he knows that with his men holding the tunnels he used to get past us, we will be forced to attack him from this side of the Sea in the Depths. He wants to send troops across to keep us at bay.” Saqri made the gesture Unwilling Blindness. “We can waste no more time in talk. Grab a rope, Barrick Eddon! Every heartbeat brings us closer to catastrophe.”

And that catastrophe, he could not help understanding, would be nothing like the Great Defeat that Saqri and her kin had been awaiting all these centuries as a lover anticipates the return of the beloved. This end would be something much different—dark, wild, and pointless.

The ropes creaked, but despite their astounding slenderness, they held. Every now and then one or the other of Barrick’s feet slipped and his body spun away from the cliff face, and in those perilous, nauseating intervals he could see boats pushing off from the island onto the odd, metallic sea. And each boat, he knew, was full of Xixian soldiers, men ready to paint over their own fear—which now, in this strange place, must be great indeed—with the blood of as many Qar and Funderlings as they could destroy.

He looked back up to the clifftop where Ferras Vansen and the Funderlings were finishing up their own slower, more cautious rigging, preparing to descend and join the Qar in what Barrick could not help feeling would be at best a glorious shared suicide.

“Remember Greatdeeps!” he shouted to Vansen, and his voice echoed from the cavern’s distant walls. The guard captain raised one hand in a salute.

Barrick had surprised himself. Why should he do such a thing? There was nobody more human than Vansen, with his stolid goodwill and his unthinking loyalty, and there was no mortal less human than Barrick Eddon had become, the Fireflower smoldering in his heart and thoughts. What did he care for mortals and mortal things?

Pinimmon Vash had seen many strange places, from the secret water dungeons underneath the Orchard Palace to the infamous crypts of the Mihannid Blue Kings, and even the autarch’s own family tomb, the legendary Aeyrie of the Bishakh which stood out against the sky as if it had grown from the very stone of Mount Gowkha… but he had never seen anything quite like this.

The cavern itself—well, it seemed foolish even to call it a cavern. This immense chamber deep in the earth appeared to Vash to be almost a quarter the size of the entire Orchard Palace in Xis with all its grounds. Veins of dimly shining stone and knobs of glittering crystal in the cavern’s arching walls made it seem some kind of celestial model built to grace a god’s table, but in the middle, almost directly above Vash’s head, stretched only darkness. Any roof to the great cavern was much higher above their heads than the feeble light of the Xixian torches could reach. The sensation, Vash thought, was that of looking up from the bottom of a deep well.

He stood, with the rest of the autarch’s army, on the island at the center of the Sea in the Depths, but it was the Shining Man—the mountainous, man-shaped lump of dull stone at the heart of the island—that truly dumbfounded and oppressed Vash. It wasn’t a statue. No hands, human or otherwise, had crafted it as a replica of some actual being. Instead, it had the look of something cruder, as if someone had poured molten gem-stones into the impression a man had made falling headlong into mud. But there was more to it than that. Although at the moment it glimmered only with the reflected, refracted light of the chamber itself, Vash had seen a stronger glow throb briefly within it, like a candle guttering behind old glass, and his hairs had stood up on his neck and arms. The paramount minister had no wish to see it again, that pulse like a huge, diseased heart beating.

All around him, the rocky island swarmed with Xixian soldiers doing their best to ignore the ominous surroundings as they finished tying together the reed boats. Vash noted that he and the antipolemarch seemed to have correctly planned how many bundles of reeds the men would have to carry down from the surface, and he felt a moment’s relief before he realized how foolish that was: what difference did it make that Vash had done his duty, that the autarch could find no fault with his arrangements? In a moment, they might all be dead, or the autarch himself might gain the strength of Heaven. Either way, nothing would ever be the same again.

“Where is my trusted paramount minister?” the Golden One called. Vash felt his hackles rising again.

“Here, O Great Tent.” He hobbled across the sliding, rounded stones until he reached the place where Sulepis stood tall and slender in his golden armor, a glorious vision even in this inconstant light. “How may I serve you, Master?”

“Are the boats finished?”

Vash took a breath but hid his frustration. It was plain to see that they were. The soldiers stood lined up along the shoreline beside the completed boats, massive rafts with the bundled reeds pulled together at each end to make a bow and stern. “Of course, Golden One,” Vash said. It had been an immensely difficult task to transport so many river reeds from Hierosol on such short notice, to keep them dry and safe from mold, but there had been no way of knowing whether they would be able to find the proper materials in this godsforsaken northern wasteland, and the Golden One did not respond well to failure.

Sulepis will become a god while I will probably die and receive a makeshift grave here in this wet northern hellhole, Vash thought, without even a priest left behind to pray for me. But there stand the boats. I have again done what is mine to do. Out loud, he said, “All the boats are ready. What else does the Golden One desire?”

“The prisoners, of course. All of them.”

Vash blinked. “All of them?”

Sulepis stared at Vash as though from a huge height, as though he himself were the Shining Man. “Yes. The king, the Hive girl, and the northern children. Does that suit you, Minister Vash? Or should I ask someone who has nothing better to do?”

Vash felt a cold shock down his spine. “Forgive my stupidity, Golden One, I did not understand. Of course they are all being brought. Panhyssir’s priests are getting the children, and the others are there.” He pointed to a small procession of soldiers coming forward from the tunnel they had followed under the silver sea and onto the island, surrounding the prisoners, King Olin and the girl with their hands tied behind their backs. The priest A’lat capered at the front of the procession, walking backward with a smoking bowl in each hand, wreathing the prisoners in fumes. When he turned, Vash saw with a twist in his stomach that the desert priest wore a mask that appeared to be made from the skin of someone else’s face.

“Good, good.” Sulepis peeled the gold stalls off his fingertips and dropped them to the carpet. One of the slaves stared for a moment, then quickly gathered them. “I must feel this with my own skin. Look, Vash.” His long arm swept up, indicating the cavern, the Shining Man, and perhaps other things that only Sulepis himself could see. “Be aware of everything around you—smells, sounds, sights—for within the next hour the world changes forever.”

“Of course, Golden One. Of course.” Vash was desperate for the whole sordid horror to end so that he could find some way of accommodating whatever followed, if such were even possible. “You haven’t told me what else I can do to aid your… ritual. Do you need an altar… ?”

“An altar?” Sulepis found this very amusing. “Don’t you understand, Vash? This entire place is an altar, a place where the heavens were once made to shake—and will be again! This spot is sanctified by the blood and screams of the gods themselves!” The autarch’s voice had grown so loud that soldiers and functionaries all across the island stopped, trembling in fear because they thought the autarch had lost his temper. “No, my altar is the earth itself, this silver sea and the scar that Habbili left when he sealed the way back to this world with his own dying spirit.” He waved at the Shining Man, which loomed above them like the spire of a great temple. “Do you not know what that thing truly is? That is where Habbili the Crooked tore open the very flesh of the world so that he could banish the gods! Then, mortally injured himself, he closed the hole with his own being to keep them prisoned—and it has remained that way ever since, hiding here in the earth for thousands of years, worshiped by primitives as though it were a living thing.” He bent toward Vash as if to share a secret. “But now Habbili’s wounds have killed him at last. The priests and prophets have felt it. They have told me! Habbili’s strength will no longer hold shut that wound in the world. Anyone who has the power or knowledge can reach out across the great void… or reach in.” He straightened up to his full height, leaving Vash to stare up at him like a man watching an approaching thunderstorm. “So bring on the children! Let their blood open the door and then let the gods themselves beware! Sulepis will be the master even of the immortals themselves!”

Barrick had only just alighted on the cavern’s rocky floor when he saw Yasammez standing nearby looking out across the cavern toward the dark, distant shape of the Shining Man. She was alone for once, wrapped in a vast black cloak, her eyes half-closed so that she seemed as calm and remote as a cat lying in the sun. Her hair had pulled loose from its elaborate knots during her descent and hung around her head like thorny branches.

The Lady of Weeping, the voices whispered inside him in a kind of superstitious awe. The Scourge. Exile of Wanderwind.

Barrick approached her but did not kneel or bow. “My lady, will you not fight beside us? This is the last day, the last hour—the moment when we write the final page in the Book of Regret.”

Her eyes slowly turned toward him. “That page was written long ago, before your kind had even entered the world.”

He felt the sting of that but would not be drawn. “But I am also your kind now, Lady Yasammez, whether you or I wish it to be so… and you are our greatest warrior. If you do not fight for us now, when will you take the field? When the rest of the People lie dead?” For a moment, the shocked clamor of his Fireflower ghosts, their outrage at his disrespect, filled him with anger. “Is that your form of self-slaughter, Lady? To wait until there is no one left to see your fall so you spare yourself the shame of defeat?”

“The shame of defeat?” In cold anger she threw back her cloak to show her black armor and the naked blade of Whitefire that she leaned on like a cane; its gleam leaped to his eye like a tongue of lightning. “Child of men, I am the defeat of our people in the breathing flesh. I have lived with the foreknowledge of my own death since your people gnawed uncooked bones in the forest. I will not survive this day and I know it, but I will not have such as you questioning me. Begone, child of a stolen heritage, and do what you will with the end of your own life.”

The black murk of her cloak and the dark spikiness of her armor framed her pale, fierce face like storm clouds around the moon. For a moment Barrick saw things in her bottomless eyes he had never seen before, or perhaps in that strange place and time he merely dreamed them, but to his utter astonishment he felt a tear overspill his lid and trickle down his cheek.

“If I have wronged you, Lady, then I ask your forgiveness.” He bowed and turned away.

Saqri was waiting for him, her hair strayed from its diadem and fluttering in the strange winds of this deep place like black spidersilk. “Here is the bearer of the Fireflower,” she said and the Qar around her stirred and turned away from their enemies on the far side of the cavern. “Now our strength is complete.” She looked from Barrick back to Yasammez, who still stood by the base of the cliff. “Did she have a word for you?”

“Yes. Several.” He pulled on his helmet. “Lead us, Saqri. I need to smell blood in the air. That will make me stop thinking.”

Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Come, then!” she called to the surrounding Qar, who banged spears and swords against their shields or threw back their heads and bayed up at the cavern’s ceiling and the moon hidden so far above it, the moon that was in their blood as the Fireflower was in Barrick’s. “The hour is upon us! The last of the old years begins to die tonight! Let us show this presumptuous mortal king how the People dance at Midsummer!”

With a shout the Qar leaped forward and raced across the cavern toward the southerners stepping off their boats along the near shore, soldiers as numerous as ants. The Xixians were already nocking arrows and bending bows, waiting for the Qar to come in range.

“Midsummer!” cried Barrick, and the voices within him wept and exulted.

Ferras Vansen had been in battles both fierce and frightening. He had stood with his master Donal Murroy against both bandits and rebels. While scouting he had hidden in a tree for half an agonizing day, knowing that even the slightest noise or movement could bring death because a troop of mercenaries had camped almost directly beneath him. He had disarmed a maddened Southmarch guardsman who had killed his own wife and their four children, wrestling with the man in the smeared blood of his dead family. He had fought the Qar themselves on battlefields as strange as nightmares—but nothing had prepared him for this final deadly struggle deep beneath Southmarch.

By the time Vansen and those Funderlings still able to fight made their way down the cliff, the Qar and their small, silent queen had already flung themselves at the first of the autarch’s men to land on the shore. Vansen could not see well enough to guess who was getting the best of things because the light in the monstrous chamber had begun to flicker and gleam as colors he could scarcely recognize pulsed in the depths of the Shining Man the way red heat rippled in the embers of a fire.

“Double-fast, men!” Vansen shouted. “Otherwise the fairies may not leave us any!”

“Ha!” Malachite Copper was gasping along beside him. “I knew the Old Ones to be uncanny—I didn’t know they were greedy, too!” Copper’s leg had been injured in the final melee in the Initiation Hall but he was limping along gamely, doing his best to keep up. He had cursed when Vansen suggested he stay behind and tend his wound. “Well, Captain, we will just have to take what they leave us.”

Vansen looked back. The Funderlings following were wide-eyed with something more than fright, a look that seemed to search beyond the moment and perhaps even beyond their own short mortal lives. Weighted down with weapons and armor, none of them much more than half Ferras Vansen’s size, they still hurried to keep up with him, as if after all they had suffered they remained intent on proving themselves. “Sledge Jasper would be proud of you,” he called to them now. “He is watching!”

“Make your Wardthane proud, boys!” gasped Malachite Copper, stumbling for a moment in his weariness. They had reached the outskirts of the fighting, a twilight world of unsteady shapes locked in struggle as the stones overhead glowed and then darkened, glowed and then darkened.

“At them!” Vansen’s heart was strangely full here at the end, despite all that he had lost, all that he had never had. “At them, my brave men!”

To Beetledown’s astonishment, the queen of the Rooftoppers herself was waiting for him when he reached the stables in the ruins of Wolfstooth Spire. His favorite mount Muckle Brown had been saddled and was scratching impatiently—a fine, strong young female flittermouse, dark as sweet ale and almost as large as a pigeon—but Beetledown had eyes only for his mistress.

“Majesty.” He bowed as low as he could. “You do us too thickish an honor.”

“Nonsense.” Upsteeplebat smiled. “You are the best of my scouts, Beetledown. Still, we must not waste time in talk. If the Funderling Chert Blue Quartz says that the hour grows short, then you must fly now into the depths to find this man Cinnabar. Are you ready?”

“Directly, Ma’am,” he said. “I had but my oilcloth to fasten tight—some of the ways lie through curtains of water tall as one of the castle doors!”

“I wish I had seen it as you have, brave Beetledown.”

“If… if all goes well,” he said, “perhaps Your Majesty would do me the honor of letting me be your guide. I wot well that my friend Chert and un’s kind would be only too proud to show you the great caverns.”

The queen’s pretty face grew solemn. “And I would love to be shown them. It is a promise, then. If all goes well, you will show me some of these places you have seen, my brave scout.”

He feared he would burst out singing at the honor. “Too kind you are, Exquisite Majesty.” He finished lashing the oilcloth cloak close around him—it would not do to have anything dangling when he flew through those tight, dark spaces—and then moved toward Muckle Brown, who hunched between her folded wings and stared at the Rooftopper with the cross, bleary expression of a child awakened too early from a nap. Beetledown climbed onto her lushly furred back and sat patiently as the grooms tied him into the saddle and put the rein-rings in his hand.

“Ah!” said Queen Upsteeplebat suddenly. “Do not forget your blade, brave Beetledown!”

“Blade?” He shook his head. “I fear you mistake me for another, Majesty. I have never ...”

“Never until now. But you have shown yourself not just a brave Gutter-Scout but a queen’s paladin as well, and the traditional gift is… a sword.” She clapped her hands and a small page came forward, carrying the sword as if it were made of precious jewels—which, in a way, it was. The silver thing was as slender as a cat’s whisker and sharper than a bee’s curved barb, its hilt wrapped in golden thread. “This is the needle of Queen Sanasu herself, dropped beneath her chair in the Long Ago. Take it, Beetledown. Serve your friend Chert well, and you will serve us all well.”

He knew if he spoke much more he would say something foolish. He leaned down and took the sword from her dainty hand, then thrust it through the strap over his shoulder so that the hilt bobbed near his head and the pointy end did not trouble the flittermouse. “Thank you, Majesty.” He signaled to the grooms who undid the bat’s fetters and stepped away sharply to avoid being nipped. The big mounts were notoriously ill-tempered when kept from flying at night, and sundown had passed hours ago. Feeling her freedom, Muckle Brown leaped out through the arched window of the belfry and into the black sky.

Beetledown prodded his mount with his heels; the bat turned up her wing and swept toward the wall of the inner keep, then over it, swimming through the air in brisk strokes followed by long, gliding moments where nothing moved but the air rushing past. He gave the bat a little more heel and then pulled on the rein. She swung high up into the air, banked so that for a moment it seemed even the moon was below them, then dropped down like a stone, spreading her wings only as the ground rushed so close that Beetledown held his breath.

A moment later they were through the gates of Funderling Town and skimming beneath the carved ceiling that was as lively as an upside-down world. Beetledown only knew one route into the Mysteries, the long and dangerous one Chert had shown him. He could only pray to the Lord of the Peak that he could do what had been asked of him in time.

Ferras Vansen felt as though he were nothing but an eye—as if none of his own sinew and bone remained except that organ of sight. Even the sounds of combat had become so unrelenting that they dulled almost to silence; faces slid past him like the faces of ghosts in a dream, angry, frightened, some even familiar, but he had no time for ordinary thought. He was in the middle of a storm of injury and death and could consider little beyond survival.

The Xixians on the far side of the Sea in the Depths had lined up their archers, and as the first of their manufactured boats reached the shore where Ferras Vansen, the Funderlings, and the Qar hurried forward, arrows hissed through the air, nearly invisible in the unsteady light. One of the Funderlings just in front of Vansen dropped with a shaft in his neck; another went down with one in the meaty part of his thigh. The first man was dead already, but Vansen dropped to the rocky cavern floor beside the second man and removed the arrow as carefully as he could, then tied the man’s belt around his leg to stop the bleeding before hurrying forward to rejoin the charge.

With his longer legs, Vansen caught up to the vanguard just as they reached the first wave of Xixian irregulars, many of whom were still clambering out of their boats, doing their best to avoid touching the strange silver liquid of the underground ocean or lake. Some of them looked almost like children trying to keep their feet dry as they leaped from the prows of the unsteady boats to the stony beach. It gave Vansen an idea.

“Shove those nearest to the shiny sea back into it!” he shouted. “They are afraid of it!” It only occurred to him a moment later that the Funderlings might be just as frightened. After all, wasn’t this the heart of their religious mysteries?

The Xixian soldiers seemed to be endless, as if the autarch possessed the harvest god Erilo’s magic sack and could simply pour out whatever he wanted. Vansen, Malachite Copper, and half a dozen more Funderlings cut their way into the center of a group of Sanian infantrymen, each of whom carried two spears and small arm-shields that were little more than oversized gauntlets of metal and leather. These nearly unencumbered desert fighters were fast and a difficult match for the Funderlings, who got no particular advantage from being close to the ground. One of the little warriors died when a Saniaman threw one of his spears before the groups had even clashed; moments later a belch of fire on the far side of the Sea in the Depths was followed by a vast eruption of dirt and stone as the cannonball struck the ground near Malachite Copper. Two Funderlings were flung through the air, broken and bleeding; Copper himself was lucky to get away with a dozen new cuts made by flying shards of stone.

The Funderlings had been fighting for hours, first in the Initiation Hall, now here in the glittering semidark. Vansen was exhausted, and he knew his troops were, too. Most of the Xixian soldiers here hadn’t even taken part in the battle for the hall. Not only were there ten times as many of them, they were all rested.

Unless we can find another way, we’ve lost, Vansen thought desperately as he gave ground against a tall, grinning Saniaman whose face was a mass of dark tattoos and who used his twin spears so cleverly that it was like fighting two men. Vansen had to make certain there was no one behind him while he concentrated on this nimble enemy, so he backed away from Copper and the others, trying to find an open spot. Even if we are in the last hours of Midsummer, it doesn’t matter—the autarch must already be on that island and he’s almost certainly begun whatever he means to do. The thought spread through him like a poison, distracting him so that a sudden lunge by the half-naked Sanian soldier nearly caught him in the belly. He quickly brought up his shield and gave a little more ground.

Vansen saw that he was being forced too far from his fellows: even if he managed to kill his man, he would have a hard time finding his way back to the relative safety of numbers. The man lunged again, but it was a feint; a moment later, he swiped with his other short, flexible spear, trying to rattle Vansen’s helmet or even knock it to the side a little to blind him, but Vansen managed to get the edge of his shield up and deflect it, then spun back out of the way of a second, more serious thrust.

The tattooed spearman laughed, a shrill, disturbing sound. Drunk, perhaps, or drugged. They said the Xixian priests gave their men potions to make them fearless. Some opponents found it terrifying, no doubt, but Vansen found it made him burn with anger. Was he a peasant, to be cowed by some giggling foreign savage while defending his own home?

An arrow snapped past the Saniaman and Vansen both, and in the instant’s distraction, Vansen leaped forward, swinging his shield into the man’s face while turning sideways to avoid the inevitable thrust of at least one of the spears. The spearhead darted out at him like a serpent, but he sucked in his belly and threw his weight behind the shield, bearing the man backward so that it was all the southerner could do to keep his feet, his arms helplessly flying out to either side for balance. In that moment Vansen kicked out and swept the man’s nearest foot off the ground, then put his knee into the man’s groin and fell on top of him, staying inside the circle of the reach of the two spears. Before the Saniaman could do more than try to grapple with the weight on top of him, Vansen let go of his shield and pulled his dagger from his belt. By the time the Sanian fighter had shoved the shield aside, Vansen had already struck him twice in the guts with the knife. The man’s eyes widened and his mouth stretched as though he would scream, but Vansen kept pounding the blade into his middle and the man vomited blood instead.

Vansen climbed to his feet as the man still lay scraping with his fingers at the stony ground as though he might dig his way to safety. He stepped on the fellow’s head and pressed down until he heard the man’s jaw snap, then stood up and looked around.

A squad of the autarch’s Leopards had set up on the far side of the silver sea and were beginning to fire their long rifles, each shot accompanied by a clot of smoke, so that within moments the men seemed to crouch beneath a tiny thunderstorm. The rifle balls traveled far too fast to be seen, but their handiwork was all too apparent: nearly every shot threw a Funderling to the ground or ripped into one of the Qar. Vansen even saw one of the few remaining Ettins fall back with half his head shot away. Had there been more Leopards, or had they been able to load their filigreed rifles faster, the battle would have ended quickly. Even so, the Leopards and their guns were keeping the Funderlings and Qar from outflanking the Xixian irregulars so that the allies would have to continue taking on the autarch’s strength face-to-face.

Vansen had just begun to form an idea about how to attack this hopeless situation when Barrick Eddon came running to him across the uneven stones, the prince’s pale face smeared with blood from some small wound, his helmet in his hand and his curly red hair flying, so that for a moment he looked to Vansen like some freakish, supernatural creature, an armored demon with his entire head on fire. It still startled Vansen how tall the boy had grown, how he seemed to have aged years in the matter of a single season.

“We are trapped here, Captain—the hour is almost on us!” Barrick shouted. Arrows sped past him but he did not seem to notice. “If we remain, we have lost!”

“But what else can we do, Highness?”

Barrick laughed, a harsh, wild sound. “I saw you look at the boats, Vansen. You were already thinking it! Come, while Saqri and the others can yet hold the center and distract them. She has told me that in a moment she will stage her play!”

Vansen had no idea what Barrick meant by that, but the prince was right. They had thought of the same thing. They could not fight their way through the Xixian defense by strength alone, but if someone reached the autarch and put a blade or an arrow in him the day might still be saved.

“Which one, Highness? The one on the end?” Vansen knew that they had to stay as far from the center of the fight as possible. If the riflemen on the far side noticed them floating unprotected, they would never reach the other shore. “I’ll go—but for the love of the gods, put your helmet back on!”

Vansen and the prince hurried down the sloping shore in a prolonged and painful series of crouches—painful for Vansen, anyway. To his astonishment, Barrick Eddon had not only grown in size, he had grown in strength and grace as well, and even seemed to be freely using the arm Vansen had been told was forever crippled. What had happened to that sulking, red-faced child of a few months ago after Vansen himself had fallen into the dark in Greatdeeps?

He hunched as low as he could while a volley of arrows snapped overhead, the sound of their passing made almost inaudible by the clamor of voices and crash of guns in the great cavern. As he did so, a strange, unexpected thought came to him. Despite the terrible danger all around them, Barrick Eddon was alive and well and had returned to Southmarch. Which meant that Ferras Vansen had not failed Barrick’s sister, Princess Briony, after all. He might not have carried the prince to Southmarch all by himself, but he had helped to keep him alive. If Vansen lived, unlikely as that was, one day she might release him from her scorn.

Suddenly his heart felt as light as the poets often claimed, light as a bit of down caught on the puff of someone’s lips. He had not failed, although so many times he had been certain he had done so. However little Briony Eddon’s curses and scorn of him might have meant to her, they had meant the world to Ferras Vansen, had lain upon him as heavily as stone. Now that weight was gone.

“Hurry,” Barrick shouted. “Saqri has begun!”

A sound rose behind them, a weird and beautiful moan like the howl of a wolf given words. The queen of the fairies had climbed over the backs of her own soldiers to engage the enemy, her sword sparkling and darting like a hummingbird in a pool of sunlight. It was her voice that rose above the clamor of battle. Saqri had become the focus of nearly all eyes. Her long, slender blade struck and struck again. She danced through the Xixians like smoke, and for that moment they fell back from her in astonishment. Through it all, Saqri kept singing.

Vansen heard a noise and dragged his attention back to his own situation. Two Xixian soldiers left to guard the farthest boat were hurrying forward to intercept Vansen and the prince. He ducked a swipe from one guard’s sword, stumbled and rolled, then came up to find the man coming back at him again. At that same moment Barrick Eddon dodged past his own man, snatched the rifle from the man’s hands just as the Xixian was lowering it to shoot, and then whirled and hit him from behind with the gun hard enough that the man’s chin snapped down against his chest. Before that man had even fallen to the ground, Barrick turned and threw the gun at the other guard like a short spear. It hit the southerner in the head and knocked him onto his back, bloodied and dying. Vansen gaped at the men Barrick Eddon had so effortlessly bested as the prince made his way to the grounded reed boat.

“Gods, it’s big.” Barrick lowered his shoulder against the bow and began to push. The boat gave a squishy creak but did not move. Vansen came up beside him and began to help him, but it felt like trying to slide a basket of wet clothes the size of a house; Vansen was certain that his own blood was going to burst from his ears before the thing moved even a fingernail’s breadth.

At last the boat scraped forward, skidding a few heavy inches. Vansen clenched his teeth until they felt as if they might shatter and pushed harder; beside him he heard Barrick talking quietly to himself. The reed boat shuddered and began to slide, faster and faster until Vansen stumbled trying to keep up with it and found he was already knee high in the silver sea.

“Push a little farther to get it moving,” Barrick said quietly. “And when you get in, stay low.”

Vansen pushed, walking on his tiptoes, trying not to splash. He was chest high in the silvery liquid now. It was thicker than water but more slippery, shiny and heavy, but less so than actual metal. It was also disturbingly warm. “We’re in it—the silver stuff!” It was all he could do to whisper, so strange did the substance feel where it touched his skin, almost… alive.

Barrick scrambled up into the boat, then turned and reached a hand down to help Vansen climb up also. Vansen threw himself down in the bottom of the boat, gasping for breath, and watched the silvery liquid run off him, slithering away into the crevices between the bundled reeds. “What is it? What is this lake made of?”

Barrick Eddon had stretched out, too, lying on his side near the far side of the boat. His eyes were half-open and fixed on nothing, as though he could see through the bundled reeds of the gunwales, and perhaps even through the stone of the cavern itself. “You ask, what is the sea made of, Captain? The very last remains of my oldest ancestor.” He smiled a little, but it only made Vansen feel cold. “You’ve been splashing in the blood of a god.”

38. A Visitor to Death’s Estate

Everything happened with astonishing swiftness.

Briony, the Temple Dog soldier, and the Syannese knight Stephanas were making their way silently across the hilly temple yard with nothing but the light of the three-quarter moon, which was just strong enough that Briony didn’t notice the lesser light, a dim glow on the overhang at the front of the Eddon family tomb, until they were almost on top of it.

Both fear and fury surged through her. What was Hendon doing in her family’s vault?

As she signaled to the Syannese to stay quiet, two soldiers in dark cloaks came up the steps of the tomb together locked in some kind of struggle.

“The dead… !” one of them gasped to the other even as he fought with him, so frightened he could barely speak. “He’s trying to bring back… !” The terrified soldier at last broke free from the other, who seemed to have been trying to restrain him, and sprinted off across the cemetery grounds to disappear into darkness. The other soldier watched him go for a moment with wide eyes, but he must have heard something closer to hand. He lowered his spear and began inching toward the spot where Briony and Eneas’ soldiers crouched behind a stone vault.

“Who is that?” he demanded in a quavering voice. “Step out, in the name of the lord protector… !”

One of Tolly’s men, then. Briony nodded to the soldier with a bow, who stood up and loosed his arrow more or less in one motion. Hendon Tolly’s sentry looked down at the slender wooden shaft shivering in his gut as though it were the most puzzling thing in the world, then he folded over and dropped noiselessly to the ground.

Briony led Stephanas and the other Syannese soldier down the stairs. To her surprise, the tomb’s main vault, the place where her grandfather, mother, and brother had all been laid to rest, was empty except for the coffins that contained them and other recent Eddon ancestors, but she could hear voices—surprisingly loud voices—in the inner vault. She looked to Stephanas and the soldier, raising a finger to her lips.

“The child,” she whispered. “Remember—save the child at all costs.”

And then they stepped through the short passage between vaults. When they emerged with weapons raised into the light of the inner tomb, Briony saw several figures, the most startling a man with a long knife about to murder the infant prince on some sort of makeshift altar, but before she said a word her Syannese bowman shot the knife-wielder in the chest. The man spun in surprise and then toppled heavily to the floor, his long dagger clinking on the stones as it bounced away.

Hendon Tolly acted almost as swiftly as the archer. By the time the man with the knife touched the stone floor of the crypt, Tolly had thrown the heavy book he was holding at the bowman, knocking his weapon out of his hands. Hendon’s sword hissed out of its scabbard. Briony drew hers, too, but Hendon had no intention of anything so civilized as fighting an armed enemy. His slender blade leaped forward like the tongue of a silver snake and hung, barely wavering, above tiny baby Alessandros, who had begun to cry, a strange, homely sound in the middle of such an unhomely place.

“Well, now,” said Tolly, his eyes wide and bright in the light from the torches burning in the sconces. He moved a step closer to the infant prince, all the time keeping his blade within a few inches of the child’s eyes. “What an interesting evening this has turned out to be!”

“Don’t listen to talk,” Shaso had always told Briony, usually after distracting her into dropping her guard. “It is either foolishness on the part of your opponent, or it is meant to distract. Know where you are.” Briony did her best to follow that advice, though the sight of Hendon Tolly’s smirking face only a couple of yards away made her hand tighten on the hilt of her sword until it ached.

Briony had never been inside this inner vault, with its six walls and narrow shelves and dark, deep corners—a chamber that now seemed full to bursting even without the ancient coffins. Besides herself and the two Syannese, the only ones still standing were Hendon and one of his guards and what appeared to be a hostage, a dark-haired woman Briony recognized after a moment as the Summerfield noblewoman Elan M’Cory, the one who had been so miserable about Gailon Tolly’s death. Tolly’s other minion, the knife-wielder, was lying facedown on the floor in a small pool of blood. But Hendon’s sword so near the young prince’s throat trumped any advantage Briony had in numbers.

And it was clear that Hendon knew that. “Retreat, Briony, or I will kill the child. You will not take me without losing little Alessandros here. I would happily rob you of a brother as I go.” He laughed.

“Is there nothing decent in you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “This is a pointless conversation. You could not understand me if you lived as long as the fairies do. Go slowly back, out of the tomb. If you let me get the door closed, as I should have been minded to do before, then you can do as you wish.” He laughed again. “You can call for a battering ram if it pleases you!”

“No. Don’t be a fool. I will not leave the child with you.”

“I feared you would be stubborn. It is so like you self-satisfied Eddons.” Hendon nodded slowly, letting his gaze slide to her guards. “I see you have brought the Syannese to Southmarch.” Tolly raised a mocking eyebrow. “Which of course means that you have whored yourself out to young Eneas.” His eyes widened at her expression. “No? Truly? Well, then, perhaps to the old man himself. Is that it? Did Olin’s daughter give herself to the ancient king of Syan to save her people? How noble!”

It took every bit of strength she had to resist Hendon’s goading, to stay where she was. The crying of baby Alessandros was beginning to make her head ache. “Sir Stephanas,” she said. “Send your man to find Prince Eneas. Tell him we have Hendon Tolly trapped in my family’s vault.”

“No! If he even takes a step toward the outer vault,” Hendon Tolly warned her, “I will take out this child’s eye. The little prince will still be fit for my purposes, but he will scream all the louder.”

“Dog! Is this your idea of honor? To threaten children?”

Hendon Tolly laughed so hard it could be nothing but genuine. “Honor? What whey-faced nonsense is that? Do you think I care for such things?”

“Gods! You are filth, Tolly. And even if you keep me here for hours, eventually Eneas will come looking for me. There is no way out of here.”

He looked amused at this. “Truly? Well, that is sad.”

Briony was desperate to shake him from his certainty, to get him away somehow from the child. “Yes, you are as good as on the headsman’s block—and then he’ll minister to your treacherous family, too. I will knock down Summerfield House myself and drag your brother and your mother out into the light of day like the creeping things they are. ...”

Tolly nodded. “If you do, you’ll probably find our mother still there, but it’s rather a funny story about my brother, Caradon.” He laughed. “It seems he’s found himself a bit short lately. ...”

“For the love of the Trigon, Highness!” said Sir Stephanas loudly. “Do not waste words on this coward any more. We have him outnumbered!”

“No, Stephanas ...” Briony began.

“She’s right, young fellow,” said Tolly with a grin. “After all, it might seem like you have me outnumbered, but there are only two of you and a woman against me—a duo of Syannese, at that. There has never been a day that a few butter-eaters could beat a man from the March Kingdoms… !”

“Braggart!” To Briony’s horror, Stephanas leaped toward Tolly, striking down at Tolly’s sword with his own to sweep it away from the helpless infant, but Tolly only stepped aside and then his slim blade flicked out. Stephanas stumbled, then stood up straight and took another couple of halting steps, blocking Briony’s view of Hendon Tolly. Stephanas let go of his sword, then his knees folded and he slumped to the ground, blood pulsing from the socket of his eye. Hendon lunged toward the baby again… but Alessandros was gone from the makeshift altar.

“What… ?” He saw Briony and stopped. His lips curled, but this time the smile was slow and reluctant. “Well played, girl. You are resilient, you Eddons, I will grant that. Now stop this foolery and give me the child.”

Young Alessandros was surprisingly heavy, and squirming and crying on top of it. Briony raised her own sword and slowly pivoted, keeping herself not between Hendon Tolly and the door, but between him and the other Syannese soldier, who was looking at Stephanas’ last, gasping moments with round, startled eyes.

“Take the child,” she said to the young soldier. “Take him!”

“No!” Hendon moved forward but Briony took a step back, keeping distance between them. “Take the baby, curse you!” she snapped at the Temple Dog. “Take him and run back to the residence. This is the king’s son! Get him to safety!”

The soldier reached out his hands, but stared at Hendon all the while like a rabbit watching an approaching snake. Briony pushed Alessandros toward him, then almost sighed with relief as the young soldier took the child. “Run, I said—run!”

Hendon looked as though he was about to say something, but then suddenly lunged forward with a stroke so long and vicious that if Briony’s own blade had not been raised enough for her to bring it up with only a flick of the wrist and divert Tolly’s attack, his thrust would have gone right through her. He struck and then struck again, so swiftly that it was all she could do to fall back and stay between Tolly and the door, shielding herself behind her own moving blade as he hammered at her.

“Run!” she screamed.

The Syannese soldier at last took the point. In an instant, Briony’s last soldier had vanished from the inner vault carrying the infant in his arms. Only when Briony heard his feet scuffing on the stairs leading up from the outer vault did she take a breath. “The child’s out of your reach now, Hendon.”

“Bitch,” said Tolly. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “You’ll die slowly for that. And, after all, your blood will serve as well as that child’s for my sacrifice. ...” He turned to his guard, who was still holding Elan M’Cory. “Forget that whore. Come and help me with this mannish princess.”

A little unnecessary emphasis in his words warned her. Briony turned from Elan and the other guard just in time to save herself from another of Tolly’s unexpected attacks.

He quickly forced her back, but instead of letting her get to the door of the inner vault, he kept her moving until he was backing her toward his own guard, but even as Briony realized this she heard a shout of surprise and pain. She risked a swift glance, enough to see that Elan M’Cory had leaped onto the soldier’s back and was scratching at his face with her nails. The guard shouted and cursed as he tried to throw her off.

The distraction gave Briony time to avoid Hendon’s thrust and keep backing past them, around the outside of the six-sided vault, doing her best to keep Hendon on the other side of the lead coffin that lay in the center of the room. Briony realized that he had forced her into a losing game, and that Elan M’Cory was about to be overpowered by the soldier in Tolly’s boar-and-spears livery. Then the odds would be two to one. She feinted twice, then took a wild, swinging blow at Hendon’s head that he dodged easily, but did not let herself be carried so far that his following stroke could find her unprotected belly. As Hendon took a step back to set himself once more, Briony suddenly turned and lunged in an unexpected direction herself, slashing Hendon’s guardsman across his face. As he dropped his blade and reached up to his bleeding cheeks and mouth, she plucked her long Yisti dagger from her belt and stabbed at him, piercing his mail and sinking the slim blade deep into his belly.

The man stumbled, gurgling, then fell across the lead coffin.

“There’s your bloody sacrifice or whatever you were planning, Hendon,” she said, keeping the corpse between them as she circled and tried to catch her breath. “Now I’ll be happy to send you off to Kernios after him.”

Tolly’s face was set hard. “You have learned a few things.” He feinted, then lunged, then lunged again, the second one actually meant to strike her. It nearly did. She was weary already, but Hendon was not even breathing hard. He was not a big man, but he was very strong, with muscles like braided whipcord. “Was it Shaso who taught you so well, or your new lover, Eneas?” he asked. “I was the one who had Shaso killed, you know. It was by my order that nest of black traitors in Landers Port was burned to the ground. Too bad you weren’t roasted with the other birds in that same oven. ...”

Don’t listen, she told herself even as she wanted to weep with rage. Don’t listen. She dodged another one of his attacks, then a moment later caught a second one on her blade and just ducked under it, but she felt the sharp tip of Tolly’s steel pierce her surcoat and for an instant even slide along her neck before she spun away. She was tiring badly; the effort made her lose her balance and almost fall. Hendon saw his advantage and leaped after her, raining strokes on her like a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, so that Briony could do nothing except try to keep her steel between Hendon’s sword and her flesh.

But I can’t. He’s faster than me… stronger than me… and he always has been…

Suddenly Elan M’Cory screamed, a shriek of genuine terror that made even Hendon Tolly take a step back from Briony to look. A dark shape blocked the doorway between the vaults, and now took a shaky step forward into the inner vault.

At first, Briony thought one of the dead out of her family’s tomb had risen to stand swaying on the edge of the darkness, its filthy, tattered cloak like a shroud, its deathly face hidden deep in a hood. It reached toward them with hands that looked like ragged claws in the flickering torchlight, still wrapped in the cerements of the grave.

It spoke, but its voice was an inaudible, scraping hiss. The hairs on Briony’s neck rose and her heart, already speeding, threatened to burst from her breast.

“B-B-Brothers protect us!” Briony said.

The apparition tried again to speak, and at last words could be heard—ragged, gasping words nearly as painful to hear as they must have been to form. “Briony ...!” the thing scraped. “I have… come back ... from Death’s lands ...”

Her breath caught in her throat as the hooded shape took another staggering step into the vault. “Zoria’s mercy,” she gasped, “is that you, Shaso? Gods preserve us, is that you?” But even as she said it, even as superstitious terror gripped her, something seemed wrong.

Even stranger was Tolly’s reaction: the lord protector’s eyes bulged and his hands lifted as if in hopeless defense against this phantom, the sword he held in one fist all but forgotten. “You… ! But… but you’re dead!”

And then Elan M’Cory came crawling across the ground, weeping and praying, and Briony was convinced that the chaotic air of Midsummer had driven everyone around her mad.

The bandaged hands came up and slowly tugged back the hood. At first Briony could make no sense of what she saw—the milky, damaged eyes and the oozing, pale skin worthy of any corpse, blotched all over with what looked like black earth. But then, as the ruined face turned slowly from her to Hendon Tolly, she suddenly knew what she was seeing—who she was seeing.

“Gailon,” she breathed. “Gailon Tolly.”

The thing pointed at Hendon. “You,” it rasped, each word an agony. “You killed me.”

“What is this madness?” But the bluster had gone from the lord protector’s voice. “Is this some trick? You were dead, brother. Shot with a dozen arrows. But you are no ghost, that I would swear—you are flesh and blood ...”

“Your men… shot me, brother, then… buried me with my servants and friends.” Each word came a little easier now, but he still spoke with a halting and ruined voice. “They were not very good shots, as you can see.” He bared his teeth in a terrible grin. “Hours, days, I lay wounded in the dark earth with the corpses of my companions, too weak to move… but unable to die. I was a stranger in Death’s estate and Death did not want me. When I realized I was still alive, I dug my way out of what you meant to be my grave, Hendon, then came back to tell Briony of your treachery.” He turned his nearly sightless eyes toward Briony. “But I see you learned too late what my brother is—the rottenest fruit of my father’s loins. Now all I can do to atone for my mistake… is to end his life.”

He took a few uneven steps toward Hendon, who seemed stunned by what was happening. Then the slender, dark shape of Elan M’Cory scrabbled across the ground and grabbed Gailon Tolly’s legs.

“No!” she wept. “Don’t leave me again, Gailon! Not again!”

“Let go, sweet Elan,” the ragged figure said, his voice still the doomful scrape of an unquiet spirit, but he did not immediately pull away, and even seemed for the first time to show something like human emotion. “I cannot… I am no longer of your world. ...”

“And I prefer to keep it that way!” cried Hendon Tolly, who leaped forward and drove his sword into his brother’s stomach. Gailon grunted in pain, then he and the girl both tumbled to the floor, pulling the sword from Hendon’s hand.

Briony saw her chance and dove toward Hendon Tolly, but he turned just in time to see her coming and managed to deflect her thrust with his hand so that her sword bloodied his palm but otherwise slid harmlessly past him. She stumbled and lost her balance; Hendon shoved her so that she took a couple of helpless steps and fell against the wall by the doorway. By the time she was able to right herself and turn around, sword at the ready, Hendon Tolly had vanished.

She was in the doorway leading to the outer vault, and Hendon hadn’t gone past her. There was only one place he could have disappeared so swiftly, she realized, and that was into some deeper vault. She glanced briefly at Elan M’Cory as the woman wept and struggled to pull the blade out of Gailon.

“Get out of here now,” she told Elan, then began examining the mossy walls where Hendon had disappeared. As she probed into one of the shadowy corners with her sword, the blade slid far deeper than she expected, encountering no resistance at all when it should have found unyielding stone. She stepped a little nearer and found an opening in the stone where two walls did not come directly together, a space wide enough for a slender man—or a woman—to slip through.

She considered waiting until Eneas arrived, but she had no idea when that might be. If this hidden passage led somewhere else in the castle—if, even worse, it was one of the tunnels made by Chert’s Funderling people—Tolly could be out of their reach forever in a short time. The monster and murderer would escape…

She thrust her sword into the opening in the wall and poked wildly into the darkness beyond until she was assured no one hid there to ambush her. She wiped the blood off her dagger and slipped it into her belt, then went back and took a torch from the sconce.

Even more vaults waited behind the inner vault, or at least more underground chambers, half a dozen or more. As far as she could tell they had never been used for anything, let alone been finished like the family tomb: the walls were rough and the stone floors raw and uneven. But more worryingly, each new chamber led to another farther down.

Underneath us, behind us, everywhere around us… Briony had thought she lived on solid ground—what a bitter jest that had become! Seeing Gailon, whom she and everyone else had believed long dead, had shaken her badly, and finding these passages hidden below the family vault only made things worse. Nothing seemed entirely firm or real anymore.

After some little while spent carefully exploring each chamber in turn, she stepped out of the last one and found herself at the head of a path. The light of the torch revealed that on the path’s far side the earth fell away into a dark abyss the torch couldn’t illuminate past the first dozen yards. The path itself wound down and away for farther than she could see, with the chasm on one side and an unworked stone wall on the other, like the steps that spiraled around the inside of Wolfstooth Spire. How far down did this passage stretch? And where did it lead? For that matter, where had Hendon gone… ?

Just as she had that thought, Tolly dropped down on her from above, where he had been clinging to the wall like a spider. He almost shoved her off the path and into the black nothingness beside it, but Briony managed to twist and fall onto the stone of the edge. Then she struggled back toward the middle of the path, though she dropped the torch to the ground and lost her sword into the pit.

Hendon yanked Briony onto her back and knelt on top of her, his full weight on her arms as he set the cold length of his dagger against her throat.

“I have wasted a great deal of time on you, girl.” Tolly’s sweat dripped down onto her face. “So I’ll just get on with slitting your throat.”

He could hear almost nothing else but the soothing voice; its wordless approval, or sometimes disapproval, helped him to find his way, steering his steps through the dark. He felt as though he had been walking for days, but could that be? He struggled to remember where he had been before; it was slow in coming. Strange faces, strange smells, the murmur of unfamiliar tongues spoken by even more unfamiliar creatures. That was it—he had been among the fairy folk. But where was he now? And why was it so very difficult to think?

Chaven Makaros. That is my name. I am Chaven the physician… the royal physician… ! Those names and titles were all he had of himself, so why did they seem so unimportant?

The wordless voice urged him to go faster, a directive he could feel in his bones and organs. Faster, yes. He had to go faster. He was needed. Nothing could happen without him, and then he would be rewarded.

But why couldn’t he remember what his reward was going to be? Or who it was that would reward him?

While the fighting had raged in the Maze, Chaven had made his escape. In truth, it had been a relief to leave Barrick and the bright-eyed Qar behind. Too many questions. Too many curious glances. They were not human, that was certain, and to be truthful, neither was Prince Barrick anymore. There were moments when Chaven had felt quite naked, certain that everyone who passed him could see straight through to his hidden allegiance.

It was strange to think that only a year ago or a little more his life had been ordinary. Then he had found the mirror during some trip to a faraway market, one of the trips he made several times a year, although he had no memory now of bringing it back. Over the following days, as he had cleaned it and wondered over it, his love for an interesting old thing had turned into something more. Chaven had begun to spend long stretches of time with it, polishing the bowed glass and staring into its alluring, sometimes slightly confusing depths. And although he could not remember it happening, one day he discovered he could see all the way though. To the other side.

And then… And then… And then he could not remember what had happened. Not all of it, anyway: sometimes life had still proceeded as normal, of course, the mirror nothing more than an uncomfortable shadow at the back of his thoughts, like a hidden stain. But other times it had made things… happen. He had found himself in strange places or situations with little memory of how he had gotten there. The Kernios statue had been one of those things that just happened. He had discovered it in the center of his table one day, and although a visit to the castle archives had helped him to discover what it was, he hadn’t remembered anything of how it had made its way to him until that Skimmer man had come to his door asking for money—for the gold Chaven had promised him and his kin for bringing the statue up from the deep bay waters along the outwall near the East Lagoon. The Skimmer swore by his water god that Chaven himself had told them where to dive.

Frightened by this, the physician had sent the pop-eyed man away with a token payment and a promise of more, but then pushed it from his mind as something too disturbing to contemplate. Other gaps had begun to open in his waking life, more and more of them. Now he was trudging through the deeps with this cursed Kernios statue, not knowing where he was bound or why he was carrying it.

But Chaven could not turn back any more than he could leave his skin and become someone else. First the mirror, now the statue—whatever moved him to acquire these things had only tightened its hold, gripping him so surely now it did not even bother to fog his thoughts. He was a tool, he realized. A weapon. He belonged to someone and could no longer pretend otherwise, but he didn’t know who his master was.

Chaven of the Makari trudged downward through the lonely spaces beneath the Maze, the sounds of distant battle wafting to him through the warm, dank air.

“Never think when you can feel what is happening,” Shaso had told her many times. “Thinking will get you killed.”

But she had stopped to think, and just as the old man had warned, she was as good as dead now—as dead as Shaso himself. Her sword was gone, and Tolly was sitting on her chest and arms, his weight preventing her from pulling out the long Yisti dagger in her belt. Tolly’s knife blade felt like a strip of ice against the skin of her neck. She felt him shift his weight to slash her throat, but at that instant something made a noise in the passage behind them. A footfall? Loose stone pattering down? Hendon Tolly hesitated for just a moment as he turned to look, but it was enough that a desperate Briony could free her hand to make a fist and drive it into the lord protector’s crotch.

Hendon Tolly had given up his Tessian codpiece, she was grimly pleased to discover.

He groaned, gagged, and hunched forward, shifting his weight just enough that Briony could tug her other hand free. Before Tolly could get his knife back against her neck once more, she tugged her small Yisti dagger out of its sheath at her wrist and shoved it into the underside of his jaw. His eyes widened in surprise as he reached up to clutch his neck, the blood sheeting through his fingers, and as he stared down at her in astonishment, she yanked the dagger free and stabbed him again, this time in the eye. Hendon Tolly shrieked and clung to her even as his death throes took him; the two of them rolled toward the edge of the path, but Briony could not tear his slippery, bloody hands from her clothing. He would have pulled her with him as he slid over into blackness, but something caught at her belt and held her back from the brink. Tolly’s fingers pulled free and for a single moment he turned his blinded eye toward her, the Yisti knife still lodged in the socket and a look of disappointment on his face, then he tumbled out of view.

“My lady… Princess Briony… are you alive?”

She looked down at the little man stretched on the ground beside her, still clinging to her belt. She could not help laughing a little at the strangeness of it all. “Chert,” she said. “Praise Midsummer, you… you saved my life.” Briony was shaking so badly now she could barely pull herself back into the center of the path. When she was safely away from the edge, she collapsed, panting and shivering, determined that whatever else might happen, she would not cry. “But I have taken back my family’s throne—did you see? He’s dead. Hendon’s dead. I killed him like the mad dog he was.”

The Funderling patted her back awkwardly, clearly uncertain of how to comfort a wounded, shaking princess.

At last Briony was able to sit up again. The torch still lay on the path a short distance away, burning fitfully. Chert wrapped a strip of his shirt around her wounded arm. “What’s down there, Chert?” she asked. “What lies underneath my family’s tomb?”

He looked at her, a little surprised. “Why… everything, Highness. This tunnel track leads down into the very depths of my people’s sacred Mysteries.”

“Where my brother and the Qar have gone.” She dusted herself off and rose shakily to her feet. Every inch of her ached. “Where the autarch is. And my father as well.” She bent and picked up the torch. “Eneas will take care of the rest. Will you lead me?”

“Lead you?” The Funderling got up too, staring at her as though she had suddenly begun speaking a different language. “You want to go… down there?”

“Yes. With you as my guide.” She slid her knife into its sheath. “Unless you have something better to do, here on the last day of all.”

“But… it will take us hours to reach the bottom. Everything will have ended down there long before. You will never reach it in time ...” A thought occurred to him. “And there are dangers you do not know yet, Highness… !”

“Never say never to an Eddon, Master Blue Quartz. We are a stubborn family.” And without waiting to see what he was going to do, Briony stepped past him and began to walk down into the depths.

39. The Very Old Thing

The autarch and his soldiers had dragged the elements of a small city down into the depths and onto the strange island, tents and lumber and the makings of many reed boats. Now a legion of the Golden One’s carpenters were laboring to build a great platform near the edge of the silver sea even as a battle raged only a few hundred paces away, so that the clatter of the builders almost drowned out the screams of the dying.

All along the shore blades gleamed and guns barked flame. From this distance Qinnitan could barely make out what was happening, but it looked as bloody and desperate as any of the fighting on the walls of Hierosol. Farther down the shore, the autarch’s enemies had made their way in among the landed boats, and one of the small craft had even floated back out into the middle of the shining silver; Qinnitan yearned to be in that loose boat, drifting apart from the madness.

The monster of Xis himself, architect of all this confusion and suffering, sat atop his litter in his bright armor, shouting orders at men who were clearly already working as hard as they could. Several of them were bleeding only a little less than the soldiers in the fighting.

“The children!” Sulepis shrieked, standing up so suddenly that the twelve naked slaves holding his litter swayed and some of them had to struggle to keep their balance. “Where are they? Where are my prisoners?” One of the Nushash priests was leaping up and down beside the litter, trying to tell him something. “I don’t care!” the autarch shouted. “Vash! Vash, where are you? By my father’s tomb, where is Pinimmon Vash? Is he missing as well? I shall have him and the priest both torn to pieces!”

But before the paramount minister could be found and torn apart, High Priest Panhyssir appeared at the head of a procession of lesser clerics, soldiers, and children, thus distracting the Golden One. Qinnitan stared as the youngest prisoners trudged past the place where she and King Olin stood fettered to a large, deep-sunken post. Four or five dozen in all, the children had the look of northerners, their eyes hopeless and empty, their faces made even more wan by weeks spent in confinement on the autarch’s ships. She wondered dully what he planned to do to them.

“Look away, Qinnitan,” Olin told her. “Do you understand me? Look away.”

But she could not. Here at the end she found herself greedy for every instant, no matter its horrors, because soon she would see nothing at all.

“Hurry them to their places,” Sulepis called to the guards. “And you builders, away from the platform—all of you, away! It will serve as it is. The hour is nearly upon us.”

The Xandian workmen began to scramble down off the platform, a simple wooden structure as crude and functional as a gallows. Sulepis’ bearers carried him forward until he could step from his litter directly onto the wooden floor and look out across the silvery expanse of the Sea in the Depths. To the autarch’s left, his soldiers were spread along the island’s curved shoreline, many of them firing guns at the struggling armies on the far side of the silver sea, although even Qinnitan doubted they could tell friend from foe in the general confusion. Not that it mattered much. The leader of the attacking force, a slim figure in white armor, had just fallen, and the rest of the outmanned force was retreating. Now they fought just to stay alive against the autarch’s superior numbers.

A pair of the autarch’s Leopards came toward the post. They ignored Qinnitan entirely as they unchained King Olin’s iron shackles from the post.

“Don’t be afraid, Qinnitan,” he said. “I am not.”

“I’ll pray for you,” she told him. “May the gods bring you peace, Olin Eddon ...!”

The king’s arms were still bound; the guards kept him upright as they led him away across the slippery stones, toward the platform and the waiting autarch. The Golden One looked back and forth between the reflective stillness of the Sea in the Depths and the massive, man-shaped stone outcrop at the island’s center—the Shining Man. The stone seemed dark as black jade, but Qinnitan had seen gleams of color pulsing through it—almost furtively, as though whatever lived inside it did not yet wish to make itself known.

As Olin’s guards led him up the crude stairs onto the autarch’s platform, the other soldiers herded the captive children down to the shore of the island, then forced them down onto their knees at intervals along the water’s edge. Panhyssir the high priest had appeared and had been helped up the steps so he could stand near the autarch. Several other priests were with him, and were already filling the air around the Golden One with incense and the sound of their prayers.

So this was how it ended, Qinnitan realized. All her struggles to escape, all her desperation, all of the times she had thought herself finally free… it all had come down to this. She was grateful she had saved Pigeon. But look! As if to prove how pointless rescuing a single child had been, now a hundred other children would be slaughtered here in front of her. Were the gods really so intent on showing her how worthless her efforts had been?

Panhyssir chanted in a version of Xixian so antique Qinnitan could barely understand it, the high priest’s great beard bobbing up and down against his swollen chest. The soldiers around the edge of the island, each one standing by a kneeling prisoner, watched the platform intently.

“You have me,” Olin shouted at the autarch. “Now let the girl go!”

Something was trying to get into Qinnitan’s head.

“Thank you for reminding me,” Sulepis said. “Guards! Bring the girl, too!” Another pair of soldiers hurried to unchain her from the pole and then shoved her stumbling toward the platform, but Qinnitan scarcely felt their rough hands.

Something else is watching us, she realized. The soldiers dragged her up the steps and dumped her beside Olin. Her heart, already beating fast, now began to pound against her ribs like a woodpecker’s beak. That monstrous thing I feel when the Sun’s Blood is inside me… it’s here.

The cavern seemed to be getting darker, but Qinnitan somehow knew it was not the world but herself that was sliding deeper into shadow. The presence was all around her, yet it was in her too, scenting the world of daylight and air through her senses, waiting just on the other side of some incomprehensible door that had been closed against it thousands of years ago.

Here, she realized, her thoughts flailing in sudden terror. This is where the door was shut, and it’s been waiting here all this time… waiting to come back ...!

Panhyssir raised his arms in a dramatic gesture, unaware that as he did so an entire world of darkness held its breath like a cat crouching beside a mousehole, stone still but for the lashing of its tail.

“Now!” The autarch’s voice quivered with pleasure and excitement. “Ah, now! The blood!”

The soldiers along the shore grabbed their child captives by the hair and bent back their heads. As each raised a blade to a slender neck, Qinnitan knew that what was happening here was even worse than the murder of children—a hundred times worse! A thousand times! All along the island’s coast the prisoners’ reflections stared back in horror, a hundred children and then a hundred more mirrored in liquid silver. Qinnitan opened her mouth wide to scream out a warning—didn’t they understand what the autarch was doing, the forces he was unleashing?—but the eager darkness was inside her as well as around her and would not let her make a noise.

The blades dipped, slid, and the children fell to the rocky ground as if they were sacks of meal—but to Qinnitan’s astonishment the young prisoners were all unharmed, their flesh unmarked; the guards had only pretended to slit their throats. But the reflections of the children, unlike the real children, had been mortally slashed by the reflected guards. Blood fountained from their ruined throats in the reflecting waters of the Sea in the Depth, but in the real world the children still lived; yet a red stain had begun to spread through the silver.

“Do you see, Olin—it is the sacrifice in the mirror lands that matter!” the autarch laughed. Qinnitan could barely hear him through the hammering in her skull, the feeling that her head would split open like rotten fruit. “It only matters what happens there, on the far side—that the mirror is clouded with innocent sacrificial blood!” He spread his hands to take in the whole of the Sea in the Depths. The silver sea roiled with scarlet, a bright stain that was spreading swiftly now in all directions as if real blood had been spilled, gallons of it. “And this is the greatest mirror that ever was—a mirror made from Habbili’s own godly essence!” He turned to his guards. “The children are no longer needed. The ritual has succeeded. You may dispatch the prisoners.”

“But you accomplished what you wanted—you don’t need to do that… !” Olin shouted in fury, then his voice choked off in a horrid, ragged sound like something tearing. And then, as the autarch’s Leopard soldiers began to stab the helpless, shrieking children who still knelt at the edge of the silvery sea, and chase down any others foolish enough to think they could escape, something began to happen to the king of Southmarch.

Olin’s guards held him up, but they did not find it easy: the northern king had begun to twist and moan like a terrified animal, eyes bulging as though something in his skull tried to force its way out through the sockets. All around him, screeching children were being caught up and slaughtered by Xixian soldiers, but Qinnitan could only stare in horror because the same thing that was clearly chewing its way into the northern king was pushing at her thoughts, as well—a very old, very terrible thing.

The surface of the Sea in the Depths was almost entirely scarlet now, and blood from the martyred children puddled in the low places of the stony island, but a hoarse shout from behind distracted Qinnitan even from this horrific scene. Far down the island shore, the loose reed boat had finally drifted across the Sea in the Depths and come to rest. Two men were climbing out of it even as the autarch’s soldiers raced toward them. One of the two wore armor of ordinary battered metal, but the other wore plate that glowed a strange blue-gray, and his helmet was of the same unusual hue.

The Xixian soldiers reached the two fighters and fell upon them. Qinnitan was certain the newcomers were doomed, but a moment later the autarch’s soldiers fell back, two of them tumbled aside like broken, bleeding toys. The tall one’s helmet had come off; his hair was nearly as bright a red as the stain spreading across the silvery sea.

Qinnitan knew him at once, although she had never seen him in the flesh before, and a little strength came back to her. She could not die yet, and couldn’t surrender to despair, either. Somehow she must stay alive at least a little longer.

Barrick had come for her.

The prince had hardly spoken as the boat drifted across the strange sea, and had moved only to lean over the side and give the boat an occasional paddle. Now, as the craft scraped over the stones near the shore, Barrick sat up and pulled his helmet on.

When the boat finally grounded he said only one word to Vansen—“Follow”—and then vaulted over the side and into the shallows. By the time the prince had waded to the shore, shiny liquid streaming down his legs until he might have been Perin himself walking through the clouds, dozens of Xixian soldiers were already hastening over the rocky beach toward them.

The first wave reached them just as Vansen caught up to the prince, but before Vansen could do more than lift his ward-ax to defend himself, Barrick had somehow caught several of the attackers and had thrown them all backward at once, as easily as a father wrestling with his children. Someone grabbed at Barrick’s helmet and pulled it off, but instead of the sight of his unprotected head giving the enemy confidence they all flinched back from his fixed eyes and broad grin. The prince danced through them, sword flashing like glints of true sunlight; almost every time it withdrew, a Xixian soldier fell heavily to the ground and did not rise.

By the gods, what has happened to that boy? Vansen wondered. What kind of magician has he become?

But Ferras Vansen himself had no such magic, nor time to wonder at the transformation of the angry, crippled youth he had known: it was all he could do to defend himself from the Xixians who had instantly sized him up as the less dangerous of the two foes. To his shame, Vansen quickly realized that his best chance of remaining alive was to stay close to Barrick, so he bent himself to protecting the prince’s back.

It truly did not seem as though Barrick Eddon needed much protecting. After the initial fury of his attack, the prince’s pale face took on a distracted, almost exalted look, like the kind Vansen had seen on paintings of the great oracles in spoken congress with Heaven. But Barrick’s actions were in the here and now. Every economical movement seemed to serve a purpose, and no blow was stronger than it needed to be. The prince could block a thrust on one side and still be balanced enough to turn the blade over and dispatch a man who had moved a step too near on the other.

Now Barrick began to fight his way up the beach toward the autarch, who stood a few hundred paces away atop some kind of viewing platform, but every thrust, every block, every body that Barrick kicked to the side also carried him farther into the jaws of the Xixian army.

Time, which for Ferras Vansen was already out of joint, now seemed to slow almost to a halt. Whether they fought their way up the beach for moments or hours, he honestly could not have said—earning each step forward seemed to take a lifetime. The faces of Xixian soldiers streamed past him like the waters of a river.

A rifle cracked nearby; Vansen could feel the hot wake of the ball. Somebody else managed to get a thrust past his defense and agony flared in his already wounded thigh. As he struggled to regain his balance, a heavy Xandian mace crashed against his shield so hard that one of the straps broke. Vansen threw it aside so it wouldn’t drag him down, then employed the broad haft of his ward-ax in place of the lost shield. He was no longer even trying to strike back at the enemy, but instead did his best to turn the closest and most dangerous strikes away from Barrick.

A shout came from the rear of the attacking soldiers. Others picked it up and repeated it, but Vansen couldn’t understand the harsh Xixian tongue. Another mace struck his arm, and he almost dropped his ax. By the time he could lift it again, he had become separated from Prince Barrick by several steps, and half a dozen Xixian soldiers quickly forced their way into the gap. Vansen stumbled as they came at him. Someone grabbed his arm, then two men leaped onto his back. He managed to elbow one of them in the face hard enough to feel something break, but his ax was gone and others quickly pulled him down.

Farewell, Princess Briony, he thought as the last strength fled from his limbs and he was finally overwhelmed. I gave everything for your brother… I pray I am forgiven…

But to Vansen’s astonishment, no final blow came, no quietus from a spear in the gut or slit throat. Instead, when he was disarmed, his captors dragged him to his feet, used rope to tie his arms roughly behind his back, then began to drag him up the slope toward the autarch’s platform.

Perhaps the southern madman needs more blood for his spells…

Barrick was still on his feet. Vansen could see the knot of soldiers surrounding him, and for long moments it looked as though the prince might actually fight all the way to the autarch, but the prince’s forward progress slowed and then finally stopped, only a dozen steps from where the autarch waited. The struggle went on for a little while, even so—men continued to stumble back weeping with pain, clutching ruined faces or the stumps of missing limbs—but at last the Xixians beat their enemy to the ground. Barrick’s red head rose above them as the southerners lifted his unmoving form up onto their shoulders, handling him almost tenderly. He was carried to the platform and thrown onto the raw wooden floor, senseless and bloodied. Then Vansen was tossed unceremoniously onto the platform beside him.

“And what have we here?” asked a voice from high above him—a calm but somehow terrifying voice that spoke Vansen’s own tongue nearly without accent. “I recognize you.”

Ferras Vansen struggled until he could roll onto his back and look up at the unnaturally tall, brown-skinned youth in golden armor. This must be the autarch himself, he realized, but who would ever have guessed the monster to be so young?

The southern king’s gaze flicked to Vansen and he frowned slightly. “Not you, northern dog. You are mud. But your companion—why, this must be one of the Eddon princes. Kendrick? No, he is dead, of course. But, ah, with that hair… of course. It is Barrick.”

The prince might have heard his name, for he groaned. The autarch laughed. “Look, Olin—your son has come to watch you give yourself to the gods.” He turned to a fat priest in a huge headdress. “It is time, now. The door is open. We must bring the god through to enter his chosen vessel.”

King Olin? King Olin was here? Vansen did his best to lift his head and look around, and for a moment saw the back of what must be the king’s head, but he was bent over and breathing hard, almost gasping, like a woman laboring through a painful delivery.

A boot on Vansen’s back shoved him back down onto his face.

“Oh, no, Captain Marukh, let the peasant watch, too,” said the autarch cheerfully to the guard captain. “Olin is his king, after all… and soon I will be his god!”

The pain was growing, there was no doubt about that. Every drop of Qinnitan’s blood seemed to be getting hotter until she felt certain she would cook from the inside like a goat stuffed with hot stones. But it was more than just pain: the very air seemed to have become thicker, something as hard to breathe as water or the silvery stuff that surrounded this island at the bottom of creation. And cruelest of all, now Barrick had appeared before her at last, the one thing she had lived for during her miserable exile, and she was helpless to do anything about it.

Why have you done this to me? she demanded of Heaven. Taken me from the Hive, dragged me across the known world, tormented me ceaselessly, just to show him to me in the moments before I die? I curse you, gods!

But if the gods heard her, even at this moment when they seemed closer than ever, they clearly did not care. Barrick lay only a few steps from her but it might as well have been miles. He had been beaten so badly and was bleeding in so many places that she doubted he would ever awaken.

And Olin… ! What tortures had the uncaring gods condemned him to?

As the chants of the priests rose again, the northern king finally stopped shaking, but Qinnitan now could barely see him. Something terrifying was happening to her, as if with each moment that passed, her essence was boiling away. All that she was, all she knew and remembered, was beginning to evaporate.

“Groaner! Lifter! Bringer of Winter and Darkness!” the priest intoned.

Each time the priest cried out that word, Qinnitan cried out too, and Olin made a sound without much humanity left in it. Qinnitan tried to roll toward the suffering king but she could not make herself move and could scarcely hold onto her thoughts.

“Arise!

“Arise!”

Suddenly Olin sat bolt upright, swaying like a hood snake, his mouth split in a clench-jawed grin of intense pain. His eyes had rolled up until only the whites showed.

“The door is open!”

It was so very near to her now—Qinnitan could feel the gap in the world that had been clawed open, and the huge, horrible presence that was forcing its way through. How could the priests go on chanting? How could Sulepis stand so straight, showing no more emotion than the weird half-smile on his face? The autarch, his soldiers, the priests—they all hardly seemed to notice the dreadful presence that was killing both her and the northern king.

Olin’s breathing had grown even faster, a chain of rasping, percussive grunts. His arms rose up from his sides like the wings of a bird, as if he was being forced to embrace this terrible visitor. Blood started from his nose and his head rolled from side to side.

Qinnitan felt the thing thrusting itself into the body of the king, but somehow just by being near it burned into her as well. It was climbing into her world… into this very place… !

A stab of pain made her writhe and for a moment everything went black. When her sight came back, she saw that Olin had thrown back his head, his neck bent at a terrible angle as though he hung on a fishhook. The king’s gasping breath had become a single, moaning cry of pain.

“Oh, gods, if you have any mercy, help us… !” she cried… but no god answered.

At the sound of her voice, Barrick’s eyes opened. For just that instant, for perhaps the only instant Qinnitan would have again in this world, their gazes met… then the hot, remorseless blackness swept over her, swallowing her whole.

40. Fiery Laughter

Those who didn’t fly them didn’t know anything about it—flittermice and birds were just different. A bat didn’t push as smooth as a bird, and the glide was shorter. A rider also had to cling close to the creature’s furry body or else he’d wag from side to side and slow the bat’s progress even more.

Beetledown the Bowman knew all this and more—he had been riding on bats since he had been big enough for his father to tie onto the saddle in front of him. People said nobody knew flyers better than old Beetle-wing had, and his son was proud of that legacy. What glory was to be found exploring the heights of the world on a docile rat, or on your own legs? A winged mount was the mark of a true Gutter-Scout.

But his command over Muckle Brown was more than a matter of pride, it was a matter of life and death—especially now. The farther into the depths he flew, the more the fetid air began to affect him as it had when Chert had first brought him down. He was already finding it hard to keep his mind on his journey, and each time his mount flew into a cold downdraft and dropped suddenly, or banked and turned him upside down in a matter of a single pulse, Beetledown felt himself less and less in control of either the flittermouse or himself.

Tha hast promised, he kept telling himself. Tha hast promised Chert the Funderling and thy queen. Beest tha the man thy father named! But it had already taken him an hour and more simply to find his way across Funderling Town and through the dark passages beyond the Silk Door, as Chert had once shown him, and more time had passed since then. It was work to stay alert, work to stay balanced on Muckle Brown’s velvety back, and Beetledown had already been wearied by days of constant riding and flying when the queen’s order had come. As the flittermouse plunged deeper and deeper into the pestilent depths he was finding it very difficult to stay awake.

A new smell tickled his nose, distant but unmistakable, and with it came a gradually swelling murmur, like the sound of ocean that echoed deep in the Royal Spindle Shell. The murmur continued to get louder even as the air itself grew thicker, until the report of his addled senses began to make him think that he and his mount had somehow turned downside-up: surely a roar like that could only come from the great ocean itself! But how could that be? Could he have so badly lost his way?

No, he decided a moment later, that be no smell of good and honest ocean. He had encountered the thick, cloying scent before, if not the noise. No proper sea that, but Chert’s foul silvery pond in the earth’s heart.

But where did this scent and the sounds come from? He was still far from the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple, let alone the distant deeps to which Chert had sent him—and his time to reach them was also dwindling, he had no doubt.

He hesitated for only a moment before pulling on the reins and leaning to bank the flittermouse hard. Beetledown and the bat sailed on, farther and farther away from the one path he knew. After passing through a long and intricate series of narrow places, one of which was a crevice too tight to fly through, so he had to get out and lead the balking Muckle Brown through it, he began to smell the odd salt-and-metal scent stronger than ever. The echoes changed, too, the murmur spreading to take up space in what was clearly a huge, wide cavern.

But if we are so far from the ocean still, why does it roar so?

He pushed down on the stirrups; the bat dipped her head and dove, spiraling down so quickly that Beetledown could feel the air press his ears until they ached. For what seemed a very long time they swept downward through the vast, vertical tunnel until, with no warning, they dropped out of extended darkness and into a massive cavern whose dimly glowing stones burst out before his dazzled eyes like the stars themselves. For a moment even Muckle Brown was disoriented: the bat hit a wall of cold air and suddenly tumbled into a dive. Only as they plummeted toward the surging, bellowing shapes beneath them—the source, he now realized, of the roar his clouded wits had mistaken for the sea—did he pull the flittermouse back into his control.

Beetledown skimmed the great cavern once, twice, thrice, trying to make sense of what he saw. Many men hurried like ants across an island in the middle of the silvery lake. Some of these appeared to be defending the island against a motley assortment of creatures, many of which looked to be Funderlings, or at least were of a size to be. These must be his quarry, Beetledown decided, but he could not simply drop into the middle of a deadly struggle and expect to survive.

He circled until he found a small group of Funderlings who were snatching a moment of rest on the outskirts of the fighting. He brought Muckle Brown down in their midst. One or two of them started back in surprise, but the rest of the bloodied, filthy little men barely even looked up at his sudden arrival.

“Have a message for Cinnabar, I do!” Beetledown shouted as loud as he could, hoping they could hear him and would not simply swat him or his mount dead. His flittermouse did not like to be surrounded by these giant shapes, and it was all Beetledown could do to hold her down; he could hear the bat’s protests at the edge of his hearing, a shrill and angry squealing. But the Funderlings, overcome by exhaustion, only stared at him.

“I need Cinnabar the Magister!” he shouted. “Lord of the Peak blast your ears clean, can none of you hear me? Cinnabar! I am Beetledown the Bowman and I bring a message from Chert Blue Quartz!”

One of the Funderlings pointed back toward the stony cliffs at the edge of the great cavern. “Magister’s with his boy,” he said. “He’s the one in armor. Look for him there.”

“I thank ’ee, good sir.” Beetledown touched the brim of his hat and kicked at Muckle Brown’s ribs. They vaulted into the air. One swift circle to orient himself, then he turned the bat toward the base of the cliffs.

He found Cinnabar sitting propped against a large stone amid a dozen of his wounded comrades. An even smaller Funderling lay beside him, pale and motionless. Beetledown landed only a short distance away, but Cinnabar did not turn from his sorrowful contemplation of the silent child.

Beetledown stood in the stirrups and waved his hands.

“Hear me! I come from Chert Blue Quartz! Are you Cinnabar the Magister?”

The wounded Funderling nodded but did not look up. “I am… for a little while longer. Then the Elders will decide.” He reached out his hand to touch the boy’s slack face. “They have killed my son. They have killed my dear Calomel… !”

Beetledown shook his head. “May the Lord lift him up. I grieve your loss and beg pardon, Magister, but my errand cannot wait.”

Cinnabar glanced at him without curiosity. “What can any errand matter now? Can’t you see we’ve lost everything?”

“Mayhap. Mayhap not.” Beetledown urged the bat nearer, and Muckle Brown reluctantly crawled toward Cinnabar. “But I am sworn to it. Now list. Chert says to tell ’ee that Brother Nickel has stopped un—that Chert cannot go forward to do what was planned.”

Cinnabar looked at him for a moment, his eyes dull and his face weary. “It was a foolish hope, anyway. Did you truly come all that way just to tell me of this failure?”

“No!” Beetledown was feeling the press of time very strongly now. “The Astion, Chert said. Send the Astion and still there may be hope.”

“Ah. Hope.” Cinnabar’s mouth twitched—the faint ghost of a smile. “The Astion, is it? Even at the end the Guild will have their rules followed.” He reached to his belt and drew out a leather purse, then shook its contents onto the stone of the cavern floor. Beetledown waited impatiently, listening to the sounds of men fighting and dying on the other side of the massive cavern. The Funderling picked up a shiny circle of black stone etched with a six-pointed star and extended it toward Beetledown. “Can you carry it?”

“If tha canst put un in the pack on my back,” the Rooftopper said, “then I can carry un.”

“Go then… but it will not matter,” said Cinnabar. “We are too few, the southerners too many, and we and the Qar spent too much of our strength on each other. Now we are all dead.”

But Beetledown could no longer hear him: he and his mount were already rising toward the vast chimney and the upper levels of the Mysteries.

There was no time now to return the Astion to Chert on the surface. Beetledown the Bowman knew he would have to fly directly up the great chimney to Funderling Town and hope that he could use Chert’s map to find Chert’s friend Brother Antimony from there, and that Antimony himself would be able to do what must be done. But even as they flew, Beetledown was weighed down by grief. What he had seen in the great cavern beneath the earth stank of failure and defeat.

Last hours of all, mayhap, he thought. For all of us. At least I must do my duty and make Lord of the Peak proud of me.

As he soared upward toward the cleaner air, he didn’t see the black shape detach itself from the perch where it had waited, brooding and patient. The great gray owl banked in gentle circles until Beetledown and the flittermouse had rounded a bend on their upward flight, then it flapped its wings and followed them, eyes glinting orange even in the near-darkness.

For just that moment their gazes met, then the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl called out Barrick’s name, convulsed, and collapsed. The Fireflower chorus went quiet in his head. He could hear only one voice—hers.

Barrick… ! Wordless now, dwindling as though a harsh wind swept it away. Barrick, it’s ... the fire…

And then one more voice, his own, drifting up out of the new silence inside him like a forgotten prisoner in a deep cell. Qinnitan… !

For just an instant he felt what she did—her terrible fear as the end came, the desperate spark of her bravery. And for just that instant, he felt the ice inside him melt away, the hardness that had separated him from his own heart. He was free again, naked of everything, even the Fireflower, but it was a freedom that felt like terrible weakness.

No. Not now. I cannot go back to being that useless thing again… ! Barrick forced himself to lift his throbbing head. Strong. Strong… ! Qinnitan lay a short distance away, senseless, perhaps even dead. Blood trickled from her nose; one small drop hung poised, ready to fall from her cheek to the rough boards. For a strange moment, he could not pull his eyes away from that drop of blood, imagined it growing and growing into a vast, shiny red sphere, a world of blood into which one could dive and then vanish in living scarlet.…

No. He closed his eyes. That was human blood, the same as the thin stuff in his own veins that tried to weaken him. He had to be Qar now.

Barrick tried to stand, but his legs and arms would not support his weight. The Fireflower voices murmured in dismay at his helplessness.

That is how the Dreamers changed me, he realized. They took the old, weak Barrick away and buried him deep inside me. So I could reach Qul-na-Qar. So I could live with the Fireflower. They buried him and built a wall around my heart to keep it strong. And in the midst of everything else—the fetid, bursting air and the chants of the priests and even a dim apprehension of the vast and terrible something lurking behind it all—Barrick felt the poisonous gift of the Dreamers flowing back again to protect him, to make him safe from his own humanity.

They need me—the People need me… !

He got his knees beneath him and did his best to rise, his bruised and bleeding limbs as wobbly as those of a newborn colt. A half dozen of the Xixian soldiers fell on him at once and began to push him back down on his face, but the autarch turned and lifted his hand.

“Stand back, Leopards. I will not make the mistake of underestimating you again, Olin’s son. Clearly, your pariki friends have given you some sprinkling of their magicks. Mokori!”

A massive hand closed on the loose mail of Barrick’s armored neck, cutting off his air as it jerked him onto his feet. An instant later, a golden wire thin as a silkworm’s strand dropped over his head and he was pulled back against one of the largest bodies he had ever encountered. The autarch laughed and waved his hand again.

“Do not kill him, Mokori! Olin’s son will play audience. I suspect he may be one of the few people who can understand what is happening.” The autarch stepped back to reveal Barrick’s father, twitching on the ground like a man in the grip of a killing fever.

“Look, Olin—if you still are Olin,” the autarch crowed. “One of your sons has come to watch you play host to Xergal, the god of death and the underworld.”

Each time Barrick moved, the wire tightened around his neck. He didn’t think that in his battered condition he could have fought free anyway—the strangler Mokori was almost as big as Hammerfoot the Ettin—but the sight of his father’s suffering, even through the Dreamers’ deadening spell or whatever they had done to him, made him squirm and struggle despite the noose around his neck.

“Father?” he cried. “Father, can you hear me?” But Olin did not seem even to see him, let alone recognize him. Now Barrick began to feel the greedy joy of the invisible watcher. It fed on misery, somehow—on deceit and shame. That was how it had kept itself alive all these centuries in the dreaming lands… alive, perhaps, but not sane.

Suddenly Olin doubled over and fell onto his face, legs kicking like a hanged man’s. The sound that came from the king’s throat was so desperate and horrible that Barrick’s eyes filled with hot tears. Despite all his grievances, despite any wall around his heart, at that moment Barrick would have given his life to save his father from such suffering.

“Midnight is upon us!” cried the autarch. “He comes—the god comes! He enters the vessel!”

“That vessel is a man, curse you to the lowest hells!” Barrick shouted. “He is a king!”

“Come to me, great god—Xergal, or Kernios, or whatever name you wish!” the autarch cried, louder by himself than all the chanting priests combined. “Come to me, Earth Lord—Isolator—Gray Owl—Ageless Pine! I summon you to cross the void! I have made a home for you here!” Both of the autarch’s arms spread wide, as though he welcomed a lover. “Enter and be my servant forever—my slave!”

And then King Olin’s grunts of pain abruptly stopped. Barrick’s father rolled onto his back as though thrown there, and his limbs shot out straight; for a moment his entire body seemed to bulge and distort, rippling from his head to his extremities as though something hot had been poured into his skin.

Barrick heard a shout of misery and recognized it as his own. I’ve failed you all, he thought, battered by the confused and chaotic swell of the Fireflower voices. Failed.

Another cry came, this one from one of the Xixians, then more and more, voices of soldiers and even priests, all rising in fear. Olin’s body rose from the ground like a puppet being lifted by its strings until he stood upright and motionless. All across the platform and on the ground nearby the autarch’s men stumbled back, some making the sign of Nushash with spread fingers like the sun’s rays, others openly weeping with terror, overcome by what was happening in this strange place so very far from home. Olin had become utterly motionless, as if he were some smaller replica of the Shining Man that still loomed over them all, the dark, man-shaped shadow at the center of the island.

“Speak to me, servant,” said the autarch. “Are you indeed the god of the dark earth?” The thing, Barrick saw, did not look much like Olin anymore.

Thin end of the wedge, the awed voices whispered in his thoughts. The crack in it all. The last… !

The thing turned its head slowly toward the autarch, and Barrick gasped at how his father’s eyes had changed; whatever looked out of them stared out from a crawling tangle of fiery lines that filled the eyes from lid to lid, a squirming glow that bathed even the king’s brow and face… but it still did not speak.

“I said, who are you?” The autarch’s voice had become a little shrill.

“I am he who commands the Owl,” it said in a voice of such musical sweetness that for a moment Barrick almost felt glad that he had tasted so much horror, just to hear it. But even as the words faded, he felt the undertaste of boundless cruelty that was in it and it made his gorge rise. “I am the master of the Knot and keeper of the Pine. I am the Crowfather.”

Sulepis clapped his hands together like a pleased child. “The God of Death—and he is my slave! You are my slave, are you not, Master of the Depths?”

“I am the slave of my summoner as long as he holds me in this world.” Again that beautiful, horrible voice made Barrick want to throw himself at the thing’s feet and beg forgiveness, or hurl himself into the silvery sea to drown. But the most dreadful thing of all was that it was his father’s skin it wore, his father’s face being awkwardly moved by those inhuman emotions. How could he have ever thought he truly hated Olin when seeing this wrenched at his heart so?

“Then you must do what I say! You must!” The autarch closed his eyes and went almost completely still as if captured by the transport of love-making or religious frenzy. Barrick had never seen such an expression of rapture on a human face.

“As long as I am held here, I will do what I am told,” the dead-eyed thing said. “I will burn this world to its foundations if you so direct me. I will suck the life from every plant and bird, everything that walks and breathes.” And saying this it laughed, a noise of such melodious horror that the Fireflower voices inside Barrick were shocked into silence again.

This god is insane, he realized. It has been locked away from the world too long. Like a dreamer who never wakes, it no longer knows the difference between what is outside itself and what is inside.

And now it had been loosed on the world, its only keeper the madman in golden armor. The autarch had begun to laugh, too, a loud and excited sound that was nearly a shriek of triumph. “Yes! Yes! Mine mine mine!” It was hard to say which of the two sounded less human.

“Make me immortal,” the autarch commanded when he had regained control of himself. In the new silence that blanketed the great cavern his voice carried far. “Make me immortal like you!”

“I will not,” said the god that wore the face of Barrick’s father.

“What?” Sulepis straightened and turned toward the motionless figure. The autarch was taller than the being that had been Olin, but for all his size and the flare of his armor and feathered ornaments, there was no way anyone could have thought the autarch the more powerful. The god burned inside of Olin, glowing so that from different angles the king’s very veins and bones could be seen. The skull beneath the king’s face might have been made from the same gleaming stone that dotted the great cavern’s walls. “Do what I say, or I will destroy you!”

Barrick was still held fast. Some of his strength had returned, but not enough: he was bleeding from many wounds, and bones were broken inside the sheath of his flesh.

“But you cannot destroy me, Sulepis am-Bishakh,” the god said in a reasonable tone. “You and these other mortals have not the power. You cannot compel me.”

“What? Are you saying you lied?” The autarch’s voice, instead of growing shriller, suddenly took on a tone at once silky and dangerous. “That the promises you sent to me through the great Seeing Glass of the Khau-r-Yisti were meaningless?” The autarch turned as if to address his soldiers, although most of them were cowering facedown on the stony ground, or had retreated to the farther reaches of the island. Only the autarch’s household guards, some two dozen of the formidable Leopards, remained on the stand with him and the priests and the prisoners. “Do you think I would not be prepared for such tricks from one of those who have already been banished from the earth once for their treachery?” the autarch demanded. “I will force you in ways you will not like, Death God.”

The face of Olin, its glow like the sickly shine of a mushroom in dark earth, curled its lips in a ghastly approximation of a smile. “Tell me of these ways, little emperor. Or better, show me.”

“A’lat!” the autarch called. “A’lat! Bring the book!”

A small, dark-haired figure, wizened and as bent as an ape, limped quickly forward from the back of the platform, holding a brown, tattered scroll in its knobby fist. It lifted the scroll and began to read the words written there. The Fireflower voices heard the words and shouted their meaning into his aching head.

As the desert priest intoned the words the wood of the platform began to sway and creak, as though some great weight had been set down upon it. Even the rocks of the cavern wall seemed to rumble in discomfort, shaking Barrick to his core. Beside him, Ferras Vansen began to stir to life, though Qinnitan remained as still as death.

But the thing that had been King Olin, the waxy, gleaming thing that was no longer anything like a man except in form, only listened, motionless and unperturbed.

The priest finished in a howl of imprecations, but when he fell silent. the god still stood, unmoved, his essence burning deep inside Olin’s waxy flesh.

“Did you truly think I would let you thwart me, after all I have done?” the autarch cried, his anger too great to let him show fear. “You are trapped, Kernios, trapped in that mortal body! Because as I name you, so I command you—and I know all your names, Skull Eater! And if I choose to destroy that vessel, it may be that you die, too—a true death that can come even to gods!”

“You know so little.” The god spread its arms wider. The air grew tighter all through the cavern, making Barrick’s ears ache. On the ground beside him, Vansen groaned and grabbed at his head. “True, you have named a name… but it is not mine.”

“Kill it!” the autarch cried. All around, the Leopards came scrambling forward. “Grab this thing and cast it into the fire—burn it like a candle… !”

“No.” The god extended its hand, and the soldiers fell down clutching their chests as if they had been pierced by arrows, rifles and helmets clattering from their hands. “You know so little. I am not here, in this pathetic skin. Even with your ceremony, only a token part of my being can pass through to inhabit this twice-usurped king. The rest of me remains trapped in the dreaming lands, where Crooked banished me… but now Crooked is dead.”

“But you are my slave, Xergal or Kernios or whatever name you choose, Deathgod!” the autarch shrieked. “Nothing you say or do can change that. I have spoken the words of power. I have prepared the way. You have come through and accepted what I set out for you—this mortal vessel with its ancient, holy blood! Now you are mine, curse you, mine!”

The god laughed again. It still sounded something like music, but a music that scraped and grated in Barrick’s skull until he thought he might fall back to the ground, screaming.

“Fool,” said the thing in Olin’s body. “You cannot tame me because you cannot name me. Now look to the foot of the Shining Man and you will see the rest of the answer to my riddle.”

Barrick turned with everyone else. In such a dim place, it was likely he was the only person in the great chamber who recognized the small, portly figure shuffling across the stony island toward the monstrous outcrop. It was the physician, Chaven Makaros, with the stone statue of Kernios clutched in his hand and an expression on his blinking face like something caught in the light when it would have preferred darkness.

“Who is that?” demanded Sulepis, losing control again. “Who is that walking there… ?”

“It is my slave,” said the thing that wore Olin. “Do you see what he carries? That is the Godstone, as you call it—the thing you sought in vain. It is the last piece of the Shining Man, and it broke free long ago when Crooked sealed the way with his own life’s essence. Ignorant humans made a fetish of it, a statue ...”

“Kill him!” the autarch shouted suddenly. “Archers! Kill that creature!”

Before Barrick could even take a breath, let alone try to struggle loose from his captors, a humming cloud of arrows flew toward Chaven a hundred paces away; but although the darts seemed to fly right at him, they landed in a great spatter of loose stones without even touching him. The autarch bellowed in rage and had them fire again, but these, too, could not seem to find Chaven.

“You cannot strike him!” The face of the possessed king looked bloated and inhuman, as if something pressed out from behind the skin. Barrick had seen something like it once, when a drowned man had been fished out of the East Lagoon, swollen into something far more grotesque than any mere dead body. “I have misdirected the eyes of your soldiers!”

“I am sorry, Father,” Barrick whispered. “Sorry, sorry ...”

Untouched by arrows, Chaven seemed nevertheless for the first time to be aware of what was around him. He slowed his already plodding pace, then stopped and turned to look back at the autarch’s platform.

“Where… ?” He turned slowly from side to side but didn’t seem to recognize anything he saw. “Why am I here?”

“You are where you should be, good and faithful servant,” said the god shining out through Olin’s skin. “Take the Godstone to the Shining Man. Let them be joined again, so that the doorway is completed after all these centuries. ...”

“But… but why does it hurt so? You promised me bliss… !”

“And bliss you shall have. Only complete the doorway.”

Barrick didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew that the physician was being used somehow as a helpless catspaw and that neither of the monsters that stood on the platform, mortal or immortal, could be allowed to triumph. “Stop!” He struggled until the strangler’s wire cut deep into his throat. “Chaven, don’t do it! You are being tricked… !”

Something hard struck him—the butt of a Leopard guard’s gun—and Barrick felt his legs turn limp so that he would have fallen but for the metal noose. A red haze washed over his sight. The physician turned as if he had not heard him and continued across the rocky island toward the huge base of the Shining Man, which had begun to glimmer and pulse.

“Hurry!” screeched the autarch. “Stop him!”

Guards tumbled down the steps of the platform to pursue Chaven, but as their feet touched the stones, they began to waver and stumble like drunken men, then straggled off in all directions as though struck blind.

“Their wits are broken,” crowed the god in Olin’s body. “They will never find him. And once the Godstone has rejoined the rest of the Shining Man, you will see what you have truly done, little mortal king!” It loosed the terrible music of its laughter again. “Self-important mortals—do you even know what the Shining Man is? It is not a god, but the shadow of a god’s last moment on this earth. It is the mark left on the world from the moment wounded, dying Crooked used his own essence to close the door between this world and the worlds beyond the void. But now Crooked is finally dead, and as soon as the Shining Man is whole once more, the essence he left behind will vanish, too ...!”

“Why do you do this to me?” Sulepis screamed. The autarch leaped at the god’s throat but pulled back his hands with an outraged squeal of pain, waggling them as if they had been burned. “Beast! Liar! Why do you thwart me?”

“Because you are a presumptuous fool!” The spirit in Olin was laughing again. “You planned for years—I prepared a hundred times longer! You thought to prison me in a body but did not bother to secure the Godstone, and without it, you have no power over me!” Colors were now running up and down through the Shining Man as Chaven drew nearer to it, milky blues and streaks of dark but radiant purple, even little flashes of red flickering just beneath the surface like summer lightning, as though the great, man-shaped stone were stirring into life.

The strangler finally let Barrick drop to his knees. He gasped in air once more, and the red tide before his eyes began to recede.

Then a new figure stepped into view from a crevice near the foot of the massive Shining Man as though it had been waiting there all along, a strange man Barrick had never seen before, ragged and bearded like a desert oracle. Chaven himself was so deeply in the grip of compulsion that he did not even see the newcomer, but it did not matter—the newcomer saw him very well. The stranger stepped out in front of Chaven, and for a moment they both halted, staring at each other. Then the bearded apparition lifted a piece of very ordinary stone and smashed it down on the physician’s head. Chaven slumped to the ground still clutching the Godstone, but the stranger only bent over and continued hitting him with the rock, over and over again until even in the midst of so many horrors Barrick had to turn away. When he turned back, the stranger was standing over the physician’s body in triumph, the Godstone now clutched in his bloody hands.

“By all my ancestors,” the autarch said in astonishment, “… that is Daikonas Vo!”

“Noooooo!” Now it was the turn of the thing in Olin’s body to sound astonished and dismayed, its voice suddenly barely human as it bellowed and hissed. “It cannot ...! No! It is not written ...!”

The bearded man lifted the gleaming statue over his head and began to stagger back toward the autarch’s platform like the winner of some village festival carrying his prize. The guards the autarch had dispatched to stop Chaven were still wandering like madmen and did not even seem to see him. “Vo!” the autarch cried, his voice throbbing with relief and joy. “Daikonas Vo, my wonderful soldier! You shall have a thousand gifts for this! Gold, virgins, spices—anything you name!”

The one called Vo stopped, then lowered the thing in his hands and squinted at it as though he had only just realized he carried a heavy stone statue. He raised his dull gaze to Sulepis himself.

The thing in Olin’s body squirmed in frustration and rage. “Do not give it to him!” it cried. “Why will you not do my bidding?”

Vo looked at the god curiously, but then turned and spoke to the autarch. “You put a thing inside me, Golden One. It is killing me.” Vo looked down at his belly. “No, that is a lie. It has already killed me. I can feel it.”

“No, that is not true!” The autarch waved his hands in a fretful way that made him for the first time look like the young man he was. “A’lat, come and tell him.” He beckoned to the desert priest. “Tell him! Tell my good soldier that we can make him right again. We will cure you, Captain Vo. You have nothing to fear. You will rise high in my service—none will be higher! Do you wish to be master of all this northern land? My viceroy? Nothing easier! Where is Pinimmon Vash? Tell him to bring out the Bishakh charter and I will make it so. Vash? Burning Nushash curse that old stick, where has he gone… ?”

Vo staggered a little, and now Barrick could clearly see that the man could barely stand. “And the girl from the Hive… ?”

“Of course,” said the autarch. “The girl. Do you want her for yourself? You shall have her, to do with as you wish. She is yours—she is no use to me now, in any case… !”

Daikonas Vo took a few more steps toward the men, lowering the statue as though it grew heavier by the moment. Some of the Xixian soldiers still on the platform had their arrows nocked, waiting for a command from the autarch to kill him.

“You did not need her,” Vo said, so quietly it was hard to hear him.

“What?” The autarch’s ears were clearly not as sharp as Barrick’s. “What did he say? Do you want more, Vo? Name it!”

“You did not even need her.” The bearded man spoke so softly that nearly everyone on the island fell silent to hear him. “You put a demon in my gut to make me deliver the girl to you… and you did not even need her for your little mummers’ show.” He sagged at the waist and the knees, bending until Barrick was certain he was about to collapse. Then he slowly straightened. “And now you want this, too,” Vo murmured.

“Leopards… !” said the autarch quietly, but his voice was far from calm. “Be ready ...”

“But you shall not have it.” Daikonas Vo turned sharply and heaved the statue back toward the Shining Man as hard as he could. As the autarch and the others watched in gape-mouthed astonishment, it spun through the air toward the suddenly darkened Shining Man; then, as the statue vanished into the rock’s great black shadow, the entire stone mass erupted in blinding light. The Xixian soldiers closest to it stumbled back, clutching their eyes, weeping and shrieking, but the autarch let out only a single, agonized shout of despair.

Even as the dazzling glare spread, the cavern began to shiver as if something gigantic had picked it up and begun to shake it. The platform pitched, and those still standing there fought to keep their balance. The blaze that was the Shining Man grew brighter still until its harsh glare had driven away everything else, until it seemed as though the sun itself had been kindled in the great cave.

The Fireflower voices filled Barrick’s head.

“Crooked is gone!”

“Woe! The way has finally been opened! Woe to all the earth!”

“The gods will be free again!”

The streaming white light suddenly faded to something duller, a swirl of violet and indigo like a bruise on the air, then even that began to die. The shaking of the cavern became less. For a moment only a tattered black hole remained in the air where the Shining Man had stood, then the body of Barrick’s father fell to the ground beside him with a noise like a sack of wet meal. The hole in the air at the center of the island filled with hot, red light, then something stepped through it, bigger than a man and growing every moment, a banked white fire in the shape of a beautiful youth who wore rippling flames as a cloak.

“I MUST NOW DECLINE YOUR GIFT OF A MORTAL BODY,” the god announced, towering over all their heads now and still growing. His voice was so sweet that Barrick wanted to impale himself on it and die pierced by its music. “FOR AS YOU CAN SEE, I CAN NOW CREATE MY OWN. ...”

“No! You are mine, Deathgod!” shrieked the autarch.

The youth laughed, his hair floating around his head in tufts of pale flame. “I TOLD YOU THAT IF YOU COULD NOT NAME ME, YOU COULD NOT TAME ME. I AM NOT KERNIOS, WHO STILL SLUMBERS WITH THE REST OF THE GODS, ALTHOUGH PERHAPS ONE DAY I WILL WAKE MY FATHER TO SERVE ME WITH THE REST OF THE COURT. NO, YOU FOOLISH MORTAL! YOU TRIED TO ENSLAVE A GOD, BUT IT IS YOU WHO HAVE BEEN COZEND BY ME—THE TRICKSTER, AS THE MEWLING QAR NAMED ME. NOW ZOSIM SALA-MANDROS IS FREE! AND YOUR MORTAL ARMIES AND YOUR IDIOT CURSES AND SPELLS MEAN NOTHING TO ME!”

I have met this thing before, in a dream in the city of Sleep, thought Barrick, despairing. “Can you kill the darkness?” it taunted me. “Can you destroy the solid earth or murder f lame… ?” And it’s right. Now that Crooked is dead and the way is open, we can’t stop it… !

“COME TO ME NOW, LITTLE SOLDIER!” Zosim thundered. He snatched up Daikonas Vo, the man who had freed him, and lifted him high into the air. “YOU HAVE SERVED ME WELL—SO I GIVE YOU A GIFT! YOU WILL BECOME PART OF A GOD!” He threw Vo into his flaming maw and crunched him up like a roasted chestnut. “BE PROUD!” Zosim laughed, belching out a cloud of fiery amusement. “NOW YOU ARE IMMORTAL!”

The monstrous figure grew, and the air burned hotter and hotter; men screamed and burst into flame even as they tried to flee him. Now a handsome youth as tall as a temple minaret, the god of poetry and deceit stared down at their helpless struggles and laughed until the very stones of the cavern trembled.

41. Snakes and Spiders

The thing that had been following him drew closer, and for the first time Beetledown could see it clearly when he turned. It was a gray devil owl, a huge bird with eyes that shone as brightly as lamps even in the near darkness.

Devil owls were night-sky hunters—he had never heard of one so far beneath the ground—but it was foolish to waste time wondering why it was here. The silent predator was right behind him, nimbly matching every swerve that Muckle Brown made and never falling behind more than a short distance. Beetledown could feel the bat laboring as she tried to stay ahead of the monstrous bird, but the owl seemed to glide almost without effort. Three times now it had come close enough to climb above Beetledown’s head, ready to drop and strike. Only Muckle Brown’s last-moment spins out from beneath it had saved him, and he was less than halfway back to the place Chert had told him to go. Owls could hunt in total darkness if they were familiar with the territory, and with their silent wings and keen hearing, they didn’t need much light even in a strange place. Long before he reached his goal, the hunting bird would catch them in its sharp talons, and then both he and the flittermouse would be torn to pieces by that great, curved beak.

It was by far the most frightening journey of Beetledown’s adventurous life. He clung tightly to the flittermouse’s back, his belly pressed flat against her shoulders and neck to reduce the pull of the wind and to keep him close as she swung rapidly through the narrower spaces of these stony depths, but although there were points where the owl fell back a short way, he and Muckle Brown never got far ahead: the creature was strong, pursuing them with a relentlessness he had never seen in one of the great birds before, as though it had a Beetledown of its own strapped to its back and goading it along. He had already tried twice to hide in small spaces the owl couldn’t reach, but it had waited so patiently that both times he had bolted back into flight—he simply didn’t have the time to wait.

When he dared to, Beetledown swung back out into the great open spaces of the chimney that had led him in and out of the depths, then climbed as swiftly as he could to gain much-needed upward distance before the monster caught up with him and forced him into the narrower, safer side passages once more. That was also the only way he could keep moving in the right direction; at this frenetic pace, even his own excellent instincts could make no sense of the twists and turns of the smaller tunnels, and he was nearly as frightened of getting lost as he was of being caught and eaten straightaway.

But did it even matter? Hadn’t the Funderling magister told him, “It will not matter,” or something like it? “Now we are all dead,” Cinnabar had said.

All? What did that mean, Beetledown wondered even as he clung to his careening mount. Did it mean the Rooftoppers, too? Could this be the end of his own people—had he no chance of success at all… ?

High Lord, do you truly wish nowt more for thy faithful folk ...?

His prayer was interrupted by a purr of air, just loud enough to be noticed. Beetledown did not hesitate or turn to look—he knew the sound of an owl’s wings close by. He yanked the flittermouse’s head to one side and they fell away just as the spread claws drove past, one of the rear talons raking Muckle Brown’s wing, making the little creature squeak in pain and breathless fear.

Can’t outfly un, he thought. Can’t outwait un, either. Only time afore it claps its foot on us and then it be back to the nest with supper. Beetledown reached back to try to find the hilt of his sword, but it was hard to grab it as they whirled in and out between the stalactites that dangled from the ceiling of this long, narrow chamber, and which were the only things keeping the devil owl at bay. At last he found the scabbard, which had slipped almost all the way down to his back during the bouncing flight, and then managed to find the hilt; when the next moment of relatively straight flying came he braced himself and tugged out Queen Sanasu’s sewing needle.

Never drew a royal sword afore now, he thought sadly. Ah, well, at least un’ll get some use ’fore the end…

He dropped into the first side-branching hollow that appeared to extend more than a few yards, grateful to be riding a flittermouse, which was better by far in such places than any other steed. He did his best to keep close to the top of the tunnel—little more than a wide crack—but it was not always possible; as the bat dove to avoid a series of stone curtains ranged one behind the other, the owl attacked again. Beetledown whirled, almost tumbling from his saddle despite being tied in, then braced and lunged. He managed just to pink the owl’s knobby foot behind the claw as it swept past. The bird let out a shrill squawk of pain and beat its wings hard, dropping behind them once more.

Un won’t make yon mistake again, he thought. But un’ll come back, doubt it not.

It was like his worst childhood nightmares. Young Beetledown had often dreamed of being hunted by owls and other birds, of running with helpless, weary legs across broad, open spaces with nowhere to hide as winged shadows grew closer overhead. This time, though, he would not awaken to the comfort of his brothers’ and sisters’ warm, sleeping forms around him.

Beetledown had now seen the bird several times. It was clearly not being guided by any rider, but wouldn’t stop chasing him, either. Was the creature sickened? Mad? Any other owl would have given up long ago.

Twice more it came close enough for him to jab it with his blade, once more in the foot and once when its immense wingtip swept right past his face. Both times the bird let out a cry of rage and protest but did not abandon the chase.

Muckle Brown faltered, lost some height, then struggled to get back to the ceiling again, but the owl had taken advantage of the momentary lapse and had once more pulled above it. Beetledown knew he had only a few instants at the most, so he pulled the reins and turned the bat into the next crevice that led in the direction of the wide chimney, knowing it was his only chance: with the owl above them in this narrow space and his mount tiring so quickly, they would not survive the next strike.

To his exhausted relief, Beetledown had guessed correctly: a moment later they spun out into the wider, echoing darkness of the great chasm, but the owl was right behind them now and there was no way they could outfly it to the top of the chimney… if there even was a top to it. He banked toward the walls, hoping to find outcroppings along the side that would offer some protection as they flew, but they were still a long distance from the Funderlings’ work camp and the bat was exhausted, barely able to keep its wings moving. Even without the owl following them, Muckle Brown would die soon unless she could rest.

Suddenly, a vast winged shape dropped down on him from one side, catching him completely by surprise—he had not known they were so exposed. Beetledown had only a moment to reach out with his blade but he missed his thrust. The owl’s talons snapped shut, failing to close around the bat, but they caught Beetledown’s saddle strap and tore him roughly from Muckle Brown’s back. The bat screeched in pain and fear and tumbled down and away from him, but for a moment Beetledown himself continued to fly upward, as though he might somehow continue his desperate journey even without a mount. A moment later he reached the top of his rise and began to fall again, spinning helplessly through empty air, down, down, down…

“Why have I never been here?” the princess asked Chert as they made their way down along the narrow path that circled the immense hole he had come to think of as the Pit. “How could I be so ignorant of a path that climbs down deep into the earth from my own family’s tomb?”

“This path was built even longer ago than the Stormstone Roads I took you through to reach the inner keep,” Chert explained. The madness of these final hours made it almost seem no more than an ordinary confidence. “My ancestors of those oldest days were frightened that… that your ancestors planned to keep us trapped in Funderling Town, just as we feared it in Stormstone’s time. We wanted our own ways of getting in and out.”

“You did it so you could break a royal decree?”

“With respect, Highness, you would have done the same if the pick was in the other hand, as we say. Any people will try to protect themselves. That’s why we built the Stormstone Roads, and this path, too.”

“Explain to me.”

Chert did, wondering all the time what the future would be for his folk, if there even was one. If the Big Folk know everything about us, then we will be at their mercy. And I have done much to make it that way.

“Because you feared us,” she said flatly when he had finished. “All this work, all those workers injured and even dead, because you feared my family.” She shook her head. “That is a grim legacy.”

The way she said it gave him a little hope. “You are not to blame for what your ancestors did.”

“On the contrary, our only claim to the throne is what our ancestors did! If history is meaningless, then so is the Eddon dynasty.”

Chert shrugged. “Then perhaps each generation must earn its throne anew.”

Her eyes widened a little. “You surprise me, Master Blue Quartz. That is a truly ...”

Princess Briony never finished what she had begun to say. They had been making their way around an outcropping that forced them uncomfortably close to the inner edge of the path, but now the light of Chert’s torch revealed a dark shape sprawled before them.

“By the Hot Lord!” Chert said, then felt a pang at using such blasphemy here of all places, only a short distance above the Mysteries and the Sea in the Depths. “It’s the fellow you fought—the lord protector!”

Briony carefully nudged the figure with her boot. “He was no one’s protector.”

Hendon Tolly’s one good eye flicked open. Chert gasped and jumped back, but the lord protector did not move. Tolly seemed to stare up at them, but it was hard to know whether he saw anything. Drying blood and the hilt of Briony’s small dagger obscured his other eye.

“You tried to destroy everything I love,” she said. “But you failed, Hendon. You will spend eternity with the rest of your kind, snakes and spiders, down there in the dark.” She yanked the small dagger out of his eye socket, then before the wound even began to bleed again, she set her booted foot against his chest and shoved him over the side and down into the dark chasm.

Chert’s footsteps were growing heavier and heavier with each yard they descended. “Highness,” he said, slowing to a halt, “I really cannot let you go any deeper. We must have already reached the depth of Funderling Town—perhaps we could cross over somewhere and then go back that way.”

“Where Durstin Crowel and many of Tolly’s other murderous followers are preparing a last stand? Why would I want to do such a thing? Are you saying that we cannot get to my father and brother and the Qar going this way?” She turned on him. “Did you lie to me?”

“No, Mistress, no.” Chert shook his head. He saw more than a little of Opal in this young woman (though it seemed presumptuous to say so.) Both of them had iron in their spines and neither of them seemed to expect much good out of him. “But every moment that passes brings us closer to some sort of disaster.” Now that the moment had come, he did not want to tell her. Such a terrible decision—and the reigning monarch had to hear of it from the simple Guildsman who had made it in her place! “Will you simply trust me when I say we should go no farther? That the danger is too great?”

She still stared at him. He saw no softening at all. “Will I trust you, Chert Blue Quartz? Are you mad? What does that have to do with anything? Almost all who remain of my family are deep in the earth below me, fighting for their lives. Why under Heaven should I stop here?”

Chert saw that she would not budge, let alone turn back, and as he had learned from his life with another stern-minded woman, he also knew he had run out of choices.

“Stay just a few moments, then, Highness, and I will tell you why we should go no farther ...”

When he had finished, the princess stared. Chert could not even count all the different humors on her face—fear, surprise, and anger were only the most obvious.

“Is this true?” she demanded. “You Funderlings will bring it down? Collapse the very stones beneath my family’s home? With all who live in it still here? And my family down below at the heart of it all?” Her eyes narrowed. “And you say this was your plan?”

“Yes—but it was to happen only if there was no other hope, Princess. And it was more complicated than that—more subtle, I promise… !” He did not want to tell her that he thought it was too late for anything now anyway—too late to defeat the autarch, certainly, but too late for his own desperate idea as well. The strength was running out of him like a seam of dry sand. What did any of it matter? He had thought about and dreaded so many things for so long, but had never imagined he might find himself too far from all those he loved in this final hour even to die with them. Folly. It had all been folly.

Princess Briony blinked, nodded once, then turned and resumed walking down the path that wound around the Pit. Chert stirred. “Princess? Where are you going?”

“Where do you think I’m going, Funderling?” she called back over her shoulder. She did not sound as if she thought much of Chert Blue Quartz at this moment. “I’m going to die with my family. You may die as you choose.”

“But, Highness, if the gunflour works and the rocks fall… !”

She turned on him, her face contorted with fury. For the first time Chert saw that more than just Princess Briony’s clothes had changed since the first time they’d met. She had grown not just older, but… deeper, somehow. Stronger. And something he could see in her now but not recognize frightened him more than a little. “You have taken a risk that was not yours to take, Funderling,” she said. “Now let me do what I must do.”

“But it must already be too late… !”

“Quiet, you!” She took a step in his direction, and for a moment Chert was actually frightened she might harm him. “Until my father takes the throne again, I am the princess regent of this kingdom. All who live above and below, your folk and my folk, are mine to protect—but you and your fellow stonecutters have taken that from me. Now leave me alone… or if you will not do me that courtesy, at least be silent.” She turned again and stalked off down the uneven trail into the dark, a knife clutched in each hand. Chert hesitated for a long moment, then hurried after her.

Aesi’uah waited for her mistress to return from the dreamlands. The daughter of ancient Sleep had waited patiently as Saqri and the others had sacrificed themselves, as the autarch’s ritual had gone forward, even as the screams of terror echoed through the cavern when the strange, gleaming shape on the island began to grow, as if the Shining Man had taken on monstrous, immortal flesh. Aesi’uah did not mind waiting: she could do little else. She was not a warrior but an eremite and could only wait until her mistress should ask her for her help.

Yasammez’s eyes flicked open, black and deep, but she remained where she was a long time, sitting cross-legged on the rocky ground at the foot of the cliff beneath the Maze. At last she rose.

“I am going to die now,” she announced. “Take any others of the People you can find who still can walk. Tell them to carry my sweet Saqri and the other wounded and retreat toward the surface as swiftly as they can.”

Aesi’uah felt quite sure that Saqri was beyond help, but she bowed to her mistress’ request. “What of the Guard of Elementals? I can feel them pressing you for an answer.”

Yasammez shook her head. “I have given them my answer, which is no—I will not use the Fever Egg. The mortal Barrick Eddon has taught me something.”

“Truly, Mistress?”

Yasammez’s smile was like a knife slash. In the distance Xixian soldiers were dying in flames at the hands of a jubilant god, their screeching like the far-off cries of birds. “Truly,” she said. “Their short lives seem to mean as much to them as the endless spans of the gods themselves—more perhaps. What right do I have, after my own long, Heaven-granted span, to take that away? Perhaps they will even make some accommodation with the returning gods and write an ending I cannot foresee. Our folk have suffered the Great Defeat, but perhaps their story will be different.”

Yasammez slid Whitefire from her belt. It glinted like white jade, like a fallen shard of the moon. She held it out and looked it up and down. “Long ago, this mighty blade was wielded by the sun god. It killed other gods.” She nodded. “Longbeard himself fell to this blade, and he was said to be the Heaven’s greatest warrior. We shall see if it has one last fight in it—if it can spill the blood of one more immortal. A pity that I do not have the sun god’s strength as well.”

She turned to Aesi’uah. “Approach me.” Yasammez then bent and, to the eremite’s amazement, gently kissed her brow. “You have been a good servant, Aesi’uah—one of the best I have ever known in all my uncounted years. I hope that when you find your death, it is a kind one. If my many-times-great-granddaughter lives beyond this hour, tell her the People died nobly today. I could have hoped for nothing better.” Yasammez turned and began to walk away down the rocky slope toward the silver sea, which was beginning to steam with the Trickster god’s spreading flames; after a few steps she stopped and turned. “If the manchild yet lives and you meet him, tell him that I remember his words. I have decided to let his people as well as my own find their ends in their own ways. I hope he understands the burden he must now carry.”

And then Crooked’s daughter went striding away once more, down to the misty, silvered sea, toward the god she had already faced once and had said she hoped never to see again. Her aspect grew around her as she went, swirling, spreading, dark and fierce as a thundercloud, a small, inky blot set against mounting fires.

Beetledown plummeted through the air tumbling end over end, and in that hurtling instant knew that he had failed: even if he miraculously fell onto the narrow path instead of down into the abyss, even should he survive the cracked bones, he would never be able to make the trip all the way up to the Funderling camp on foot.

But then something caught him.

It folded around him, soft and warm but solid, and for a moment he thought he must have fallen against the owl that had attacked him—nothing else made sense. But a moment later he was lifted up high in the air and the hand that held him opened and he found himself staring into the glowing light of one of the Funderling corals, which shone from a lantern on the head of the pale-haired figure who stared down at him.

“Hello, Beetledown,” said Flint. “I thought I’d find you here.”

Beetledown could only stare at the familiar, unlikely face in astonishment. “But… Chert’s son, th’art. What dost tha here?”

“I had a feeling I should be here,” the boy said. “And I was right—the Trickster god guessed your task and sent the bird to stop you. But there is no time to talk now. You must be on your way—hurry! Brother Antimony is waiting.”

Beetledown couldn’t help wondering if he might in truth be lying somewhere stunned or even dead and dreaming this whole thing. “Can’t. I’ve no way for getting there. Yon owl has killed my mount.”

Flint lifted his other hand up into the glow of the coral lamp and uncurled his fingers to reveal the brown, furry shape of Muckle Brown. Startled, the bat tried to spread its wings to leap free, but Flint gently closed his fingers over it again. “No,” he said. “I caught her, too.”

Beetledown could not help himself—he whooped with laughter. “What miracle is this? Something the Lord of the Peak has done, as’s not happened since the old days?”

“Perhaps,” Flint said. “I’m not certain. But you’d better go.”

“The owl… ?”

“It’s gone. Once it knocked you out of the sky, it had done what it was set to do. It’s been released now. I don’t think you’ll see it again.”

“Then help me get back onto yon flittermouse. Perhaps someday, Chert’s boy, tha willst be good enough to explain this all to me.”

“Perhaps.” Flint nodded slowly. “But that’s something I can’t see.”

Muckle Brown was unmistakably weary, but with Beetledown back in the saddle and the owl gone, she seemed willing to try to fly again. “I’ll go better slow,” Beetledown said. “She’s barely able to scrape air.”

“Not too slow,” Flint said, getting ready to fling bat and rider into the air once more. “Many are waiting on you. And when you see Mama Opal, tell her not to wait for me—she has to go with everyone else. But promise her she’ll see me again.”

Before Beetledown had time to make sense of all that, he was spinning up into the darkness in a whirl and crack of leathery wings.

42. The Pale Blade

Muckle brown was barely able to keep flapping her wings when he finally brought her spiraling down on the makeshift table where the Funderling monk Brother Antimony sat staring at a series of plans scratched on slate. The bat landed heavily and pulled her wings in close, interested only in breathing, careless of what might happen next. Beetledown rolled out of the saddle and scrambled down onto the flat stone.

“By the Elders!” said Antimony, startled. “What is this… ?

“I am Beetledown the Bowman, Brother—we have met before.” He slipped off his pack and lifted out the Astion, his arms trembling at its weight. “This, from Cinnabar. Un says the stones must fall now—that the battle in the deeps be lost.”

“But… but ...” Antimony was clearly overwhelmed. “Lost? Is that true?”

“I was there but a short while. That’s what un told me.” The Astion passed on, Beetledown sagged. “Hast tha any water to drink? I will share it with my mount.”

“What? Ah, of course.” Antimony rose. “But first I must deliver this news. The men are waiting. They have been stalling so as not to tear everything down, hoping that Chert would succeed… !” He shook his head. “Elders! This is a terrible hour. But we must do what we promised… we must… !” The Funderling monk was still muttering to himself as he ran out to the main part of the cavern where the workers were gathered.

Beetledown crawled across the stone until he could lean against Muckle Brown, who still seemed interested only in regaining her breath. “Th’art good, leatherwing,” he told the creature. “Hast done well. Hast done nobly.” He patted her. “There be my good girl. And soon summat wet coming.”

Soon the end of the world, too, or so it seemed. But at least they would both get a drink of water first.

The names and tales flared in Barrick’s mind like details picked out by lightning—Zosim the Trickster stealing the war chariot of Volios, Zosim covering himself in flowers so he could hide and watch Morna the goddess of winter bathe, after which he raped her. He had once disguised his voice to protect himself from the wrath of Perin Skylord, claiming to be Perin’s father Sveros returned from the void; now Zosim had disguised himself again, pretending to be Kernios to fool the Autarch of Xis into releasing him back into the world.

The Trickster had returned and the Fireflower voices inside Barrick were horrified: in the old days only the greater powers of the other gods had held Zosim back and thwarted his cruelest whims. Now he was alone in the world, the last of the gods. He was unstoppable.

Only the autarch and the last of his select Leopard troops still stood before the terrifying menace of Zosim Salamandros unbound. Most of the autarch’s ordinary soldiers had already fled in panic, many of them trying to wade through the silvery blood of Kupilas to escape the island, only to find themselves caught in its strangely viscous grip and pulled down. Zosim had picked out others for even harsher treatment: as he pointed at them they burst into flames with a noise like a muted thunder-clap, their dying shrieks lost in the god’s loud merriment.

On the far side of the silver sea, the remaining Qar and Vansen’s Funderlings were also in full retreat. The Xixians they had been fighting only moments before ran with them, no longer interested in anything but saving their own lives. Men and fairies were already struggling with each other for the dangling climbing-ropes, desperate to get back up to the Maze and the tunnels beyond.

Barrick’s strength was finally returning. He twisted until he could stretch his bonds as tightly as possible; after a few painful moments, the ropes snapped. The Fireflower ancestors, still stunned by the appearance of the Trickster god, were little more than a muddle of confused noise in his head. He found his sword where one of the panicked guards had dropped it and used it to cut Ferras Vansen’s bonds, then carefully did the same for the motionless black-haired girl.

Vansen rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. The girl did not.

“Qinnitan.” Barrick knelt beside her, put his face so close he could smell the delicate saltiness of her skin. “Can you hear? Qinnitan, don’t leave me!” But it was useless: if she still breathed he could not detect it. The god forcing his way through into the world had burned in Barrick’s own thoughts like a glowing ember—how much worse must it have been for her, specially prepared to be a vessel of that god? He blinked rapidly, unable to look at her slack features any longer. Fate could not be so cruel—or could it?

Of course it could. It always has been.

He turned then to the other figure that lay beside her. His father’s beard had far more gray than he remembered, but otherwise it was the face he knew so well, one he had loved and hated in almost equal measure. Olin, too, seemed dead, but Barrick could sense a tiny pulse still throbbing beneath his ear. Was there anything left of him inside this near-corpse, or had the god burned it away while he occupied him? Was anything left besides barely breathing meat… ?

A tremendous splash startled him from his confusion. The monstrous, beautiful youth had waded into the middle of the silver sea to snatch up a handful of Xixian soldiers who had been trying to swim to safety. The god held the tiny, thrashing figures close to his beaming face.

“DO YOU LIKE THE TASTE OF HEAVENLY BLOOD?” Zosim boomed. “IT IS A HEADY NECTAR FOR MORTALS. DO YOU HOPE IT WILL CHANGE YOU? LET US SEE!”

Even as he spoke, the shrieks of the terrified Xixians altered as they began to stretch and lose their human forms. Barbs of the silvery blood, stretching and growing inside them like thornbushes, began to pierce their flesh. Their eyes bulged with terror and their limbs flailed, but they could not escape what was already inside them. Tendrils of twining silver sprung out of them like vines, lifting them up into the air until they dangled on thorns of their own solidified and shiny blood, like the larder of a butcher bird.

Vansen stared helplessly at the dying Xixians as if he would never move again.

“You must get Qinnitan and my father away from here,” Barrick told him. “Take the boat and cross. Lie still. Hope the god doesn’t see you.”

Now Ferras Vansen turned to look at him, his face pale, his eyes full of the horrors he had seen. “What will you do, Prince Barrick?”

“Whatever I must.” He could not help laughing at the idiocy of his own words—what on earth could he do against a god? “Take the girl first—I’ll protect my father. Go. Hurry!”

As Vansen staggered off with Qinnitan’s limp body in his arms, a huge shadow passed over Barrick’s head. He turned, raising his sword, but it was only the god stepping back onto the island. The Trickster was headed toward the autarch and his remaining men, who had just reached the makeshift camp where they had first come up onto the island.

“The cannon, curse you!” Sulepis shouted at his minions. “Kill that thing!”

“OH, YES, SHOW ME WHAT MEN HAVE LEARNED TO DO WHILE I SLEPT!” cried the god, laughing again. “CROOKED THE ARTIFICER SEEMS TO HAVE TAUGHT YOU CREATURES WELL!”

But even though the autarch’s men tried to do as he ordered, their cannon had never been meant to fire so high in the air. At its greatest elevation it still did not point higher than the god’s knee. Zosim had now grown taller than the famous statues of the Three Brothers in the center of the great Trigonate temple in Syan. The cannon roared, but because the god was moving, the great cannonball hissed past and crashed against the far cavern wall, sending a shower of stone down onto the fleeing Xixians, killing many of them.

The autarch and his guards ran toward the tunnel that led back from the island to the Maze, but before they could reach it, the gigantic Zosim stepped past them and snatched up the cannon that had just been fired. He crushed the great bronze gun into a shapeless mass and then shoved it into the crevice like a bung into a barrel, leaving the autarch and his soldiers with nowhere to go.

“SCATTER, ANTS!” Zosim called down to them, laughing, then began plucking up the nearest of the soldiers, deforming them into ghastly, inhuman shapes even as they screeched and wept in his hands.

Barrick raced across the rocky crest of the island toward the huge figure, his fairy sword gripped tightly in his hand. Vansen was shouting behind him, but he knew the god must be stopped here. In a short time, Zosim would run out of victims, and his thoughts would turn to the castle above.

“Just take my father and the girl!” Barrick called to Vansen. “There is nothing else you can do here.”

“I can’t leave you!”

“For the love of the gods, man, why not?”

“Your sister told me not to do it! And I promised!”

Vansen’s words kindled something in Barrick, a small train of thoughts that nevertheless stopped him in mid-stride. It’s true… I am both. Qar and man. The blood in me ... it is her blood, too. Briony. I remember… !

His walk became a run, as though he could really make a difference—as if he, a mortal, could actually fight against a god.

A pair of unnatural shapes dropped from Zosim’s gigantic hand and landed on the stony ground before him—two Xixian soldiers who had been squeezed by the god until they looked like crabs made of melted brown candle wax. They scuttled toward him. Most horrible of all were the helpless, miserable expressions Barrick could still see on their warped faces.

“AND WHERE ARE YOU, LITTLE AUTARCH?” crooned the god, sifting with his immense fingers through the pile of squirming, screaming Leopards and priests he had made. Zosim picked one up and examined it, but shook his massive, fiery head. The thrashing creature in his hand puffed into flames and began to melt and run through the god’s fingers like warm grease. He picked up a particularly fat figure—it might have been the Xixian high priest—and popped it like a grape, then licked his blazing fingertips, grinning. “SPLENDID! IT TASTES LIKE WORSHIP!”

“Face one who is not afraid of you!” Barrick scrambled up the slope toward the monstrous being crouched beside a pile of shrieking captives. “Turn, Trickster. My ancestor defeated you and his blood still runs strong!”

But before Barrick could even swing his sword, Zosim darted out a hand like baking-hot marble and snatched him up. The pain was so fierce that it was all Barrick could do not to scream like a terrified child, but his skin didn’t seem to burn: Zosim clearly did not want to lose this entertaining moment so quickly. Zosim lifted Barrick closer, his face as big as a house. “ANCESTOR, YOU SAY? AND WHO WAS THAT? SOME MORTAL WHO PISSED IN THE CORNER OF ONE OF MY TEMPLES? SOME VILLAGE LOUT WHO USED MY NAME AS A CURSE, THEN COWERED THE REST OF HIS LIFE IN TERROR I MIGHT HEAR OF IT?”

“No,” Barrick said, struggling in the creature’s grip. “No, you piece of filth. Kupilas was my ancestor—Crooked, who beat you and bound you!”

“TRULY?” Zosim seemed pleased. He lifted Barrick closer, took a deep sniff of him, each nostril as wide as an arrow port. “AH, YOU DO STINK OF HIM. HOW AMUSING! SO HIS BLOOD STILL CREEPS AND CRAWLS THE EARTH IN MORTAL FLESH! BUT CROOKED IS DEAD, AND I AM FREE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT, LITTLE ANT?”

“This!” said Barrick, and used both hands to thrust his sword as deep into the monster’s hand as he could. With a rumble of surprise and discomfort, Zosim shook Barrick free and let him fall. The landing knocked the breath from him and for a moment Barrick could only lie on the stones, gasping, but he had the small satisfaction of knowing he had annoyed his gigantic enemy.

“THAT WAS A NASTY TRICK, LITTLE ANT. YES, THIS IS A REAL BODY MADE FROM THE DUST AND CLAY OF THIS WORLD. I CAN FEEL THINGS—AND I FELT THAT, YOU LITTLE MORTAL MOUSE TURD.” Zosim lifted his foot, ready to crush him. Helpless, Barrick could only look up at the shadowy shape, big as boat being winched up into dry dock. “BUT SOON THE REST OF MY ESSENCE WILL HAVE CROSSED THE VOID AND FILLED THIS BODY,” the god rumbled, swaying a little as he waited to bring his foot down. “WHEN THAT HAS HAPPENED, EVEN WHITEFIRE, THE SUN LORD HIMSELF, COULD NOT HURT ME ...”

“I am not the sun god,” a new voice cried; loud as a trumpet’s call. “But I carry his sword. Come and taste its edge!”

As Zosim turned in surprise, Barrick rolled out from beneath the shadow of the god’s great heel and dragged himself as far away as he could. Yasammez stood at the edge of the Sea in the Depths, her face the only clear thing in the murk of her black armor and cloak; her blade, a clean slice of white light, was in her hand.

“YOU WILL DIE, OLD WOMAN.” The god sounded pleased, as though he had finally discovered something in this mortal world that interested him. “EVEN WITH UNCLE WHITEFIRE’S PALE PIG-STICKER, YOU CANNOT HOPE TO INCONVENIENCE ME!”

“Perhaps not,” said Yasammez. “But perhaps as you said, that body is more vulnerable than you wish anyone to know, little earthbound god.”

Laughing, Zosim threw back his beautiful head and the flames leaped higher, so that the stones of the cavern gleamed with yellow light far above him. “This weakness is a nice idea, old woman—but untrue. Come! Show me your mettle!” He held out his hand and a great golden sword appeared there.

Yasammez stepped into the underground sea. The thick, shining liquid flowed away from her like a retreating tide, but even as she neared the center of the Sea in the Depths Yasammez did not sink between the hovering waves; instead she appeared to be growing, so that by the time she reached the far side she was almost half Zosim’s size. A cold breeze knifed through the sweltering cavern as she passed, so that Barrick, who had been trying to rise, fell shivering back to his hands and knees.

By the time she had reached the Trickster god, Yasammez was as tall as he was, but where he appeared as solid as stone, the fairy woman was thinner and less substantial, as though she had stretched herself far beyond what was ordinarily possible. Barrick could see almost nothing of her true shape—she seemed as ill-defined as smoke. Only the great, white blade had retained its brilliance and density. It gleamed through the dark lady’s own essence like a slice of the full moon.

Barrick finally struggled back onto his feet as the two great swords clashed for the first time, meeting with a sound like a monstrous bell that made the entire cavern throb. He could hear the autarch shrieking somewhere on the island, demanding that his terrified men help him attack Zosim again. Barrick doubted he would find many volunteers. Above his head, the heavenly blades rose and clashed again, over and over until the ringing deafened him. Barrick hobbled toward the gigantic pair. The combatants now resembled some fantastic illusion at the center of the island, cloud-shapes whirling above a troubled sea, blades sweeping before them like the wisps of a growing storm. Zosim’s bright flames rippled and stretched, but as if in answer Yasammez only grew darker, more contained.

Barrick dodged through the murk until he saw the great moving wall of Zosim’s heel and limped toward it. He stabbed at it as hard as he could, shoving his sword into the weirdly liquid flesh to the hilt, but although he heard a dim rumble of discomfort, as he watched in dismay, the sword itself seemed to melt and vanish, so that only the hilt fell to the ground like the blossom of a broken flower. The vast foot moved suddenly and knocked him flying.

“Run, manchild!” Yasammez’s face appeared from the haze above him, grimacing in agony as though she held the weight of all the world and could not put it down. “You can do nothing here. Even I can do no more than steal his time for a few more moments.” Something crashed against her, and she swayed back, vanishing for a moment in the clouds of her own gigantic essence. The face appeared again like the sun struggling to pierce thick clouds. “Go! Save those you can. I can give you nothing else ...”

Something struck her again, and she shuddered and fell away from him, the whole of her dark mass toppled like a collapsing tower. Her white blade lanced out as she fell, but the monstrous burning shape that was Zosim was too fast, too strong. He leaped atop her and yanked her back upright again, or at least that was what Barrick thought he saw—it was all too blurry, too strange, like a battle in the mud at the bottom of a deep lake. The god’s own golden blade hacked at the dark apparition like a great tongue of fire, and Barrick heard the terrible sound of Yasammez screaming in pain, a hideous, wrenching cry that seemed to shake the very stone from the cavern walls.

Someone was pulling at his arm. Barrick turned slowly, as if in a dream, to find Ferras Vansen standing behind him, bloodied and dirty.

“You cannot help her—she said so!” Vansen shouted, struggling to be heard above the sounds of god and demigoddess tearing at each other. “Help me get the others to safety.”

“There is no safety ...” Barrick said, then a great, flaming hand swung down from above and knocked him spinning through the air.

All over… at last… was all he had time to think, and then blackness burst inside him.

The work crew hurried to place the last of the blasting powder beetles along the base of an immense stone wall that ran the length of Brewer’s Store cavern—the “cold wall,” as the monks called it. The cavern—a place Beetledown the Bowman had never seen before, and obviously would never see again—stank of sulfur and other, less familiar things, and lay perhaps a hundred feet or more beneath the temple itself. Because it was cooler than most of the other caves, the monks aged their mossbrew in rootwood barrels there, but the precious brew had all been carried away days ago. As far as Beetledown could tell, the beetles—wedgeshaped iron objects the size of a big person’s shoe—were all meant to burst at the same time and take down the entire side of the cavern. How the Funderlings thought this would affect a battle taking place much farther below he could not guess.

Beetledown could not sit comfortably after his long time in the saddle, but instead walked back and forth across the raised slab of stone that served as Antimony’s writing table, waiting while the monk sent messages up the line to the other, smaller caverns that were receiving similar treatment, each of his hastily-scratched missives sealed with clay and the imprint of the Astion.

The presence of so much blasting powder was making Beetledown very fretful. Since war had come to Southmarch, he had seen what the stuff could do. The roof of Wolfstooth Spire, a sacred Rooftopper spot for as long as anyone could remember, had been blown to flinders by one of the southern cannons, and pieces of all the cardinal towers, including most of the top of the Tower of Winter, lay scattered across the inner keep like a child’s broken toys. Yes, the black powder frightened him—but the waiting was even worse.

“Cinnabar, un said that the need were hasty,” Beetledown called up to Antimony, who was bent over his plans, sweat beading on his forehead and dripping onto the little slabs of clay on which he wrote. “Un said that t’were almost too late ...”

“For the love of the Hot Lord, little man, please be silent!” Antimony wiped his face. “I know we need haste, I know Cinnabar and the rest said to hurry—I know, I know, I know! But if we have made an error ...”

Beetledown didn’t know for certain what was going to happen if the Funderling engineers had planned incorrectly, but it was clear it wouldn’t be good for anyone. “Tha pardon, Brother. My family always said I had too much to say ...” He caught Antimony’s look of exasperation and fell silent.

“That’s the last,” said Antimony a few moments later, pressing the Astion into the clay and passing the pile of messages to the waiting courier. “Take the rest to the other works, boy, but this to Brother Salt—he’ll check the sums and if they’re right, he’ll lay the train.” The young messenger sped off. With so many men at war, nearly every remaining male worker was either a child or an elder.

Antimony sat back and wiped away more sweat. The young monk’s hands, Beetledown could not help noticing, were trembling badly. “We’ll have to set fire to the train on the next level—that’s the place the powder trails join and can all be lit at the same time.” Antimony looked up as someone hurried toward them. “Mistress Opal? ” he said in surprise. “Why are you still here? Only the last few engineers remain.”

“He’s gone!” said Chert’s wife. “I can’t find him!”

“Your boy?” Now it was Antimony’s turn to look fearful. “Flint? Spite him for a rascal, where has he gotten to now? He knows this is your husband’s plan—Chert’s plan. It’s too dangerous for him to be wandering. By the Elders, what is he thinking?”

Beetledown walked to the edge of the slab. “Mistress Opal, I greet ’ee again, and have some happy news which had gone astray. I saw him, your son. It was un who saved both the leatherwing and your servant from yon hunting owl, and who bid me say all was well.”

Opal stared at him, eyes wide, then turned helplessly to Antimony. “What is he saying? A bird told him my son was well?”

It took no little time before the Funderlings understood Beetledown’s tale, but when he had finally gotten the gist of it across, Opal was a little relieved, though not particularly happy.

“Always, with that child, since the very first ...” she muttered as if to someone else.

“Go, then, Mistress,” said Antimony. “If the Elders will it, you, your brave husband, and your son will all be reunited. Make certain the camp is empty as you go—call out that it is time to make haste to higher ground.”

“Come with me, Antimony,” she said. “You don’t want to wait too long yourself.”

He shook his head, but Beetledown thought there was something strange in his face. “Not yet. Still I must wait on Salt Nitre and the last of our engineers and powder-trail men. You go, Mistress Opal. I will join you all presently.”

After she had gone, and the rest of the Funderlings in Antimony’s employ began to hurry past, Beetledown began to wonder if he shouldn’t move on himself. These depths disturbed him at the best of times—after all, he was not just beneath the ground here but several levels beneath Funderling Town itself—but now there was also the little matter of two hundredweight or more of blasting powder, primed and ready, so even a spark might set it off. The very idea made him shiver.

When he began to make his farewells, though, Brother Antimony asked him to wait. “The last of them will be gone in a few more moments,” said the monk. “Stay a little longer.”

Again he saw that strange expression on the Funderling’s face. Beetledown could not sit still, but did his best to pace calmly as the last few engineers hurried past and Antimony marked them off his list of workers. Last of all was Salt Nitre, nephew of Ash, who came down from the level above at a saunter, as if he were involved in something he did every day, which, from the way he talked to Antimony, might not have been too far from the truth.

“All set and primed,” he said. “That fuse is miserable short, though. You’ll have trouble getting far enough away. Why won’t you let me make you a longer one?”

“No time,” the monk told him. “If we use something that will burn for half a candle, it will be too late for those down below when it finally reaches the powder.” He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s too late already—it’s taken us a terrible time to finish.”

“That’s the fault of that snake Nickel, not to mention Chert’s idiot brother, the magister,” Salt said with an engineer’s traditional contempt for authority. “If they hadn’t shut us down, we’d have been ready hours or more ago. It’s a miracle we had things as close as we did.”

“I know,” Antimony said. “You and the rest did well, Brother Salt.”

The older monk shrugged. “Well, lad, you’d better run like the wind as soon as the train’s been lit. It will be a horrid close thing. ...”

Antimony guided him to the crude steps leading upward toward Funderling Town. “I know, I know,” he told the old monk. “Haste, now.” As Salt Nitre hobbled up the stairway, Antimony turned toward Beetledown. “And you too, friend—it’s time to ...”

A clatter of footsteps made both Funderling and finger-high Rooftopper turn as Brother Nickel, the would-be abbot, appeared from the same stairwell, his face dark with anger. “By the Elders, Antimony, what madness is this? You have gone too far—I will see you driven from the Brotherhood for this!”

Antimony stared at him. “Why are you here, Brother? You and the rest have been ordered to clear the temple. ...”

“Ordered?” Nickel shrieked. “Have you lost your mind? I saw that order—your order, a mere temple brother. What do you mean by all this? Who could possibly have given you the right to ...”

“Have the others gone, then?” Antimony interrupted. “Is the temple emptied? You great clod, you haven’t kept them there, have you?”

Nickel only stood in astonished rage, his mouth opening and shutting. At last he found his voice. “I will not only see you driven from the order, Antimony, I will see you dragged before the Judgment Chair of the Guild!”

Brother Antimony leaped forward, surprisingly quick for his size—he was the biggest Funderling Beetledown had ever seen—and grabbed Nickel by his collar, then slapped the older man across the face with the front of his hand and the back. “Answer me, fool! Is the temple emptied?”

“Yes, curse you!” Nickel was almost weeping with rage. “You and that meddling mole Chert Blue Quartz have undermined my authority so badly that no one would remain when the order came! I told them not to go, but even Chert’s brother, that coward Nodule, has fled back to Funderling Town.”

“All blessings on the Earth Elders!” Antimony shoved him away. Nickel took a few stumbling steps and fell backward to the stone of the cavern floor. “You would have doomed them all if you’d had your way, you fool! Now go, or you will die along with your temple.” Antimony grabbed his collar with one hand and lifted the struggling monk off the ground. “Don’t you understand? I am going now to put fire to the powder train. We have used a great deal of blasting powder, so if you are still here or even close when that happens, you will be obliterated—your flesh, your bones, even your name. You will become a tiny seam of ash in a pile of collapsed stone, nothing more. Is that what you wish? Then stay and continue with your noise.”

Antimony turned his back on Nickel and headed for the stairs. Nickel stared after him for a moment, eyes bulging with rage and fright, then hurried to catch up. After a moment, Beetledown nudged the bat into the air and followed them. They stepped out of the stairwell into another, smaller chamber. At the center, a star of blasting powder stretched its arms out in all directions, the trails of powder disappearing into various crevices and side passages.

Antimony crouched near the center of the star and pulled out his flint and steel. “Now keep going, Nickel, if you don’t want your rump singed,” he said. “And you might as well be on your way, too, good Beetledown.”

This time Brother Nickel did not need to be told twice. The monk raced up the stairs with clumsy haste, but managed to climb only a short way before he slipped and tumbled back down, landing badly at the base of the steps.

“My leg!” he wailed in terror. “I’ve broken my leg! Ah, by the Pit, it hurts!”

“Blood of the Elders!” swore Antimony. “I can do nothing for you, Nickel. I am staying to make certain the powder trails stay lit.”

“Nay, help un,” Beetledown told him. Nickel looked like a frightened child now. “Carry un to safety. If tha build’st a little fire for me, I will wait ’ee clear and then light the train.”

Antimony shook his head. “Someone must wait long enough to make certain the powder catches. Otherwise, all is lost. That’s my task.”

Finally Beetledown understood the monk’s strange expressions: he had not expected to make it out. “Thy task no more.” Beetledown petted Muckle Brown to calm her—the flittermouse was frightened of so much noise, of being on the ground for so long. “Un flies faster than you or any man can run—we’ll get out safe. Go now and save yon fellow, Brother. Time does be short.”

Antimony wanted to argue, but soon gave in and made a small fire. “Do not lose your life for Nickel,” he said quietly. The monk was still sitting on the floor but weeping now as well as moaning. “He isn’t worth it.”

“But tha dost be, friend monk,” Beetledown told him. “Fear not for Muckle Brown nor me. We’ll get well clear.”

Antimony lifted Nickel and tossed him over his shoulder. “Farewell, Beetledown!” he called at the last visible bend before the way curved up and out of sight. “Don’t wait too long!”

Beetledown waved, already wishing he had not done such a stupid, brave thing. And with no one even to see him! Pure foolishness.

But it be what my queen would want me to do, he thought. And nothing else am I if not her loyal Gutter-Scout.

When he had counted all his toes and fingers ten times slowly, Beetledown slid out from Muckle Brown’s saddle and lifted a bit of wood from the small fire Antimony had left for him. He took the small torch and set it squarely in the middle of the star, then, when the powder began to fizz and burn, he scrambled up into his saddle and urged the flittermouse into the air. They skimmed across the chamber and into the stairwell, and would have been gone to the upper levels, but Beetledown remembered his promise and turned back to make certain the powder train was burning.

Five of the trails had burned perfectly well, but the one that led back to Brewer’s Store and the cold wall had sputtered out just halfway across the cavern. He guided Muckle Brown down and took another burning twig to relight it. He watched as it caught and began smoldering forward once more, but he could also see that the other trains had vanished from sight on their way to the other caverns. Then the Brewer’s Store train went out again.

Un’s got damp, he thought, his heart beating very fast. He could no longer see the other trains and had no idea how long they would burn before reaching the blasting powder. Did he dare to leave? What if the failure of one would mean the failure of all? Or worse, what if it changed the destruction in some way that would make it worse, perhaps even threatening the castle itself and the home of Beetledown’s own people… ?

He hurried to pick a longer piece of burning stick. “Come, tha,” he said to Muckle Brown, then steered her down toward the cavern below.

The trail of powder reached all the way across the floor of Brewer’s Store. He chose a spot near the center of the cavern floor and touched it with the lit brand. It sparked, then caught and began to burn its way toward the powder-beetles packed along the cool wall, but even as he goaded the bat into the air once more the fire abruptly raced forward along the train, many times as fast as it had before.

Uphill, was all he had time to realize, un burns faster uphill!

He and Muckle Brown shot across the chamber and into the stairwell. He clung to the beast’s back, his fingers wrapped so tightly in its fur that he couldn’t believe it wasn’t coming loose in his hands. The powerful wings beat and the muscles pulled beneath him, beat and beat again as they rushed up through empty darkness. All Beetledown could hear was a sliver of the creature’s impossibly shrill voice as it sang for an open way home. Then hot air suddenly surrounded him, squeezing him like a brutal fist, and Beetledown the Bowman and Muckle Brown disappeared into noiseless red light.

43. Fever Egg

Please, gods, do not let him notice me. Do not let him notice me! It was foolish, Ferras Vansen knew, praying to absent gods to protect him from a god who was all too definitely present, but old habits died hard and he had never been so terrified in his life.

At Prince Barrick’s shouted order, he had carried the black-haired girl to the nearest of the reed boats drawn up on the beach, and now he struggled with the even more daunting burden of King Olin’s limp body. Madness and chaos were all around. Men who had been burned to death on their feet stood in brittle postures like scorched scarecrows; other corpses lay in smoking piles or bobbed facedown in the Silver only yards from the charred boats they would never reach. A few still lived, but in such horrible condition that Vansen could only pray their whimpering lives ended soon: not even their Xixian enemies deserved such deaths.

Vansen was a soldier. He had often risked his life in combat with other men. In the past year he had fought both the legendary Qar and the autarch’s vast armies. He had stood before the monstrous Deep Ettins and even the demigod Jikuyin, the one-eyed giant. Each of them had been fearful, and Vansen had lost track of how many times he had given himself up for dead. This, though… this was different. Because what had stepped through into this cavern from somewhere else—someplace Vansen could not even imagine—was an actual god.

A mad god, he thought in rising panic. And he is going to kill everything I know.

The cavern was ablaze with Zosim’s fiery light. It echoed to his booming, exulting voice. The beautiful, giant youth still struggled with Yasammez, but now with every passing moment he tore away and burned great pieces of the black stuff that made her, and with each attack, she grew a little smaller, a little less tangible. Vansen was astounded that she had fought so long and so fiercely—as terrifying as he had always found her, he would never have guessed she had such power. She truly was the daughter of a god, that was indisputable. But she was matched against another god, and this one was too strong for her.

“CAN YOU FEEL THAT, LITTLE COUSIN?” Zosim bellowed at Yasammez. “CAN YOU FEEL YOUR ESSENCE BEING BOILED INSIDE YOU? THE SALAMANDROS IS FAR BEYOND YOU. I WOULD HAVE BURNED YOUR FATHER TO ASH IF HE HAD FOUGHT ME FAIRLY ... !”

From somewhere in the swirling, dark cloud Yasammez’s face swam up, deformed like melting wax, full of rage and agony. “You are Liar by name and nature,” she cried, her voice distant as a fading thunderstorm on the horizon. “If you had not struck from hiding… you would never have wounded him ...”

“WOUNDED? KILLED HIM! WITH MY FATHER’S SPEAR!” Zosim’s fires blazed again, so that for a moment he became a pillar of white flame that seemed to stretch up through the roof of the great cavern. Hundreds of steps away, Vansen felt the hairs on his arms begin to smolder, his skin to dry and crack, until he stumbled and almost dropped the king’s limp body. “YOUR RIDICULOUS, LIMPING FATHER IS FINALLY DEAD,” Zosim bellowed, “AND IN A MOMENT, YOU WILL BE, TOO.”

“It… matters not ...” Yasammez said, each word its own painful breath, each more faint than the one before. “I have… held you back… long enough ...”

What does she mean? Vansen wondered. Long enough? What does she see—or has she lost her wits at the end? We are dying. We are utterly defeated…

The laughter of Zosim was so loud and so gleeful that this time Vansen did stumble. Overbalanced, he fell to the loose stones; Olin’s body tumbled from his arms and rolled away. Vansen could barely see through the tears that filled his eyes, tears of pain and exhaustion and the endless, blistering hot winds that raged through the cavern.

Zosim’s voice rattled Vansen’s skull. “AFTER YOU ARE DEAD, I WILL CLIMB OUT OF THIS STONY TOMB OF MY FATHER’S AND UP INTO THE AIR. EVERYTHING THAT LIVES WILL SERVE ME OR DIE!” Again came the laughter, gusting and crashing, as flame licked the walls all around Zosim’s head.

Vansen crawled as fast as he could across the loose stones, praying again not to be noticed. He could tell by the waxing of the fiery light all around him that Yasammez was fading. He reached Olin where he lay, still unmoving and lifeless, then wrapped his arms around the king’s chest and began to drag him. He reached the boat and tugged Olin clumsily over the side so that he rolled into the bottom beside the senseless dark-haired girl. The huge craft was mired in the loose stones of the shore; Vansen knew he would not have been able to drag it himself even if he had not been bruised and battered to within an inch of his life. Where was Barrick?

At last, as the great golden blade ripped the dark cloud that was Yasammez into tatters once more, Vansen spotted the blue gleam of the prince’s armor. Barrick was not moving. Vansen hobbled toward him as fast as he could.

To his great relief, he could feel the prince’s chest moving steadily up and down, though his armor was burned and blackened and the prince’s usually pale face was bright red as if he had been dragged through a Midsummer’s Bonfire.

Midsummer midnight, Vansen thought. Who would have thought the world would end on such a day, in such a place… in such a manner? Yasammez was all but defeated, shrunk now to a shape less than half Zosim’s size, her great aspect curling further back on itself with each passing moment as the god in her was overwhelmed. Soon nothing would remain but what was mortal, and Zosim the Trickster would make short work of that.

“Prince Barrick! Can you hear me?” Vansen shook him again, but the prince did not wake. He began to drag him toward the boat, Barrick’s heels furrowing the stony ground. Halfway there, Vansen had to set him down, gasping in the hot air, never daring to look away for long from the pillar of fire at the center of the cavern as it steadily burned away the resistance of the woman who had been the greatest of all the Qar who ever lived.

As he finally reached the boat, something grabbed at the neck of his armor coat, yanking him backward so that he overbalanced and the prince fell from his arms. A long, curved Xixian blade fell across his neck as he lay on the ground, an edge so sharp that he could feel it cutting his skin merely by resting against his throat.

“Those are my prisoners, I think,” said the Autarch of Xis, showing all his teeth. Even as he spoke, the pressure grew on Vansen’s throat until he could feel blood trickling down his neck. “I will have them back, now, peasant.”

“Please, my lady!” Chert pulled at Briony’s sleeve again. He couldn’t help thinking that in other circumstances people might have their heads cut off for less. “Please, Princess, you can do nothing good for anyone by this course ...!”

Briony would not even slow. “Sir, I’m sure you are accounted a mighty warrior among your kind, but I am the princess of Southmarch and I am twice your size. If you tug at me again, I will throw you off this path!”

Chert withdrew his hand. He knew even better than she did what a long way down that would be. “But you will be killed!”

“No, everyone I know will be killed if I do nothing!”

With her determined stride and her manly armor, Briony had the look of something out of one of the ancient tapestries—Queen Lily riding at the front of her armies, perhaps, facing the Mantis and his mercenary legions. That the sweet-mannered girl who had run him down in the hills should have grown to this… ! Chert could not help admiring her, which made him all the more reluctant to see her throw her life away.

And I’ll throw my own life away, too, if I follow any farther ...

“My lady, please! See sense! I told you what will happen… !”

“But it has not happened yet. Perhaps it never will—perhaps you have miscalculated, or your gunflour has got wet.” She hurried down the path along the edge of the abyss, trotting when the way grew wide enough, slowing to a walk when it was narrow and the footing treacherous. “Then my family and my friends will need my help even more. No, you will not stop me, sir.”

“Unshored, stubborn… !” he muttered, but Chert of all people knew stubborn women well. They did not change their ways simply because a man told them to.

I can go with her and die or turn back and perhaps live—if any live through this, that is—and hate myself because I deserted her. Earth Elders, why have you cursed me? Why can I never be master of my own life… ?

As if in answer, Chert heard the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. He stopped. After another step or two, Briony also stopped, staring into the darkness before them, but as the sound grew louder, it became clear that whatever approached was behind them, coming down from the surface.

“Who… ?” was all Briony had time to say when a young, dark-haired woman appeared in the circle of torch glow, running fast though she herself carried no light. She scarcely seemed to notice Chert or Briony as she dodged around them and hurried on; a moment later she had vanished into the darkness below them. For a few more moments they could hear her rapid footfalls, but then even those faded.

“What in the name of all the gods is happening here?” Briony said, staring wide-eyed. “How could she see? And why should she run that way, headlong into the dark?”

“I… I know her,” Chert said. “I know that girl.”

Briony was on the move again, hurrying down the path once more. “What do you mean? That was no Funderling—she was almost as tall as me!”

“I have met her—spoken to her. Her name is Willow. She is touched, I think, but she once led me to one of the Qar. ...”

“Willow? I know that girl, too. Captain Vansen brought her back from the western country—she had been lost behind the Shadowline, he said.” She sped her pace a little. “But why would she be hurrying down into the deeps without even a word? And how can she see to run in the darkness?”

Chert couldn’t answer. He didn’t know why the girl was there. He didn’t even know why he was still there himself.

This time they did not hear her until the last moment, when the girl called Willow burst out of the shadows in front of them, hurrying back toward Chert and the princess as though they had only now become visible to her. “Save him! They will hurt him! Please, they are too much for him!” She threw herself down in front of Briony without any care for her own body and wrapped her arms around the princess’ booted ankles. “Save him—my Kayyin!”

“Wh-what? Who..?” Briony stammered, but the girl was already scrambling back onto her feet. She grabbed the princess’ arm and tried to tug her forward.

“Come! Oh, come! The creatures of fire and wind will kill him!”

Briony allowed herself to be pulled forward into the dark. Chert hastened after them. He could hear the sound of voices before them, one more or less human but others that gusted and whistled like the wind.

They stumbled out into a place where the path widened and saw what at first looked like a tall, slender man in the grip of some terrible palsy, arms flailing above his head and body swaying like a sapling in a fierce breeze—but it was shadows he fought with, Chert saw a moment later, shadows who clutched at him with hands like torn, flapping curtains.

“Help him!” the girl screamed.

Briony only hesitated for a moment, then raced toward the strange struggle with a dagger in each hand. Chert could only stare, wondering again what had happened to the young girl he had seen at the funeral. When had she become this thing of rope and steel?

But it doesn’t matter—those dark things will kill her. Then Chert, too, was running, waving his torch and trying to force a frightening bellow out of his pinched throat but not succeeding.

The half-elf was wrapped in a ragged mass of darkness that leaked light like a hooded lantern. As Briony approached, one of the creatures detached itself from Kayyin and floated toward her, billowing like a cloaked man in a high wind. Only its eyes had color, glinting like green garnets.

“Those are old blades you carry,” it said as it neared her. The voice seemed to sigh from every corner of the darkness beyond Chert’s torch. “Metal of a tumbled star. They have even wounded some of us in the past, and it is not easy to spite us.” The eyes flared briefly. “But wounding is not destroying—and you are no mighty warrior, girl.”

Briony had not stopped to listen, but was keeping her two blades before her as she moved in a broad arc, trying to draw the thing away from Kayyin and the other black shapes. “What you say is that you can be hurt, demon.” Her voice was tight but surprisingly steady. “That is all I needed to hear. I just killed my vilest enemy with my own hands, so come, then—let’s see who ends up the better!”

Briony crossed the knives in a quick flick as she lunged, like a single great pair of scissors. The apparition rippled away from her like smoke, then flowed back again and hooked at her with a ragged claw. Chert swung his torch at the thing’s arm, but the brand only passed through; the shapeless thing turned toward him and the darkness of its face seemed to fill his eyes. Chert was thrown backward. He cracked his head against the wall on one side of the path. The torch flew from his fingers and bounced toward the edge, landing a pace short; the flames rippled and nearly died, then flared up again.

Chert tried to rise, but it was not only the unsteady flames that made things before him tilt and spin. His head felt like it was full of bees, and his legs had no feeling at all. Earth Elders, he thought, I can’t die, not like this, not at the edge of someone else’s fight and away from Opal.…

The flapping, flickering thing that had spoken before swirled around Briony like mist, then slid just out of reach again when she swung her blades, as if it mocked her.

“Come close enough for me to kill you, you coward!” she said, her breath coming in gasps. “Queen Saqri swore that your kind would be our allies!”

“Saqri does not speak for us—and a mortal cannot kill an Elemental,” the thing said in a gleeful tone. “I am Shadow’s Cauldron and my doom is written down in the Book for long after you will be dust. Besides, I only sought to amuse myself until our task could be completed. Sisters? Have you taken our prize back from the thief?”

The other shadows lay stretched over the half-Qar Kayyin like black blankets, but at the sound of Shadow’s Cauldron’s voice they fluttered up into the air. Balanced in the overlap of their two darknesses was a large stone that gleamed yellow and roiled like muddy water. “We have it,” they declared, and it was their thoughts Briony understood, not their words.

“Yasammez is his mother,” one of the Elementals cried. “She must have told him of the Egg!”

“No,” said the other. “He saw it in her thoughts.”

“Take it, then,” cried the one called Shadow’s Cauldron. “How he learned of it does not matter!” The Elemental waved a ragged appendage and Briony was flung down, her knives clattering from her hands. Shadow’s Cauldron then blew away like mist and re-formed a heartbeat later in midair above the abyss, flapping now like some great, fire-eyed bat. “Now take the Egg and drop it onto hard stone, sisters. Crack it open and let death spill out for all these warm, fleshy creatures!”

All the shadowy shapes flew up into the heights so quickly that they might have been blown there by a howling wind. Only the gleam of their watching eyes and the sickly sheen of the Egg showed Chert where they hovered.

“The bodiless thoughts of the Deep Library helped us create this, but they did not have the courage to use it! Neither did Yasammez—in the end she died as much a coward as even Ynnir the Traitor. But we are different—we are the Guard of Elementals!” The calm certainty in the thing’s hissing voice grabbed at Chert’s innards like an icy hand. “We have nurtured it in our darkest garden and made it even more potent than Yasammez could have dreamed.”

“The Egg must not be broken,” croaked a weak voice. Kayyin crawled shakily onto his feet, so close Chert could almost have touched him. “When the fevers hatch out they will not just destroy what is in the castle but will creep up and down the earth for years to come, until there is nothing left that breathes,” the half-fairy said.

“Yes!” crowed Shadow’s Cauldron. “Our children will dance beneath the moon, with all the empty lands and seas to themselves. ...!” Its voice rose like a shrieking gale. “Cast the Egg down, sisters, and scour this sullied earth clean again… !”

“Those are my prisoners.” Of all those in the cavern, dead or still clinging to life, the autarch alone looked as though he had walked in from somewhere else. Sulepis was free of burns and only lightly touched with ash, his golden armor gleaming with the reflected light of the flames all around. The autarch’s falcon-crested helmet had been pushed high on his perspiring brow and his eyes bulged with an insane fury that Vansen had never seen before in any man. “And this boat is mine, too. What have you put there, dog—what else have you stolen from me? Ah, it is another Eddon, the fire-haired one. More ancient blood to be spilled, then, yes, more blood.” Although his knife pushed ever harder against Vansen’s neck, the autarch scarcely seemed to notice him. “Surely I can find another of Heaven’s prisoners—another sleeping god who will bargain for his freedom and rid me of this turbulent, treacherous Trickster,” Sulepis said. “No, the gods are not yet done with me—I will repay them for this slight. Who do they think they are?” His eyes turned back to Vansen. “I am the Golden One! I am the Living Sun!”

Vansen had to speak through clenched teeth. He fully expected these would be his last words. “You… are… only… another… fool.”

“What?” The autarch leaned down, pressing a little harder on the knife, spreading his knees to hold down Vansen’s shoulders and stop his struggling. “What are you? One of the Southmarch peasants?”

“I would rather ...” Vansen’s voice was barely a whisper; the autarch leaned closer. “I would rather be… the lowliest sheepherder in Southmarch… than you in your golden armor ...” Vansen had not been struggling at all, but reaching for a stone; he grabbed it and smashed it as hard as he could against the autarch’s gleaming falcon helmet.

Vansen had little strength left. The blow was only hard enough to surprise the Xixian god-king, but it allowed Vansen to throw him off. He did his best to crawl away, but Sulepis was on him in moments, stabbing with his blade so that Vansen could only throw out his hands to grab his enemy’s arms. He did his best to keep the blade from his unprotected face and neck, but Ferras Vansen was weary beyond description and wounded in several places; Sulepis was taller, well-muscled, and rested. Vansen managed to roll on the autarch’s wrist, forcing him to let go of his curved sword, but that was the guard captain’s only victory. As they struggled, the autarch quickly overpowered him again and clambered atop Vansen’s chest, then fastened his long, strong fingers around the northerner’s throat and began to squeeze.

The blackness gathered and spread before his eyes. Vansen could hear nothing but the roaring in his ears, see nothing but the blur of the autarch’s mad face, all eyes and bared teeth. Then a great flame seemed to fill the sky above them both, as though the glaring, blazing sun itself had fallen down into this deep place beneath the earth. An instant later, the weight of the autarch was lifted from Vansen’s chest. He coughed, struggling painfully for the air that had been denied him.

When he could look up again, he saw the tiny golden figure of the autarch dangling from the blazing white fingers of Zosim, whose vast, youthful face wore a smile of triumph.

“AND WITH CROOKED’S DAUGHTER DEALT WITH,” the god purred in a deep rumble like an approaching storm, “THAT LEAVES ONLY YOU, MY LITTLE SUMMONER.”

Sulepis struggled until the straps of his armor broke. He tumbled free, but as Vansen watched, the monstrous Zosim snatched him out of the air like a man catching a fly. “NO, I SHALL NOT LOSE YOU SO EASILY,” the god said. “AFTER ALL, I OWE YOU SOMETHING. YOU INTENDED TO COMMAND ME AS IF I WERE ONE OF YOUR SLAVES.” He laughed and the sound rolled and pounded through the massive cavern. He lifted the autarch until the struggling, shiny figure was just before his eyes. “I SEE YOU WEAR THE SUN LORD’S HAWK ON YOUR BROW, LITTLE MORTAL CREATURE. HOW HE WOULD LAUGH TO SEE THAT! BUT I LIKE THE IDEA. YES, YOU SHALL BE… MY CREST!”

And so saying, Zosim put his thumb in the middle of the autarch’s breast to hold him, then tore off first one of his arms then the other, letting them fall to the ground. Then, as the autarch’s thin shrieks filled the cavern, and his blood spurted and streamed over Zosim’s hand, the god yanked off the Xixian’s long legs as well. The autarch’s mindless cries of agony rose until it seemed the very stars in the sky might be screaming in the invisible heights. The god lifted the autarch’s writhing, limbless torso and head to his mighty forehead and affixed it there, so that the bloody golden lump seemed almost grown into the f lesh… then it burst into flames. Sulepis still lived, burning but unconsumed, and screeching helplessly as he struggled against the god’s flesh that now held him fast. Ferras Vansen could only lie gasping in the muck, half-mad with all he had seen.

“NOW YOU WILL GO WHERE I GO, LITTLE KING, SEE WHAT I SEE… FOR A WHILE.” Zosim turned and stalked away across the island, each step making the ground shake as he headed toward the shore and waded into the Silver up to his marble thighs. With every step, the god seemed to glow brighter, hotter, and the flames that danced on his skin burned higher. By the time he had reached the far side of the Sea in the Depths, he blazed so brightly it was hard to see the form of the god within the fires.

Zosim reached up a massive hand and clutched at the cavern’s stone wall. The rock smoked and cracked and crumbled outward. He reached up and made another handhold higher up, then dug his foot into the wall. The god was no longer even remotely human, but only a titanic manlike shape of almost pure fire. From such a distance Vansen could see nothing of the autarch, but he thought he could still hear thin screams through the roaring of the flame.

“AND SO I RETURN!” the god proclaimed, then began to mount the sheer cliff of smoking, melting stone, climbing steadily toward the surface.

44. The Screaming Stars

See what they have done.

Barrick stirred, tried to open his eyes, but could not. The blackness simply was. I can’t see anything!

You must see with the eyes of the Fireflower. Ynnir’s voice. This is the last time I can speak to you, I fear—it is harder and harder…

Barrick began to move toward something—not light, but a lessening of the shadow, a shape that seemed to create itself by its resistance to the darkness. It stood calmly before him, waiting, its antlers a tangle that seemed to have no ending.

Am I dying now, too?

Not yet. The great stag lowered its head for a moment as if to crop at the grass. But no one—not even the gods, it seems—will outlast the Book. And this will be one of its strangest pages.… Suddenly, the beast lifted its head as though it heard something. Come. Follow me. See what they have done… !

The stag sprang away, and although Barrick could discern nothing of the ground on which it ran, it had the sound of a real place, of grass and leaves and twigs beneath the stag’s hooves. Barrick sprang after it.

What who have done? he called.

The short-lived ones. Your kind—tall and small. See? See how they have found a way through the darkness… !

The two of them raced now through a black emptiness shot by streams of fire. The bursts of flame shot out, one after another, great blossoms of burning force that rolled and gleamed, spreading out in spumes of hot wind, until the very earth trembled and began to come apart.

What is this, Lord?

The mortals have unleashed fire to battle a fire god, Ynnir said as they watched the conflagration grow and spread, watched the stone splinter and the earth collapse. Crooked’s Fire, it is called. Do you see? The strength of Fire is the strength of Time itself, that ravages all things, but here the ravages of fiery Time have been shrunk to a single point, a moment of destruction that we now see in all its magnificence. Behold! With nothing but powdered earth the mortals have made flame and broken the earth apart.

But why? Do they think to crush the Trickster and his flame?

Oh, no. They have a greater plan. They have called up the fire to crumble the earth, and when the earth crumbles—now, see!

And then, as the stones of Midlan’s Mount broke and fell, as burst after burst of fire collapsed first one wall of the Funderling Mysteries then the next, the sea at last broke in.

The Water Lord may sleep, but he is still mighty! cried Ynnir. What can destroy the fires of the Trickster god? The deep waters, manchild—the deep, cold waters of the great ocean… !

The great burning god had scarcely climbed up the stone chimney and out of Ferras Vansen’s sight when a roar like thunder rolled down out of the monstrous opening in the cavern’s ceiling. For an instant Vansen thought it was the god shouting his rage and triumph again, his voice made even greater by the echoes of the great vertical tunnel, but this time the very earth shook as well, the rounded stones of the island slipping and bouncing and tumbling all around him.

Vansen struggled onto his hands and knees and then raised himself painfully to his feet. Stones were tumbling from the cavern’s walls now, only pebbles at first, but chunks of rock as big as his head quickly followed, and then others larger still. A boulder the size of a goods wagon crashed down out of the heights into the Sea in the Depths and sent up a silver fountain as high as the castle outwall.

Somewhere, the gods must be laughing at us, Ferras Vansen thought. Zosim the Trickster will climb to the surface while we mortals who remain behind will be crushed by falling stones, helpless to escape.

The rumble grew louder. The ground shook harder. Vansen staggered as the island swayed beneath him like a rope bridge, but at last he reached Prince Barrick. He hoped the tremor would end soon, but instead the earth throbbed on and on—harder now if anything, as though he stood jouncing on the skin of a beaten drum. At the same time, the air around him was growing heavier and tighter, pressing on his eyes and making his ears ring.

“Highness! Barrick! I’m not… strong enough… to carry you… ! Wake up!”

Vansen dragged the prince a few steps toward the boat, but he could barely keep upright and his arms were numb. He felt Barrick stir a little beneath his hands.

“What… ?”

“It collapses around us, Highness—the entire cavern is falling down. Perhaps if we can reach one of the tunnels ...”

Barrick fought his way out of Vansen’s grip. “No!” He rolled over, then began to crawl across the stones, clumsy as a tortoise. “No, the… the boat. We must… get into the boat.”

“Highness, that is madness,” cried Vansen. “It will never protect us—some of the stones are big as houses… !”

“Vansen, I do not… command you as a prince, I… beg you as a friend. Get into the boat!”

Barrick clambered up over the bundled reeds and into the boat with what looked like the last of his strength, then lay stretched between King Olin and the black-haired girl, as pale and motionless as if his heart had stopped. Vansen crawled in beside him.

“No matter what happens, hold them,” Barrick said, his eyes closed and his face as pale as his dead brother’s had been on the night of his murder. “Hold my father tightly and do not let his body go. He deserves… to come home ...”

And then the first great gush of seawater plunged down out of the heights and into the Last Hour of the Ancestor. The gush became a flood, a single jade-green column, as if the entire Irisian Ocean had been poured on them from above out of some upturned bucket. As the wall of green rushed toward them, Vansen had a strange moment’s vision of a beautiful white youth trapped inside, burning and glowing like molten silver as he tumbled helplessly in the water’s grip. Vansen plunged one hand as deeply as he could into the reeds of the boat, then wrapped his other arm around the limp form of Barrick’s father, the king.

The speeding wave crashed over them and turned the world to silent jade. Bubbles floated before Ferras Vansen’s blinking eyes, shining like stars lost from the firmament. The reed boat squirted up to the surface and for a brief moment he could suck in air, but the craft was being tossed like a wood chip by the crashing water. Vansen could not lift his head to look—it was all he could do to hang on to both Olin and the boat, bellowing with pain as the force threatened to yank his arms out of their sockets. They crashed against stone and the little craft turned over, then the boat was tossed out of the rushing green, spun, lifted, and tossed again. Once more they careened against a wall. Vansen thought he heard Barrick shouting and spluttering. Again the green covered them and spun them like a leaf in a powerful eddy. Deep beneath them, something still burned and smoldered in the depths, but even the god’s flame was dying beneath the weight of so much water.

Up and out. Over, clinging without knowing which direction he was falling. Down again, then spat up and out once more. Water shook him like a dog shakes a rat. Vansen closed his eyes and hung on.

Briony was struggling to get back up when the first great shudder passed through the stone beneath her feet, knocking her to the ground again and almost rolling her over the edge and into the chasm. A roar as deep as some terrible beast of legend rose from the depths; even the Elementals slipped sideways in the air, surprised.

The roar from below had become a fierce and growing thunder. A howling gale burst up from the chasm deeps, and the rush of hot air threw Briony back from the edge and sent the Elementals flying like rags. The one with the glowing stone, the one named Shadow’s Cauldron, hovered out of Briony’s reach above the abyss, ready to throw down the Fever Egg and burst it on the stone to free the poisons inside.

“No!” shouted Briony as the sickly jewel rose higher and the ground shuddered beneath her hands and knees. “Don’t… !”

A shape flew forward and threw itself off the edge toward the Elemental. At the last moment before falling into empty darkness it caught the floating thing and held on, grappling with Shadow’s Cauldron’s black insubstantiality as though the Elemental were a huge bat. The attacker was Kayyin, and for a moment it seemed his weight might pull the creature down with him, but the ragged black thing was too strong—it lifted itself and the half-fairy until Kayyin’s legs dangled. Then, a moment later, another figure rushed past Briony—the girl Willow. She leaped after Kayyin, catching and clinging to his legs with a cry like a fearful child. She had surprised the Elemental. As Briony watched in horror, all three of them swayed for a moment and then tumbled away into the darkness, the Egg with them. The other two Elementals floated out over the abyss as if to see what had happened to their comrade, then abruptly vanished as if they had never appeared at all.

Breathless, horrified, Briony scrambled to the edge, staring down into the darkness, wondering if she would feel the poison when it came—would it be thick like smoke, like temple incense… ?

Something was climbing up the chasm from below, something big. The wind of its coming flattened her hair against her head, but Briony could see it only as a broad moving front pushing its way up through the darkness.

Water. The gigantic hole was filling with water, and it was rushing upward toward her. Kayyin and the girl and even the Fever Egg were gone beneath it, and in a few moments she and Chert would be swallowed up, too, left to drift in it until their bones settled to the bottom. Briony crawled back toward the place where the little man lay beside the wall, still fighting to get onto his feet. She sat down beside him and waited for the end, wanting to pray but not certain to whom she should address the prayer. After a few long moments the roaring began to quiet; the water still rose, but its speed seemed to have lessened. Briony clambered back to the edge and looked down, holding the torch out so she could watch the frothing shadow as it rose, as it swallowed level after level beneath her, until to her amazement it finally stopped rising only a few dozen yards below.

“Water,” she said, still trying to understand it.

Chert had crawled to her side. “Fracture and fissure,” he said. “We did it. Oh, my ancestors, we did it. ...”

“And that Fever Egg fell into the water and didn’t break,” she said slowly. “Even now it’s sinking to the bottom.”

“Are you certain?” Chert asked, peering down into the darkness as if it might be floating there. “How can you know?”

“Because if the shell had broken, I imagine we’d be dead by now.”

Chert was suddenly distracted. “Princess? Don’t you see them?”

“See what? See whom?”

“Down there.” But where he pointed, Briony could see nothing—it was too far and too dark. “None of them are moving,” he said, “but there are four of them lying in the bottom of the boat.”

“What do you mean?” She could not see in this dim light like a Funderling, and certainly could not see a boat, but as she stared, she saw a green gleam far down in the watery depths, growing as it rose toward the surface. For a moment, as if in a dream, she saw an impossible thing—a gigantic, glowing human shape struggling up through the fathoms of roiling water, thrashing toward the surface. Then it slowed to a drift. The light dimmed and nearly died, and the vast, manlike shape fell into dark, flickering pieces. A moment later the water was completely dark once more. It had been a dream, a vision, nothing more. Briony shook her head in confusion. “Do you still see the boat? Are there truly people in it?”

“Yes. Perhaps if I can get down to them with my rope, they can answer some of your questions. If they’re still alive, of course.”

“I think it unlikely.” Briony stared down at the boat she could not see. What had happened here? More importantly, what had happened far below? To her family? To the autarch? The unsettled water still roiled and made waves along the edge of the chasm. How could any of them have survived? “Merciful Zoria, does anyone but us still live?”

But Chert had already gone looking for a place to anchor his climbing-rope.

Chert seemed unusually grim as he came back up the treacherous slope after tying a rope to one of the survivors, and he would not answer Briony’s questions as they hauled up the first of the boat’s passengers, a slender young girl with the dark skin and dark eyes of a southerner, her body cold and motionless. By the time they had untied her, the first of the Syannese troops began to appear on the path. Eneas had sent them, they told Briony, and the prince himself was close behind. With their help, the second victim came up much more quickly, and even before he had been unharnessed, she realized she was looking at her father’s body.

As she lay weeping on Olin’s cold chest, the guards drew up the last two from the boat. Her brother Barrick was laid out beside her father, then as she stared down at his pale, still features in growing horror, the last of the survivors was brought up. He struggled out of his own harness and walked unsteadily toward her, then fell to his knees, swaying like a tree that had been cut mostly through.

“At your command, Princess, I bring your brother back to you. I believe… I believe he yet lives ...”

Then Ferras Vansen’s eyes turned up and he fell senseless before her.