Shadowplay

25. The Gray Man

He hit me.

Barrick’s anger had shrunk to a cold, hard thing inside his chest but it was not going away. He was glad: it gave him life, of a sort—better angry than empty. He stared at Ferras Vansen, who was chewing a piece of stale bread. The rest of the prisoners, quickly sorted into winners and losers after the goblin guards had thrown the bowl of slops into the middle of the cell, were nursing either their meals or their wounds. Some of the smaller ones were so thin and undernourished that it was clear they had given up competing for food and were just waiting to die. But Barrick did not care about such hapless creatures.

He had no right!

Stop. Gyir pushed Barrick’s hand with the heel of bread in it. Eat. He brought you food.

But he hit me!

I would have hit you myself if I had been closer. You were acting like a nestling—no, not even that. No child of the People would be so foolish. This is a dangerous place— how dangerous we do not even know yet. There is no time to waste on such tricks. A percussive thump jarred the floor of the cell like a giant hammer falling in the depths of the earth below them. Barrick had heard the thunderous noise, like a cannon firing, many times since being captured; the other prisoners did not even look up.

Gyir pulled a chunk from his own loaf, one of the largest pieces any of the prisoners had secured, and slipped the rest into his cloak. What you don’t eat, save. We may need it later.

Why? Barrick asked, making the thought as bitter as he could. You don’t even eat, do you? Besides, this is a god who has captured us. What can we do?

No, I said Jikuyin was a demigod, not a god. Trust me, there is a world of difference. What can we do? Wait and watch—and, especially, think. They have taken our weapons but not our wits. The fairy hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then, to Barrick’s astonishment, Gyir’s face peeled away from the bone, rolling up from his chin to just below his eyes.

No, that wasn’t it, the prince realized after a boggled moment. The featureless skin between what would have been the chin and nose on an ordinary man had folded back, flexible as a horse’s upper lip, exposing even paler flesh beneath, shiny with damp, and a small, almost circular mouth. Vansen was staring now, too. Ignoring them both, Gyir pushed a piece of bread into the toothy hole. Bones and muscles worked beneath the second layer of skin—his jaw was clearly hinged in a different way than theirs—as he chewed, then swallowed. The fairy stared back at his two companions as if daring them to speak.

Yes, your question is answered now, Gyir said at last. He seemed almost angry. This is how one of the Encauled eats. It is not pretty, But how do you breathe? Barrick asked. You keep it... your mouth...covered all the time.

Gyir brushed his lank, dark hair back from the side of his head. There are slits here behind my ears, like a fish’s gills. When necessary, I can close them. The next thought was a curious, wordless burst of something Barrick could not at first grasp. That way, I do not drown when it rains hard, he finished. The wordless sensation had been a laugh, Barrick realized, although not a happy one.

Gyir ate the rest of his piece of bread, then the flap of skin folded back down again, curling just beneath his chin like the skin of a drum, leaving him smooth as ivory once more beneath the red eyes. So, he said. Your curiosity has been satisfied. That is what it means to be born with the Caul. Now perhaps we can go back to thinking about what is truly important. Gyir rose and stretched. Several of the other prisoners scuttled away, but he ignored them. I feel stronger than I did—I think the power of our enemy’s voice has affected me, somehow—but I could not directly challenge a force like Jikuyin on my best day. Still, if he is as careless as he has been in the past, we have a chance.

“What do you mean?” Vansen said aloud.

Do not use your voices, Gyir ordered. I will interpret between the two of you when necessary.

Barrick scowled. Only a day before it had been him alone to whom Gyir would speak, but now the soldier was included in everything. What good was suffering as Barrick had suffered if it did not make him special?

The immortals, for all their power, always had one weakness, Gyir said. They do not change and they do not learn. Jikuyin is fearsome but he was always a fool—one who thought himself greater than he was. Gyir spread his fingers in an unfamiliar gesture, something that smacked of ritual. He took the side of the Onyenai—our side, I can call it, because my folk also fought with the Onyenai—in one of the last great battles of gods, monsters, and men. But Jikuyin did not attack when he should have, thinking perhaps to let both sides damage themselves to his own betterment. Even then, he was ambitious.

When he did come to the field with his legion of Widowmakers, it was too late. The Onyenai had been defeated, but the Surazemai—Perin and his brothers and their allies—were still strong. Jikuyin was trapped and could not retreat. In his foolish pride, he attacked great Kernios himself, killing one of the Earthfather’s sons, the demigod Annon. But Kernios in his rage was far beyond Jikuyin. One cast of his great spear Earthstar shattered Jikuyin’s shield, broke his helmet, and destroyed his face. He would have died then but his Widowmakers, seeing that there would be no spoils for them, managed to drag their wounded lord from the field. Many thought him dead afterward, but the People have always said that no one knew Jikuyin’s true fate. We were right to be cautious.

So what does he want? Barrick could make little sense of the story itself, which seemed like a confused shadowversion of what Father Timoid had taught them about the gods. Why take us prisoner? What does he mean to do with us?

Gyir lifted his hand, his eyes suddenly grown tensely alert in his featureless face. Say no more. Someone is coming.

Creatures of various sorts had been passing in and out of the huge prison cavern for hours—guards leading individual captives and groups away or bringing them back, the limping, overburdened goblins with their buckets of food. A few times the Longskulls had even showed up with ragged bands of new prisoners, but this was the first time Gyir had appeared to take any notice. Barrick felt his heart speed.

The heavy bronze door of the cell swung open and a squadron of the bristling, apelike guards came in, their menacing appearance and heavy clubs quickly clearing a space as prisoners hurried to get out of their way—even those still bickering over food went still and shrank back against the walls. Silence fell over the chamber. Was the giant demigod himself coming? Barrick suddenly found it hard to breathe. Would the monster even fit through the massive cell doors without getting down on his hands and knees?

Instead, the individual who entered the prison chamber was of ordinary man-size, wearing a hooded robe so black that the light of the torches seemed to fall into it and die, as if someone had taken a knife to the fabric of what was visible and simply cut out a piece. Hands so fleshless they seemed nothing but bone, sinew, and skin pulled back his hood, revealing a shaved head and a face as gaunt as a Xandian mummy, nearly every line of his skull visible beneath pearly gray skin that was thin as a lady’s fine silk stocking. He might have been a corpse just beginning to putrefy but for his eyes, which glistened silvery blue-green like twin moons in the depths of his dark sockets.

“My master told me to make sure you were comfortable.” The terrifying stranger’s voice was as expressionless as his face. He did not blink. As far as Barrick could tell, he did not even have eyelids, his gaze as fixed and unchanging as that of a fish. “Comfortable...and secure. But I think with such a one as the Storm Lantern in your company, you should have more private accommodations.” He raised his bony hand and beckoned them. “Follow.”

The brutish guards stepped forward, tiny eyes almost invisible beneath their thick brows, stone clubs lifted menacingly. Barrick tried to rise, but he was trembling uncontrollably and managed it only with Vansen’s help. He shook the soldier off and fell in behind Gyir, who was following the black-robed figure toward the back of the long, high-ceilinged chamber. The stranger moved in a disturbingly graceful glide, as though his feet did not quite touch the floor.

Who is this gray man? Barrick asked, fighting down terror. What is he going to do with us?

Gyir did not turn his head. Do not speak—aloud or otherwise—and do not resist. This is Ueni’ssoh of the Dreamless. He is not a god but he is very old and very powerful. Silence!

Barrick stumbled after Gyir, hemmed in by the shaggy giant Followers. Even with his stomach all but empty the sour stink of their fur made him feel ill. The three prisoners were forced into a narrow stone room that had been carved into the naked rock at the back of the vast prison chamber, closed off from the rest of the cavern by another heavy door with a barred window. This smaller cell was empty except for a single stinking hole in the floor for waste, dark except for the torchlight leaking in through the window in the door. Barrick had to breathe deeply simply to keep down the scream that was building in him.

The gray man appeared in the doorway. For long moments he stared at them in silence.

You have come down in the world, Ueni’ssoh, said Gyir. Once you were mighty among your own people. Now it seems you have become court conjurer for a bandit-lord.

If this was meant to goad or distract the gray man somehow, it failed. His voice remained as bloodless as before. “The master said you were a strange little company, and he spoke truly. Your presence here makes no sense to me. That is something I do not like. You—the young one. Come here. Storm Lantern, if you try to interfere these brutes will kill you.”

Tell him nothing! Gyir’s words flew into Barrick’s head like arrows. Think of other things. Tell nothing!

Ueni’ssoh’s unblinking stare was fixed on Barrick; there seemed nothing else in the narrow cell but those eyes shining like two blue flames. Before he knew it, Barrick had stumbled forward and stood helplessly in front of the gray creature, swaying in the icy heat of that mortal glare. He could feel the Dreamless plucking and prying at his deepest thoughts as if those long, cadaverous fingers had opened his skull like a jewel box.

No! He shut his eyes tight. Think of something else, he told himself desperately. Anything! He tried to imagine nothingness, true nothingness, but the featureless white that he summoned gradually took on shape, until it became snow in the garden outside his chamber in the residence at Southmarch—a view he had seen countless times. Barrick Eddon could feel the gray man’s interest like a moving ache. He tried desperately to turn his mind somewhere else, struggling to protect himself from this terrible, fearful prying, but the snow in his mind’s eye was all but real now —deep, new snow, mounded against the chimneys and on the skeletal branches of the trees. His own sitting room, chill on an Ondekamene morning despite the fire burning in the hearth behind him. Leaning on his good arm, staring out his window...alone? No, not alone... “What are you looking at, redling?”

“Ravens. They’re comical. That one’s stolen something from the kitchen, see? And the other’s trying to get it from him.”

“They’re hungry. That’s not comical.” She stepped up beside him, then, her golden hair like a sudden appearance of the sun. “We should feed them.”

“Feed the ravens?” He laughed harshly. “You’re mad, strawhead. What should we do after that, go out into the hills and feed the wolves? Even if we took them the whole of Bronze’s litter, the wolves would be hungry again tomorrow.” He pretended to consider. “But perhaps there might be enough of those whelps to feed the ravens...”

Briony hit him—not hard—and scooped the puppy up off the bed. “Did you hear that, Nelli? Did you hear what he said about you and your brothers and sisters? Isn’t he a cruel monster?”

He turned and looked at her then, really looked at her. The light in her eyes was magical. Sometimes he felt as though she were the only person beside himself in the great castle that was truly alive. “Mad,” he said, and let himself smile. “See? Talking to dogs. Mad as can be.”

“It’s not me who’s mad, Barrick Eddon. It’s you. Now stop this nonsense about snow and ravens. Tell me what I want to know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at me,” she said, but she didn’t sound quite like herself any more. “Tell me why you are here.”

“Why...? I don’t understand you.”

“You understand—you do. Don’t waste my time. Why are you here?”

He felt his breath catch in his chest. That’s not...Briony wouldn’t...!

A cold wave of surprise and fear suddenly washed over him and he found himself staring into the coldly gleaming eyes of Ueni’ssoh once more.

A tiny smile curled the slate-colored lips. “So. Stronger than I would have guessed, and with some...interesting flavors. What about the other sunlander? Might he prove a little less stubborn?”

The gray man abruptly swiveled to look at Gyir, as if he felt some movement from his direction. “No, I will not strive with you, Storm Lantern—not yet. I will enjoy that too much, and I like to anticipate my pleasures.” The cadaverous face turned to Ferras Vansen and Barrick felt himself abruptly released, as if a powerful hand had let go of the nape of his neck. He slumped helplessly to his knees as Vansen trudged past him and then stopped before the black-robed man like an obedient servant.

After staring at the guardsman for several heartbeats, Ueni’ssoh raised his hand. Vansen swayed and crumpled to the floor.

“Interesting,” Ueni’ssoh said, showing long, narrow teeth as gray as his skin. “You both shield yourself with the thought of the same female. I shall ponder on this.” He turned and glided out of the low-ceilinged chamber, followed by the bestial guards. The door slammed, plunging the room into almost complete darkness as the bolt rattled home.

What will they do with us? Barrick asked Gyir, but the faceless warrior did not answer him. “What’s going to happen?” Barrick finally said aloud. “Are...are they going to kill us?”

“Even if they keep us alive,” Vansen said grimly, “I doubt we’ll like it much.”

I said you two should be silent and I meant it. Gyir’s anger blew into Barrick’s head like a winter wind. We are in terrible danger and every word you speak aloud is a risk.

But you won’t talk to me! Barrick knew it sounded petty, but he didn’t care. What had happened to the Barrick Eddon of a few days ago, when he had not cared whether he was alive or dead? You just sit there.

I am not being silent out of some ill humor, Gyir told him. I am...testing myself. And thinking. What does that mean?

Stop. Gyir closed his eyes. Let me be alone with my thoughts, boy. Otherwise, the lives of far more than we three may be forfeit.

Miserable and terrified, with no room to pace, Barrick could only sit and breathe in the dreadful, stretching silence.

Prince Barrick had fallen asleep at last, for which Vansen was grateful. Gyir stirred and then, in one smoothly nimble motion, rose to his feet—impressive, considering he had been sitting on the hard stone for hours.

Are they just older than us, these fairies, and schooled in different ways? Vansen wondered. Is it all tricks of magic they’ve learned? Or are they truly stronger and better than we are in everything? He would never be able to forget the way the Twilight People had slashed through his men at Kolkan’s Field like wolves through pampered house dogs.

Gyir moved to the door of the cell and stood close to the grille, looking out into the larger prison room beyond.

Is someone coming? Vansen was beginning to feel disturbingly comfortable with this unspeaking speech.

The fairy lifted his pale hand. Quiet.

Rebuked, Vansen clambered to his feet to see for himself, but Gyir waved him back. The fairy was doing more than observing, Vansen realized: Gyir had an expression of fierce concentration in his narrowed eyes, and, as the torchlight from the door grille moved across the fairy’s face Vansen could even see veins bulging at the sides of the Storm Lantern’s ivory brow.

Ferras Vansen watched as the fairy looked from one side of the chamber to the other. Gyir’s gaze lit on one of the larger, more human-looking prisoners, manlike but shaggy and yellow as a buttercup, with long, splay-toed feet and a starry snout like a burrowing mole. The creature raised its head and looked around with nothing more than slow curiosity at first, but then began to twitch as though beset by flying insects. It grabbed at its ears as if to shut out some loud noise, then staggered upright and lurched toward Gyir and the bronze door.

The yellow fairy stopped, its flowerlike muzzle only inches from the grille, its eyes wide. Gyir lifted a hand and its eyes fell shut, then he extended his long fingers through the bars until he could touch the creature lightly on the forehead, then he closed his own eyes.

For long moments they stood that way, unmoving, as if sharing some ancient ritual. At last the yellow fairy took an awkward step backward, shook its head, then turned and walked away without a backward glance. Gyir stood watching it for a moment before he swayed and collapsed.

Ferras Vansen caught the fairy as he fell, grunting at the weight, although Gyir was lighter than his size would have suggested. As he lowered the Storm Lantern to the cell floor Vansen could not help noticing the fairy’s smell, an odd mixture of ocean tang, leather, and cloying, flowery scents.

Fear not—I will survive. There was a dry edge to Gyir’s thoughts which Vansen recognized as amusement. Just let me rest.

What did you do?

Must rest. The fairy did not even lay his head on his arm— the red eyes simply shut.

Prince Barrick had awakened by the time Gyir sat up again, rubbing his head as though it ached. “What have you two done?” the boy demanded of Vansen. “He won’t tell me.” Vansen had no doubt the prince was speaking aloud to irritate Gyir, and couldn’t help wondering if the boy’s father had ever simply taken Barrick over his knee and given him a good thrashing.

“I couldn’t tell you, Highness, because I didn’t understand it myself.”

I have asked several times for silence. I will not ask again. Gyir’s brow wrinkled, which was his way of frowning. Listen. Outside their tiny cell Vansen could hear the growling of the guards and the moans and shrills of protesting prisoners.

They are harrying the next gang out to work and I must... narrow my thoughts. Deepen them. I am going to look through the eyes of one of them—the yellow one that Captain Vansen saw. I will see what he does, where he goes, and discover something of this place.

Vansen was puzzled. But I thought you were...crippled, you said. By what those Followers did to you.

I have recovered, somewhat. In fact, I think my recovery was caused, or at least hastened, by being in the presence of Jikuyin, battered by his voice. It would be nice to think that in capturing and imprisoning us, he has unwittingly given me back something of myself. He paused, clearly listening to something Barrick was saying.

I do not know if I have the strength, Gyir said at last. Then: Very well, you may be right. I will try. But if I grow too weak, I will cut the rope, as it were, and let the two of you fall away rather than give up my own connection.

What does that mean? Try what? Vansen asked, careful not to speak aloud again.

The young prince wants me to let you both see what I see through the eyes of the prisoner.

Can you really do that?

The fairy sat down with his back against the door, then beckoned Vansen and the prince toward him. Take my hands and close your eyes, shut out all distraction. He extended one long hand toward Vansen and the other toward Barrick, palms up, white fingers curled like the petals of water flowers. Go—take it.

Vansen did and was bemused to find nothing different, other than the obviously strange situation of holding the fairy’s chill, smooth hand.

No, you must shut out distraction. If you look around, if you squirm, if you even think too much, you make it more difficult for me to hold everything in my thoughts.

Vansen did his best to comply. At first he saw nothing except the floating sparks that usually populated the darkness behind closed lids. Then one of the sparks began to grow, its glow swelling, until it pushed out the blackness and filled his mind’s eye.

It was more than just sight, though, he realized as the great door swung open before him and he followed the small, hairy back of another prisoner out into the passageway. He thought he could even feel something of the yellow creature’s thoughts, although they were as strange to him as trying to hear meaning in birdsong. The thing he was inhabiting longed helplessly for home, an ache Vansen understood, but “home” to this creature seemed to mean deep woods and tangling leaves and the silver of snailtracks undisturbed on a damp forest floor. The thing had a name, too—something like “Praise-Sweet-Lisiya’s-Grace,” as far as Vansen could tell. It was terribly frightened, but had dissolved its fear in a passivity he could not understand, a certainty that nothing would change or even could change, that it could only follow what was before it, from meal to miserable meal and from one command to the next, unless something came at last to change this nightmare, even if that something was death itself.

It was a chilling way to feel, worse still to experience such hopelessness as if it were his own. Vansen did not try to sample any of the river of memories that ran just beneath the slow, awkward thoughts. He wanted only to get out of the creature’s thoughts entirely, as quickly as he could—he hated being in this trapped, pathetic, doomed thing...!

Something wrapped around him, soothing him as a parent would a child. It was Gyir, acting not out of pity, but because Vansen’s discomfort was affecting the fairy’s own composure. Vansen felt a wash of shame and did his best to choke down his discomfort and fear. Just watch, he told himself. Be strong. It’s not me. This thing is not me. But it was more frightening than he would ever have guessed to be trapped in someone else’s body.

The line of prisoners trudged downward through several sloping corridors and once down a flight of spiral steps so long that Vansen feared he would soon be seeing the face of Immon the immortal gatekeeper. In these depths they could better hear the thunderous sounds that had rumbled up to the prisoner chamber. They were not constant, or even regular, but every hundred dragging steps or so a loud thump seemed to rattle the very stone around them.

They passed dozens of the hairy guards and hundreds of other prisoners returning from the depths, most of the groups as queerly mixed as their own, but some more obviously collected for a certain limited task, like the group of short, heavy-muscled creatures with heads sunk deep between their huge shoulders, each one carrying a bronze pick like a spearman marching to war. The most chilling thing about these squat diggers was not their silence or their faintly luminous, mushroom-colored skin, but the absence of eyes in the crude faces nestling just above their breastbones.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs at last, the guards marched the yellow fairy and his companions through a few more corridors and down one last slope, then through a heavy wooden door. A wheeled cart the size of a large hay wain stood untended in a chamber slightly bigger than the one in which the prisoners were housed, its wheels sunk deep into tracks through what looked like centuries worth of dust. At the far end of the chamber was an open door large enough for the cart to pass through, with only darkness visible behind. At the near end of the room a shaft led straight down, with a system of large pulleys strung above it and ropes cobwebbing down into the measureless depths.

Vansen did his best to understand what he was seeing through the forest-fairy’s eyes, but could make little sense of it. Were they supposed to take something from the door at one end and then lower it down the shaft? Gold? Jewels? Or did the exchange more likely go the other way around, the dirt and rubble from the mine’s digging, source of all this dust, sent aboveground for disposal?

The brutish guards finished herding the rest of the prisoners into the room but did not stop to give directions, if they were even capable of such a thing. Instead, a few of the shaggy, club-wielding creatures stayed behind to guard the prisoners—it was hard to tell exactly how many, since the star-nosed yellow fairy was doing his best to avoid eye contact with any of them—while the rest trooped out of the chamber. Whatever their work might be, the prisoners did not immediately spring to it, and the remaining guards did not seem to expect them to do so. The yellow fairy and his companions waited in attitudes of dull patience, but they did not have to wait long.

Vansen felt rather than heard a ragged sound—a shout from below—and most of the prisoners hurried to the pulleys above the deep, square pit, while others went to bring the wagon nearer. The slaves hauling on the ropes grunted and moaned until they had hauled a huge wooden basket up from the unseen depths, then they swung the basket out on a hinged arm until it dangled over the bed of the huge wagon. When they tipped it down several dozen corpses fell out in a limply flopping heap.

Vansen almost lost his grip on Gyir, or the fairy nearly lost his hold on Vansen.

One of bodies slid off the top of the pile and tumbled onto the stone floor beside the cart wheel, limp as a grain sack. The yellow fairy bent with another prisoner to lift the body— in life it had been a goblin, Vansen guessed, although the small creature’s hairy pelt was so caked with dust it was hard to be certain. There were no obvious marks of violence, at least not anything fatal: long weals ran across the dead goblin’s back, crisscrossed through the fur like roads being swallowed by undergrowth, but the skin had scarred long ago: it had not been the whipping that had killed this creature.

The yellow forest-fairy went about its grisly chores as though sleepwalking, which was just as well, since Ferras Vansen found it hard to watch what the creature was doing. It wrestled another fallen body back onto the cart, a bumpyskinned corpse of the star-nosed thing’s own type, with blood on its face but no other sign of violence. Vansen caught only the briefest moment of hesitation as the creature saw one of its own kind, then it turned away without looking at the face, pulling an emptiness over its thoughts that Vansen could feel. Nevertheless, it did not linger beside the corpse of its star-nosed kin, but walked around the back of the cart just as the creaking vehicle began to roll away from the pit. The yellow fairy bent one last time to pick up the corpse of a hard-shelled creature whose half-closed eyes and sagging mouth were the only parts of its face not covered by leathery plates of skin. The buglike thing was clearly heavier than the yellow fairy had expected; after a moment’s struggle, he decided to drag it instead of trying to lift it. As he pulled it scraping across the floor one of the other prisoners came to help—something that Vansen found oddly touching—and together they heaved the shelled thing back onto the cart.

Beyond the doorway at the chamber’s far end, a more or less level track led away into darkness. Within a few hundred paces the track grew deep with dust and the wagon slowed, then stopped. The yellow fairy and several other prisoners stepped up and pushed until it the wheels came free and began to roll again. Another thumping crash shook the cavern—Vansen could not hear it so much as he could see the way it knocked the yellow fairy and everything around him off-kilter—and for a moment the eyes through which he was looking stared straight down into nothingness: on the left side the path dropped away and the shadows stretched so deep the torchlight could not find their ending.

The prisoners steered the heavy cart very slowly around a bend in the track, trying not to let themselves or the wagon get too near the edge. Even so, one small captive was caught between the front wheel and the edge of the track; with a scream Vansen could barely hear, although he knew it must be hideously shrill in the yellow fairy’s ears, the little creature was swept off into darkness. The rest of the prisoners stopped, frightened and miserable, but blows from the guards’ clubs quickly set them moving again.

After they had finally coaxed the wagon around the difficult bend, they found themselves face-to-face with more of the hairy beast-guards coming along the track toward them. This group had scarves wrapped around their faces so that only their tiny eyes could be seen, which made them even more ominously strange. These new ape-things did not like to see their way blocked by the cart, and pointed forked spears at the prisoners, gesturing and grunting angrily until the yellow fairy and his comrades shrank back against the cliff face and let the masked creatures shove by. When they were gone, the woodsprite and his fellow prisoners laboriously heaved the corpse-wagon into motion again.

The part of Vansen that still thought as Vansen had wondered why they should be traveling so far, and where the bodies were being taken. Now he learned. As the wagon creaked onward the light grew stronger: there was clearly some other source besides the torches high on the walls above the narrow path. Only another hundred yards or farther the path turned and then turned again. The light and the sickening smell bloomed, and those prisoners who still wore rags of clothing tried to cover noses and mouths. The yellow fairy could do nothing except spread his hand over his muzzle, squeezing the star-shaped protuberance closed like a parent wrapping his fist around a child’s hand. Even through the curious dislocation of Gyir’s spell, Vansen could smell rotting flesh—the true stench must have been almost beyond belief.

For a moment Vansen could feel not just the woodsprite’s dull horror, and his own, but a flare of despair and dread from Prince Barrick as well, as though the boy were standing just beside him, or even just inside him. Barrick was fighting to get away, somehow, pushing back from the scene that stretched before them in the billowing firelight. Vansen felt Gyir’s connection to them all grow thin.

No! Gyir’s thoughts came like hammer blows. Do not turn away! Wait!

Dozens of guards, many in sacklike hooded robes that covered them almost entirely, swarmed along the floor of the vast cavern, which was little more than a shelf around a huge, open pit full of corpses, thousands of dead creatures of all kinds and sizes. Dirt brought in on ore carts by other guards was being shoveled in on top of the uppermost bodies. Fires burned everywhere, great bonfires at each corner of the huge hole and smaller fires tended by the guards in several of the wider places on the shelf around the pit, meant to disperse or consume the stench. The smoke and sparks swirled upward, and the heat of the fires and the air drawn in from the corridors that emptied into the pit chamber on all sides made the stinking winds rush in circles around the cavern before at last rising upward into the darkness of the cavern’s roof.

No. So many...! It is... Vansen did not know if the thoughts were his own now or Barrick’s, or perhaps even Gyir’s. All he knew was that the terrible sight blurred before him as if his eyes were filling with tears, then it all flew away into darkness and he was back in his own frail body once more, sprawled on the floor of the cell beside Gyir and Barrick, weak, ill, and horrorstricken.

26. Rising Wind

Pinimmon Vash, the Paramount Minister of Xis and its possessions all across Xand, looked at his closet with disaffection. Three boys, naked except for artful decorations of gold around their necks and ankles, cringed on the carpet. The slaves knew what it meant when their master was in an unhappy mood.

“I do not see my silk robe with my family nightingale crest. It should be in the closet. That robe is worth more than your entire families to the seventh generation. Where is it?” “You sent it to be cleaned, Master,” one of the slaves ventured after a long silence.

“I sent it to be cleaned and brought back. It has not been brought back. I am going on a voyage. I must have my nightingale robe.”

Vash was just debating which one of them to beat, and if he had time to beat two, when the messenger came. It was one of the Leopards, dressed in the full panoply of warfare and very conscious of the days of fire and blood just ahead. The soldier stood straight as a broomstraw in the doorway, touched his palm to his forehead in salute, and announced, “Our lord Sulepis, the Master of the Great Tent, requires your immediate attendance.”

Pinimmon Vash carefully hid his irritation: it was not wise in these days of universal upheaval to give anyone even the slightest thing to mention to an ambitious courtier or (might all gods forbid it!) the autarch himself. Still, it was annoying. He could not imagine when he would find the time before leaving to give these boys the discipline they deserved, and even his large shipboard cabin was a place of little privacy. Nothing to be done, though. The autarch had called.

“I come,” he said simply. The Leopard guard turned smartly on his heel and strode out of the room. Vash paused in the doorway.

“I will be back very soon,” he told his servants. “If the nightingale robe is not in the closet, all of you will go up the gangplank limping and weeping. If the robe is not in excellently clean condition, I will be taking other servants on my voyage. You three will be floating down the canal past your parents’ houses, but they will not recognize you to weep over you.”

The look on their faces was almost worth the tedium of having to go and listen to the ravings of his mad and extremely demanding monarch. Vash was an old man and he enjoyed the few simple pleasures left to him.

The autarch was being bathed in a room filled with hundreds of candles. Vash was all too used to seeing his master naked, but he had never quite grown unused to it. It was not because the autarch’s nakedness was an ugly thing, not at all: Sulepis was a young man, tall and fit, if a trifle too slender for Vash’s taste (which tended toward round cheeks and small, childlike bellies). No, it was that his nakedness, which should have provoked thoughts of vulnerability or intimacy, seemed...unimportant. As though Sulepis wore a body only because it was convenient, or demanded by his station, but really would have been just as comfortable with nothing more than a skeleton or skinless meat or the stone limbs of a statue. The autarch’s nakedness, Vash had decided, had nothing much of the human about it. He never felt even a twinge of desire, shame, or disgust looking at the autarch, when any other unclothed man or woman would summon one of those feelings, if not all.

“You called for me, Golden One?”

The autarch stared at him for a long moment, as though he had never seen his paramount minister before—as if Pinimmon Vash were some stranger who had wandered into the monarch’s bath chamber. The candle-light rippled across the monarch as though his long body was something drifting at the bottom of the EminentCanal. “Ah,” he said at last. “Vash. Yes.” He gestured limply toward a figure on his other side, half obscured by the steam of the huge bath. “Vash, you must greet Prusus, your scotarch.”

Vash turned to the crippled creature, who swayed in his litter as though caught in a high wind. Many thought he was simpleminded, but Pinimmon Vash doubted it. “A pleasure, Scotarch, as always. I hope I find you well?”

Prusus tried to say something, grimaced, then tried again. His round face contorted as though he were in agony— speaking was hard for him at the best of times, and even more difficult in front of the autarch—but he only got out a few grunting syllables before Sulepis laughed and waved his hand.

“Enough, enough—we cannot wait all day. Tell me, Prusus, how do you pray? Even Nushash must lose patience with your jerking and mumbling. Ah, and our other guest, Polemarch Johar. Vash, you and Johar already know each other, yes?”

Vash bowed slightly to the spare, cold-eyed man, as almost to an equal. Ikelis Johar, high polemarch of the autarch’s troops, was a power unto himself and although he and Vash had not yet clashed over policy, it was inevitable that one day they would. It was equally inevitable that one of them would not survive the clash. Looking at Ikelis Johar’s cruel, humorless mouth, Vash found himself looking forward to that day. One could have too much leisure, after all. “Of course, Golden One. The Overseer of the Armies and I are old friends.”

Johar’s grin was as humorless as that of a lion sniffing the breeze. “Yes—old friends.”

“Johar is in a cheerful mood—aren’t you, Overseer?” said the autarch, stretching his arms so a slave could oil them. “Because soon he will have a chance to give his men some exercise. Life has been dull the last few moons, since Mihan capitulated.”

“With all respect, Golden One,” Johar said, “I’m not certain I’d call besieging Hierosol merely exercise. It has never fallen by force in all its long history.”

“Then your name will live in glory beside mine, Overseer.”

“As you say, of course, and I am grateful to hear it. The Master of the Great Tent is never wrong.”

“That’s true, you know.” The autarch sat up as if struck with a sudden and pleasing thought; one of his slaves, trying desperately to avoid an incorrect contact with his master, almost slipped and fell on the wet floor. “It is the god in me, of course—the blood of Nushash himself running through me. I cannot be wrong and I cannot fail.” He sat back just as suddenly as he had risen, making the water rush back and forth in waves from one end of the large tub to the other. “A very comforting thing.”

But if that is so, my very great lord, Pinimmon Vash could not help thinking, it did not save your brothers, who also had the blood of the god in them, from losing a great deal of that holy blood when you took the throne. This thought naturally stayed private, but he could not avoid a pang of fright when the autarch looked at him and smiled with wicked amusement, as if he knew just what heretical ideas his paramount minister was harboring.

“Come, there is much to do—even for one like me who cannot make mistakes, eh, Vash? Someone take the scotarch to his chambers. Yes, farewell, Prusus. No, save your breath. We all must prepare for the ceremonies of departure, the consecration of the army, and everything else.” The autarch’s smile twisted. “I need my most loyal servant at my side. Will you stay with me while the slaves dress me?”

The old minister bowed. “Of course, Golden One.”

“Good. And you, Johar, doubtless have many details to see to. We depart at dawn.”

“Of course, Golden One.”

The autarch smiled. “Two strong men but the same obedient words. The harmony of infallibility. What a beautiful, melodious world this is, my dearly beloved servants. How could it be better?” The autarch laughed, but with an odd harshness, as though he fought some kind of doubt. But the autarch never doubted, Vash knew, and the autarch feared nothing. In all the years he had known Sulepis, from his silent, studious childhood to his sudden and violent ascension to the throne, Pinimmon Vash had never seen the autarch anything other than confident almost to the point of madness.

“It is a beautiful world indeed, Golden One,” Vash said in the silence after the laughter, and despite the sudden chill that squeezed his heart he did his very, very best to sound as though he meant it.

She walked right out the door and no one stopped her. One moment all was light and warmth and the reassuring sound of her brothers and sisters breathing in their sleep, the next moment Qinnitan had stepped into the sudden, surprising cold of a night with no moon.

The houses and shops of Cat’s Eye Street were only shadow-shapes, but it didn’t matter. She knew the place as well as she knew the geography of her own body, knew that Arjamele’s doorway would be just here, and the loose stone of the next doorway along would catch her toe if she didn’t step over it. She knew the shape of everything, but she also knew that something was different—something in the dark, cold street had changed.

The well. The lid was off the well.

But that was impossible: the well was always covered at night. Still, even though she could not see it—could see almost nothing but the indistinct shapes of the buildings looming around her, black against the deep velvety purple of the sky—she knew it was uncovered. She could feel it like a hole in the night, a deeper black than anything she could see with her eyes. And worse, she could feel something in it—something waiting.

Still moving helplessly as though led by some god, she walked forward, feeling her bare soles against the gritty sand. The stones of her street, a street almost as old as Xis itself, had long since surrendered to the flowing sands which got into everything. No matter how hard the women of Cat’s Eye Street swept, the stones would never be seen again. But it was said that some of the oldest houses had cellar rooms with doors that had once let out onto this very street when the stones had still been visible, although now those doors could no longer be opened, and would admit only centuried dust if they were.

Qinnitan felt the well before she saw it, the waist-high ring of stone with emptiness at its center like an untended wound. She thought she could hear a faint noise as of something in the depths gently pushing the water to and fro.

She leaned forward, although she did not want to, although every sense she had screamed out for her to turn back toward the house and the safety of her sleeping family. Still she leaned farther, until her face was over the invisible hole, until the faint noises were rising straight up to her ears —slish, splush, slish, something gently stirring down in the darkness.

Was it a monstrous eight-legger such as she had seen in the market, a sort of wet sea spider with limbs as slippery and loose as noodles? But how could such a thing get into the well? Still, whatever it was, she could feel it as well as hear it, sense its inhuman presence somewhere below her.

Now she could feel it moving. Coming upward. Climbing, with inhuman strength and patience, up the smooth, clammy stones, climbing right up toward her where she leaned helplessly over the well mouth, her limbs stiff as stone. She could feel it in her head as well—cold thoughts, alien wishes unclear but unmistakable as fingers around her throat. It was climbing toward her as intently as if she had called it... “Briony! Help me!”

At first she thought the startling voice came from the thing in the well, but it sounded like a real person—a young man, frightened as she was frightened. Was someone calling her? But why call her by that unfamiliar name?

The thing in the well did not stop or even slow the sticky slap of its climb. Qinnitan tried to scream, but could not. She tried again, but the scream could only build and build inside her until it seemed she would burst like a flooded dam.

“Briony! I’m here!”

She could feel him, as if he stood just on the other side of the well—could almost see him, a pale, pale boy with hair as flame-red as the streak in her own dark locks, a boy staring at her without seeing, his eyes haunted... “Briony!”

She was terrified. The thing’s wet fingers were curling on the lip of the well and the boy couldn’t even see it? She wanted to know why he called her by that strange name, but instead when she found her voice at last she heard herself ask him, “Why are you in my dreams?”

And then the blackness burst up from below and the boy blew away like smoke and the shriek at last came rushing out of her, rising, ragged....

Qinnitan sat up, gasping. Something had a grip on her and for a moment she struggled fruitlessly against it until she realized it was not huge and chilly but small and warm and...and frightened. It was Pigeon. Pigeon was hanging onto her, grunting with fear. He was terrified, but he was trying to comfort her.

“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. She found his head in the darkness, stroked his hair. He clung to her like a street musician’s monkey. “It was just a bad dream. Were you frightened? Did you call me?”

But of course he couldn’t have called her—not in words. The voice had been a dream, too. Briony. What a strange name. And what a terrible dream! It had been like the nights when she had lived in the Seclusion, when the priest Panhyssir had given her that dreadful elixir called the Sun’s Blood, that poison which had left her feverish and terrified that it was stealing her mind.

Remembering, Qinnitan shivered helplessly. Pigeon was already asleep again, his bony little body pressed against her so that she couldn’t lower her arm, which was already beginning to ache a little. How could she have believed that the autarch would simply let her go? She was a fool to linger here in Hierosol, only a short distance across the sea from Xis itself. She should pack up in the morning, leave the citadel and its laundry behind.

As she lay cradling the boy in the darkness, she heard something moaning: outside the dormitory, the winds were rising.

A storm, she thought. Wind from the south. What do they call it here? “Red wind”—the wind from Xand. From Xis... She rolled over, gently dislodging Pigeon. His breathing changed, then settled into a low buzz again, soothing as the drone of the sacred bees, but Qinnitan could not be so easily calmed. Winds push ships, she thought. Suddenly, sleep seemed farther away than the southern continent.

She got up and made her way across the cold stone floors to the main room, reassuring herself by the sound of the sleeping women she passed that all was ordinary, that only night’s darkness was making it seem strange. She stepped to one of the windows and lifted the heavy shutter, wanting a glimpse of moonlight or the sight of trees bending in the wind’s grasp, anything ordinary. Despite evidence of the ordinary all around her, she half-expected to find Cat’s Eye Street and the uncovered well outside, but instead she was soothed to see the high facades of Echoing Mall. Something was moving on the otherwise empty street, though—a manlike figure in a long robe walking away down the colonnade with casual haste. It might simply have been one of the citadel’s countless other servants returning home late, or it might have been someone who had been watching the front of the dormitory.

Holding her breath as if the retreating shape might hear her from a hundred paces away, Qinnitan let the shutter down quietly and hurried back across the dark house.

There were times that the great throne room of Xis seemed as familiar to Pinimmon Vash as the house in the temple district where he had spent his childhood (a large dwelling, but not too large, a dream of wealth to the servants but only one residence out of many that belonged to the eminent Vash clan). This throne room was the Paramount Minister’s place of work, after all: it was understandable that he might sometimes fail to notice its size and splendor. But sometimes he saw it for what it truly was, a vast hall the size of a small village, whose black and white tiles stretched away for hundreds of meters in geometric perfection until the eye blurred trying to look at them, and whose tiled ceiling covered in pictures of the gods of Xis seemed as huge as heaven itself. This was one of those times.

The hall was full. It seemed as if almost every single person in the court had come to see the Ceremony of Leavetaking —even twitching Prusus was here, who generally only left his chambers when Sulepis demanded his attendance, and who Pinimmon Vash was seeing for an almost unprecedented second time in one day. Vash was glad to see that the scotarch, nominal successor to the monarchy, had been dressed as was fitting in a sumptuous robe too dark to show the spittle that dripped occasionally from his chin.

The monstrous chamber was so crowded that for the first time since the autarch’s crowning, Vash could not see the pattern on the floor. Everyone was dressed as if for a festival, but instead they had been standing in silence for most of the morning as the parade of priests and officials filed past to take their places in front of the Falcon Throne, dozens upon dozens of functionaries who only appeared on these state occasions: The Prophets of the Moon Shrine of Kerah The Keepers of the Autarch’s Raptors The Master of the Sarcophagus of Vushum The Chiefs of the Brewers of Ash-hanan at Khexi The Eyes of the Blessed Autarch of Upper Xand The Eyes of the Blessed Autarch of Lower Xand The Oracle of the Whispers of Surigali The Master of the Sacred Bees of Nushash The Scribe of the Tablet of Destinies The Wardens of the Gates of the Ocean The Supplicators of the Waves of Apisur The Wardens of the Royal Canals The Keeper of the Sacred Monkeys of Nobu The Sacred Slave of the Great Tent The Master of the Seclusion of Nissara The Chief of Royal Herds and Flocks The Master of the Granaries of Zishinah The Priests of the Coming-Forth of Zoaz The Guardians of the Whip that Scourges Pah-Inu The Wardens of the Digging-Stick of Ukamon The Priests of the Great Staff of Hernigal There were other priests, too, many more: Panhyssir, high priest of Nushash and the most powerful religious figure in the land next to the autarch himself, along with priests of Habbili and priests of Sawamat (the great goddess who, truth be told, had far more priestesses than priests, but whose female servants, like the priestesses of the Hive, were subordinated to their male masters and had only a token presence)—priests of every god and goddess who ever lived, it seemed, and of a few that may have existed only in the tales of other deities.

And as many court functionaries crowded the chamber as priests, the Favored of the palace and the whole men of the autarch’s army and navy, stable masters and kitchen masters, the clerks of records and the scribes of all the granaries and butteries and storehouses of the gigantic Orchard Palace, not to mention the ambassadors of every tame country that now danced to the autarch’s tune: Tuan, Mihan, Zan-Kartuum, Zan-Ahmia, Marash, Sania, and Iyar, even a few abashed envoys from the northern continent, representing captive Ulos, Akaris, and Torvio. There were islanders from distant Hakka wearing their skirts of palm fronds, and chieftains of the desert herders, camel masters and sneeringly proud horsemen of the red desert, from whom the autarch’s own family had sprung, but who had the sense now to bend their knees beside everyone else. (To be master of the desert and kin to the autarch himself might be a matter of pride, but too much pride in the presence of the Golden One was foolishness; the few fools bred by the sands did not usually live to adulthood.) Sulepis himself, the Master of the Great Tent, the Golden One, the God-on-Earth, stood before this assembly like the sun in the sky, clad only in a spotless white loin cloth, his arms raised as though he were about to speak. He said nothing, however, but only stood as the Slaves of the Royal Armor, under the direction of the high official known as the Master of the Armor—a position reserved for the closest thing to a friend the autarch had, a plump young man named Muziren Chah, eldest son of a middling noble family; Muziren had shared a wet nurse with the infant Sulepis but had no royal blood himself. Under Muziren’s silent (but still obviously anxious) direction, the Slaves of the Royal Armor clothed the autarch first in billowing pants and blouse of red silk embroidered with the Bishakh falcon, then pulled on the monarch’s boots and belt and emblems of office, the amulet and the great necklace, both made of gold and fire opal. Then they began to draw on his golden armor, first the breastplate and kilt of delicate, tough chain, then the rest, finishing with his gauntlets. They draped his great black cape on which the spread wings of the falcon had been stitched in golden wire, and then lowered the flame-pointed Battle Crown onto his head.

When the priests had perfumed the autarch with incense it was Vash’s turn. He carried up the cushion bearing the Mace of Nushash, gold-plated and shaped like a blazing sun. Sulepis looked at it for a long instant, a half-smile on his face, then winked at Pinimmon Vash and lifted the mace high in the air. For a moment the paramount minister felt certain the autarch was about to dash out his brains right here in front of all these gathered notables—not that any one of them would have dared even to murmur in surprise, let alone protest—but instead he turned to face the sea of people and bellowed in his high, strong voice.

“We will not rest until the enemies of Great Xis have been subdued!”

The crowd roared its approval, a noise that started low like a moan of pain, then rose until it seemed as if it would rattle the tiled images of the gods overhead right out of their heaven and bringing them crashing down to earth.

“We will not rest until our empire spreads over the world!”

The roar grew louder, although why any of them should have cared whether Xis stretched its sway one inch, Vash couldn’t imagine.

“We will not rest until Nushash is lord over all—the living God on Earth!”

And now the noise really did threaten to dislodge the tiles from the ceiling and even shake the pillars that kept heaven and earth separated.

The autarch turned and said something to Vash, but it was lost in the storm of approval. He turned back and waved his hands for quiet, which came quickly.

“In our absence, the Master of the Armor, Muziren Chah, will care for you as I care for you, like a herdsman his goats, like a father his children. Obey him in all things or I will return and destroy you all.”

Wide-eyed, the assembled courtiers nodded their heads and mumbled praise and in general did their best to look as if they could not even imagine what disobedience meant; Vash, though, had to struggle to keep his face expressionless. Muziren? The autarch was leaving the simpleton Master of the Armor on the throne? Surely that was the role of Prusus, the crippled scotarch, or even of Vash himself as paramount minister—what could be the reason for such a bizarre choice? Was it merely that Muziren was no threat to take the throne? It was hard to believe Sulepis could feel that he would become so vulnerable simply by leaving the city, not with a quarter of a million men at his command and the blood of a hundred kings in his veins?

Muziren Chah took the circlet of regency from the autarch and then dropped to his knees to kiss Sulepis’ feet. The autarch dismissed the crowd. (None of them were so foolish as to move from the spots where they stood until Sulepis himself had departed.) The autarch turned to Pinimmon Vash.

“To the ships,” he said, grinning. “Blood is in the air. And other things, too.”

Vash had no idea what he meant. “But...but what of Prusus, Golden One?”

“He is going with me. Surely our beloved scotarch deserves to see a little of the world, old friend?”

“Of course, Golden One. It is just that he has never traveled before...”

“Then enough talk. I will need my most trusted minister, too. Are you ready?”

“Of course, Master of the Great Tent. Packed and ready to travel, ready to do your bidding, as always.”

“Good. We shall have a most interesting adventure.”

The autarch stepped back into his litter—now that he was dressed in the royal armor, he could not set foot outside the throne room in the normal way, and in fact could not touch ground in Xis until he reached his ship. His brawny slaves lifted him and carried him out of the room, leaving Vash to wonder why it seemed to him as though the world had suddenly spun a little way out of its accustomed orbit.

27. The Players

Alone again. Lost again. Cursed and lost and alone...

Briony wiped hard at her cheeks with the back of her hand, scrubbing away the tears. No. Get up, you stupid girl! What was she doing, weeping like a child? How long had she been sitting here alone at the edge of the forest as the sun began to set? What kind of fool would sit blubbering while the moon rose and the wolves came out?

She staggered to her feet, weak-kneed and exhausted although she hadn’t moved for a long, long time. Had it all been a dream, then—the demigoddess Lisiya, the food, the stories of the gods and their battles? Only the dream of someone lost and wandering?

But wait—Lisiya had given her something, some amulet to carry. Where was it? Briony patted at the pockets in the sleeves of her ragged clothing, the long blouse of the boy she had killed, spattered with the dried brown of his blood... Defending myself, she thought, feeling a warming glow of anger. Defending myself from kidnap and rape!

She could find no trace of any goddess-given trinket. Her heart seemed heavy and cold as a stone at the bottom of a well. She must have imagined it all.

She still had something left in her of the Briony Eddon who been a queen in all but name, however, the young woman who had woken up every morning for months with the weight of her people’s well-being pressing down on her, the Briony who had learned to trust herself in the midst of flattering counselors and scheming enemies. That Briony possessed more than a little of her family’s famously stubborn strength and was not going to give in so easily, even now. She began to retrace her own steps—although noting with another pang that hers seemed to be the only footprints—searching along the forest fringe for any trace of her hours with Lisiya, for any real evidence of what had happened.

She found the amulet at last, almost by pure chance: the white threads had caught on a hanging branch several hundred steps into the forest, where it dangled like a tiny oblong moon. Briony gently teased the bird skull free, sending a prayer of gratitude to Zoria, and then belatedly to Lisiya herself, for this proof she had not imagined it all. She held it to her nose and smelled the dried flowers whose strange, musty tang reminded her of the spice jars in the castle kitchens, then slipped it into her pocket. She would have to find a cord for it, to keep it safe.

Could it all have been true, then—all Lisiya’s words, her strange tales?

Briony had a sudden, horrifying thought: if the charm was real, then Lisiya had brought her to the edge of the forest for a reason—but Briony was no longer there.

Slipping, stumbling in the growing dark, she hurried back over the wet and uneven, leaf-slicked ground, through the skeletal trees.

She burst out of the forest into the misty emptiness of early evening on the featureless meadows, and for a moment saw nothing. Then, just before she was about to throw herself down to the damp, grassy ground to gasp some breath back into her chest, she saw a single bobbing light moving away from her into the murk to her left, a lantern on a wagon going south toward Syan and faraway Hierosol. The witch, the goddess, whatever or whoever she was, had brought Briony here for a reason after all. She hobbled after the receding light, praying that these strangers were not bandits and wondering how she would explain why she was walking alone on the empty grasslands beside the Whitewood.

The two wagons on either side of the large fire made a sort of counterfeit town: for a few moments Briony could almost feel herself back in the midst of civilization. The man talking to her was certainly civilized enough, his speech as round and precise as his appearance. She knew him slightly, although she had not realized it until he gave his name, Finn Teodoros, and she was desperately grateful that they had never met in person. He was a poet and playwright who in years past had done some work for Brone and others at court, and had once or twice written pretty speeches for Orphanstide or Perinsday ceremonies. The rest of his traveling companions were players (as far as she could tell from the things they said to each other) taking their wagons on a winter tour of the provinces and beyond. As Teodoros questioned her, some of the others at the fire listened with interest, but most seemed far more involved with eating, or drinking as much wine as possible. Among the latter was another Briony thought she had heard of, Nevin or Hewney by name, another poet and—as her ladies Rose and Moina had informed her in tones mixing horror with a possibly indecent fascination—a very bad man indeed.

“So you say your name is Timoid, young man?” Finn Teodoros nodded at her sagely. “It smacks somewhat of a straw-covered bumpkin just off the channel boat from Connord. Perhaps we should call you Tim.”

Briony, who had picked the name of the Eddon family priest, could only nod.

“Strange, though, since the channel boat does not, as far as I know, make landfall in the midst of the Whitewood. Nor do you sound Connord-fresh. You say you have been wandering here how long?”

“Days, maybe weeks, my lord.” She tried to keep her voice boyishly gruff and her words what she imagined would be peasant-simple. “I do not know for certain.” This at least was true, but she was glad her dirty face would hide the flush of her fear. “And I am not from Connord but Southmarch.” She had hoped to pass herself off as a wandering prentice, but she had expected to encounter some tradesman or merchant, not this shrewd-faced familiar of her own court.

“Do not task him so,” said the tall one named Dowan—a giant of a fellow, so big that Briony did not reach near to his shoulder, and Olin Eddon’s daughter was not a small girl. “The lad is weary and hungry, and cold.”

“And looking to ease those deficits at our expense,” said a woman the others had called Estir. Her dark hair was shot with gray and although her face might be called pretty, she had the soured look of someone who remembered every slight ever done to her.

“We could use another hand on the ropes,” offered a handsome, brown-skinned youth, one of the few who seemed near Briony’s own age. He spoke lazily, as one accustomed to getting his way, and she wondered if he was related to the owner of the troop. Finn Teodoros had introduced the company as Makewell’s Men, which was the usual sort of name for a troop of traveling players—perhaps the young man was Makewell’s son, or even Makewell himself.

“Well, that is at first easy enough to accomplish without loss, Estir,” said Teodoros. “He shall have my share tonight, since my stomach pains me a bit. And he shall sleep with me in the wagon—unless that is not mine to grant?”

The woman named Estir scowled, but waved her hand as though it was of little import to her.

“Come, then, wandering Tim,” said Teodoros, rising heavily from his seat on the wagon’s narrow steps. He was no older than her father and what hair he had showed little gray, but he moved like an aged man. “You can have my meal and we can speak more, and perhaps I shall sniff out what use you might be, since no one travels with us who cannot earn his way.”

“That’s not all you’ll sniff out, I’ll wager,” said one of the drinkers. His words were mumbled in a way that suggested he had started his drinking long before sunset. He was handsome in a thick-jawed way, with a shock of dark hair.

“Thank you, Pedder,” said Teodoros with a hint of irritation. “Estir, perhaps you could see that your brother puts a little food in his stomach to offset the drink. If he is ill again this tennight I fear we will have another disaster with Xarpedon, because Hewney does not know it.”

“I wrote it, curse you!” bellowed Hewney, a bearded, balding man with the look of an aging courtier who still clung to the memory of his handsome youth.

“Writing it and remembering it are two different things, Nevin,” said Teodoros reasonably. “Come along, young Tim—we will talk while you eat.”

Once inside the tiny wagon the scrivener lowered himself onto the small plank bed and gestured at a covered bowl sitting on the folding shelf that seemed, judging by the quills, pens, and ink bottles hanging in a pocketed leather pouch, to double as a writing table. “I did not bring a spoon. There is a basin of water you can use to wash your hands.”

While Briony began to consume the lukewarm stew, Teodoros watched her with a small, pleasant smile on his face. “You might do for some of the girl’s roles, you know. We lost our second boy in Silverside—he fell in love with a local, which is the curse of traveling companies. Feival cannot play all the women, Pilney is too ugly to play any but the nurses and dowagers, and we will not have money to hire another actor until we are installed in our next theater.”

Briony swallowed. “A player—me? No. No, my lord, I cannot. I have no training.”

Teodoros raised an eyebrow. “No training in imposture? That is a strange argument coming from a girl pretending to be a boy, don’t you think? What matter it if we add one more twist to the deception and have you pretend to be a boy pretending to be a girl?”

Briony almost choked. “A girl...”

Teodoros laughed. “Oh, come, child. Surely you did not think to pass yourself off as a true manchild? Not among players—or at least not around me. I have been brushing rouge on principal boys and tightening their corsets since before you were born. But it is up to you—I cannot imagine forcing someone onto the stage against her will. You will sleep in the wagon with me and we will find you other employ.”

Suddenly the stew seemed to become something like paste in her mouth, sticky and tasteless. She had never spent much time around writers, but she had heard stories of their vicious habits. “Sleep with you...?”

Teodoros reached out and patted her knee. She flinched and almost dropped the bowl into her lap. “Foolish child,” he said. “If you were a real boy, handsome as you are, you might have some cause to fear me. But I want nothing from you, and if Pedder Makewell thinks you are mine, then he will leave you alone, too. He likes a charming lad, but dares not offend me because even with his name on the company, it is my contacts in Tessis that will keep us alive and plying our craft.”

“Tessis? You’re going all the way to Syan?” Briony swayed a little on her tiny stool, dizzy with relief. Bless you, Lisiya— and you, dear, kind Zoria.

“Eventually we shall wind our way thither, yes. Perhaps a few testings of our new material in the outlying towns—The Ravishment of Zoria has never seen a true audience and I would like to let it breathe a few free breaths before it is stifled by the jades in Tessis.”

“The Ravishment...I don’t understand.”

“The Ravishment of Zoria. It is a play of mine, newish, concerning the abduction of Zoria by Khors and his imprisonment of her, and the fateful beginning of the war between the gods. With real thunderstorms, lightning, magical sleights, and the fearful rumble of the gods on their immortal steeds, all for two coppers!” He smiled again. “I am rather proud of it, truth to tell. Whether it is my best work, though, only time and the hoi polloi of Syan will say.”

“But you...you’re all from the March Kingdoms, aren’t you? Why are you going to Syan? Why can’t you do your plays in Southmarch?”

“Spoken as someone who understands little of the doings of artists and nobles,” said Teodoros, his smile gone now. “We were Earl Rorick’s Players, inherited by the earl from his father of the same name. We were also the best and most respected of the Southmarch players—whatever you have heard about the Lord Castellan’s Men is rubbish. The Firmament itself was ours until it burned (that is a theater, child) and then afterward the Odeion Playhouse inside the castle walls and the great Treasury Theater in the mainland city both fought for our works. But young Rorick is dead, you see.”

“Dead? Rorick Longarren?” She only realized after she said it that perhaps it would seem strange she should know his full name.

Teodoros nodded. “Killed by fairies, they say. In any case, he did not come back from the battle at Kolkan’s Field and he has no heir, so we are left without a patron. The country’s guardian, kindly Lord Tolly, does not like players, or at least he does not like players with connections to the monarchy that was. He has given his own support to a group of players—players, hah! They are bandits, so criminal is their writing and their declaiming—under the patronage of a young idiot baron named Crowel. And so there is nothing for us to do but starve or travel.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “We decided travel would be more graceful and less painful.”

After Teodoros went back out to join his fellow players by the fire, Briony curled up on the floor of the wagon— choosing not to put Finn Teodoros’ professed disinterest in women to too harsh a test—and pulled the playwright’s traveling cloak over her. The news that her cousin Rorick was dead had disturbed her, even though she had never liked him. He had been in the same battle as Barrick and had not survived it. She did her best to let the sounds of talking and singing from outside the wagon soothe her. She was among people, even if they were only rough sorts, and not alone anymore. Briony fell asleep quickly. If she dreamed, she did not remember it in the morning.

The physician had made himself fairly comfortable. Besides a bed and a chair, the Guild-masters had given Chaven a table and what looked like every book in the guildhall library. It pained Chert’s head to think of reading so many of the things. Except for consultation here in the hall over a few particular and difficult problems over the years, he had not opened a book himself since soon after he had been introduced to the Mysteries. Chert of the Blue Quartz had a deep respect for learning, but he was not much of a reader.

“I should have come down here years ago,” said Chaven, hardly even looking up at Chert’s entrance. “How could I have been such a fool! If I had even guessed at the treasures down here...”

“Treasures?”

Chaven lifted the book in his hands reverently. “Bistrodos on the husbandry of crystals! My colleagues all over Eion believe this book lost when Hierosol first fell. And if I can find someone to help me translate from the Funderling, I tremble to think what knowledge your own ancestors have preserved here in these other volumes.”

“Chaven, I...”

“I know you do not feel up to such a challenge yourself, Chert, but perhaps one of the Metamorphic Brothers? I am sure they have scholars among their number who could help me...”

The idea of the conservative Metamorphic Brothers agreeing to allow ancient Funderling wisdom to be translated into one of the big-folk tongues was preposterous enough; Chert didn’t even want to imagine asking them to help with the project. In any case, he had more important matters at hand. “Chaven, I...”

“I know, I’m supposed to be solving my own problems— those I have brought with me which have become your people’s problems now, too. I know.” He shook his head. “But it is so hard to ignore all this...”

“Chaven, will you listen to me?”

The physician looked up, surprised. “What is it, friend?”

“I have been trying to speak to you, but you will go on and on about these books. Something has happened, something...disturbing.”

“What? Nothing wrong with the boy Flint, I hope?” “No,” said Chert. There at least was one thing in the world to be grateful for: Flint still had not recovered his memories, but he seemed more ordinary after his session with Chaven’s mirrors. He paid attention now, and though he still spoke little, he at least took part in the life of the household. Opal was the happiest she had been in a month. “No, nothing like that. We’ve had a message from the castle.”

“So?”

“From Brother Okros. He asks the Funderlings’ help.”

Chaven’s eyes narrowed. “That traitor! What does he want?”

Chert handed the letter to the physician, who fumbled for his spectacles and found them at last in his pockets. He had to set down his copy of Bistrodos so he could put them on and read the letter.

“To the esteemed Elders of the Guild of Stone-Cutters, greetings!

From his honor Okros Dioketian, royal physician to Olin Alessandros, Prince Regent of Southmarch and the March Kingdoms, and to his mother Queen Anissa.”

Chaven almost dropped the letter in his fury. “The villain! And look, he puts his own name before the royal child and mother. Does he know nothing of humility?” It took him a moment until he was calm enough to read again.

“I request the help of your august Guild with a small matter of scholarship, but one which will nevertheless carry with it my gratitude and that of the Queen, guardian of the Prince Regent. Send to me in the castle any among you who is particularly learned in the craft of Mirrors, their making, their mending, and the study of their substance and properties.

“I thank you in advance for this aid. Please do not speak of it outside your Guild, for it is the Queen’s express wish it be kept secret, so as not to excite rumor among the ignorant, who have many superstitions about Mirrors and suchlike.”

“And here he’s signed it—oh, and a seal, too!” Chaven’s voice was icy with disgust. “He’s come high in the world.”

“But what do you think about it? What should we do?”

“Do? What we must, of course—send him someone. And it must be you, Chert.”

“But I know nothing about mirrors...!”

“You will know more when you read Bistrodos.” Chaven picked the book up again, then let it fall back on the tabletop—the heavy volume made a noise like a badlyshored corridor collapsing. “And I will help you learn to speak like a master of captromancy.”

This was so preposterous he did not even argue. “But why?”

“Because Okros Dioketian is trying to learn the secrets of my mirror—and you must find out what he plans.” Chaven had become unnaturally pale and intent. “You must do it, Chert. You alone I trust. In the hands of someone like Okros there is no telling what mischief that mirror could perform!”

Chert shook his head in dismay, although he did not doubt the task would indeed fall to him. He was already imagining Opal’s opinion of this latest outrage.

Despite Lisiya’s healing hands, Briony was still sore in many places, but she was much happier than she had been on her own. It was better by far to walk in company, and the miles of empty grassland, broken only by the occasional settlement, village, or even more infrequent market town, went much more easily than they would have otherwise. She spoke little, not wanting to risk her disguise, although on the second night Estir Makewell had sidled up to her at the campfire and quietly said, “I don’t blame you for traveling as a boy in these dire territories. But if you make any trouble for me or the troop, girl, I will snatch the hair out of your head—and I’ll beat you stupid, too.”

It was a strange sort of welcome from the only other female, but Briony hadn’t planned on the two of them being friends in any case.

So if she could stay with them until Syan, what then? She was grateful for their fellowship, but she couldn’t imagine any of the players could help her in Tessis. Besides Teodoros, the soft-spoken but sharp-eyed eminence of the group, the troop was named for Pedder Makewell, Estir’s brother, the actor who liked his wine (and, according to Teodoros, also handsome young men). Makewell’s Men had chosen him as their figurehead because he had a reputation for playing the great parts and playing them loudly and well. The groundlings loved Makewell, Teodoros had told her, for his bombast but also for his tragic deaths.

“His Xarpedon gasps out his life with an arrow in his heart,” Teodoros had said approvingly, “and although this mighty autarch has put half of Xand to the sword, the people weep to hear him whisper his last words.”

The playwright Nevin Hewney was at least as well known as Makewell, although not for his acting—Teodoros said Hewney was a middling player at best, indifferent to that craft except as a way of attracting the fairer sex. He was, however, infamous for his plays, especially those like The Terrible Conflagration that some called blasphemous. But no one called him an indifferent poet: even Briony had heard something of Hewney’s The Death of Karal, which the royal physician Chaven had often claimed almost redeemed playwrighting from its sordid and sensational crimes against language.

“When he found his poetic voice, Hewney burst upon the world like fireworks,” Finn Teodoros told her as they walked one morning while the man in question limped along ahead of them, cursing the effects of the previous night’s drinking. “I remember when first I saw The Eidolon of Devonis and realized that words spoken on a stage could open up a world never seen before. But he was young then. Strong spirits and his own foul temper have blunted his genius, and I must do most of the writing.” Teodoros shook his head. “A shame against the gods themselves, who seldom give such gifts, to see those gifts squandered.”

Makewell’s sister Estir was the group’s only female member, and although she did not play upon the stage she performed many other useful services as seamstress and costumer, and also collected the money at performances and serviced the accounting books. The giant Dowan Birch had the beetling brow and frown of some forest wild man, but was surprisingly kind and intelligent in his speech— Teodoros called him “a quaffing of gentlemanry decanted into a barrel rather than a bottle.” But for his size and looks, he seemed distinctly unfit to play the demons and monsters that were his lot. The other leading actor was the handsome young man Feival, who although he had ended his dalliances with Teodoros and Makewell years earlier was still youthful and pretty enough to treat them both like lovesick old men. He seemed not to take advantage of this except in small ways, and Briony decided she rather liked him: his edge of carelessness and his occasional snappishness reminded her a little of Barrick. “Your other name is Ulian,” she said to him as they walked beside the horses one day. “Does that mean you are from Ulos?”

“Only for as long as it took me to realize what a midden heap it was,” he said, laughing. “I notice you did not spend long sniffing the air of Southmarch, either.”

Briony was almost shocked. “I love Southmarch. I did not leave because I disliked it.”

“Why, then?”

She realized she was already wandering into territory she wished to avoid. “I was treated badly by someone. But you, how old were you? When you left Ulos, I mean.”

“Not more than ten, I suppose.” He frowned, thinking. “I have numbers, but not well. I think I have eighteen or nineteen years now, so that seems about right.”

“And you came to Southmarch and became an actor?” “Nothing so straightforward.” He grinned. “If you have heard players and playhouses are the dregs of civilization, then know that anyone who says so has not seen the true cesspits of a place like Southmarch—let alone Tessis, which has Southmarch beat hollow for vice and depravity!” Feival chuckled. “I am rather looking forward to seeing it again.”

“There was a...physician in Southmarch,” Briony said, wondering if she might be going too far. “I think he lived in the castle. Chaven, his name was. Some said he was from Ulos. Do you know anything of him?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Chaven Makaros? Of course. He is from one of the ruling families of Ulos. The Makari would be kings, if Ulos had such creatures.”

“So he is well known?”

“As well known where I grew up as the Eddons are in Southmarch.” Feival paused to make the sign of the Three. “Ah, the poor Eddons,” he sighed. “May the gods watch over them. Except for our dear prisoned king, I hear they are all dead, now.” He looked at her intently. “If you were perhaps one of the castle servants, I do not blame you for running away. They are in hard times there. Frightening times. It is no place for a young girl.”

“Girl...?”

“Yes, girl, sweetling. You may fool the others, but not me. I have spent my life playing one, and recognize both good and bad imitations. You are neither, but the true coin. Also, you make a fairly wretched, unmanly boy.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Stay away from Hewney, whatever guise you wear. He is hungry for youth, and will take it anywhere he can find it.”

Briony shivered and only barely resisted making the sign of the Three herself. She was less disturbed to find another player had penetrated her disguise than by what Feival had said about the Eddons all being dead now... Not all, she told herself, and found a little courage in that bleak denial.

They walked for several days and made rough camp each night until they reached the estate of a rural lord, a knight, where they had apparently received hospitality in past years and were again welcomed. The company did not have to perform a play for their rent, but Pedder Makewell —after being forced to bathe in a cold stream, much against his will, for both his cleanliness and sobriety—went up to the house to declaim for the knight and his lady and household. Peder’s sister Estir went along to watch over him (but also, Briony thought, to have the chance at a better meal than the rest of the players enjoyed down by the knight’s stables). She couldn’t really blame the woman. Had she not feared being recognized, she would have gladly taken an evening by an indoor fire herself, eating something other than boiled onions and carrots. Still, carrots and onions and two loaves to split between them were better than most of what she had enjoyed for the last month, so she tried not to feel too sorry for herself. As she was learning, most of her subjects would be delighted with such fare.

Teodoros left the gathering early, returning with his soup bowl to the wagon because he said he had thought of some excellent revisions for his new play—something he promised he would show Briony later. “It may amuse you,” he said, “and certainly will at least instruct you, and in either case make you a more fit traveling companion.” She wasn’t certain what that meant, but although she was left alone with the other players, she had spent much of the afternoon helping to haul the wagons out of a muddy rut, rubbing her hands bloody on the rope in the process, and so they were willing, at least for tonight, to treat her as one of their own.

“But in truth we are a desperate fraternity, young Tim,” Nevin Hewney said to her, pouring freely from the cask of ale the knight had sent down as payment, along with lodging in the stables, for Makewell’s evening of recitation. “You should never take membership, even in the most temporary way, if you are not willing to incur the opprobrium of all gods-fearing folk.”

Briony, who in the recent weeks had survived fire, starvation, and more deliberate attempts to kill her—not least of which had been demonic magic—was not impressed by the playwright’s drunken conceit, but she nodded anyway.

“Gods-fearing folk fear you, Hewney,” said young Feival, and winked at Briony. “But that is not because you are a player—or not simply because you are a player. It is because you stink.”

The giant Dowan Birch laughed at that, as did the three other men whose names Briony had not learned by heart yet—quiet, bearded fellows who did their work uncomplainingly, and seemed to her too ordinary to be players. Nevin Hewney stared at the Ulosian youth for a moment, then leaped to his feet, eyes goggling, his mouth twisted in a grimace of rage. He snatched something out of his dirty doublet and leaped forward, thrusting it toward Feival’s throat. Briony let out a muffled shriek.

“That belongs in the pot, not at my gullet,” said Feival, pushing the carrot away. Hewney continued to stare ferociously for a moment, then lifted the vegetable to his mouth and took a bite.

“The new boy was frightened, though,” he said cheerfully. “A most unmanly squeal, that was.” Sweat gleamed on his high forehead. He was already drunk, Briony thought, her heart still beating too fast. “Which makes my point—and underscores it, too, thinketh I.” He turned to her. “You thought I would murder our sweet Feival, did you not?” Briony started to shrug, then nodded slowly.

“And if I had instead played the gentleman...like this...and begged this tender maiden for a kiss...?” He suited action to words, pursing his lips like the most lovesick swain. Feival, the principal boy, lifted his hand and pretended to flutter a fan, keeping the importunate suitor at bay. “Or perhaps if I turned seductively to you, handsome youth,” Hewney said, leaning toward Briony, “with your face like Zosim’s smoothest catamite...?”

“Leave the lad alone, Nev,” rumbled Dowan Birch before Briony’s alarm became something she had to act on. She did not want anyone coming close enough to see that she was a girl, but most especially not an unpredictable drunk like Hewney. “You are in a bad temper because Makewell was invited to the house but not you.”

“Not true!” Hewney made a careless gesture, then found himself off balance and did his best to turn his stumble into something like a deliberate attempt to sit down on the ground by the small fire. The frozen earth around it had thawed into muck, and he had to perform an almost acrobatic twist to land on the log the others were sharing. “No, as I was saying when I was interrupted by the princess of Ulos, I merely demonstrated why we are such a fearful federation, we players. We display what all other people hide—what even the priests hide. We show what the priests speak—but we also show it as nonsense. The entrance to a theater is the door to the underworld, like the gate Immon himself keeps, but beyond ours terrifying truth and the most outrageous sham lurk side by side, and who is to say which is which? Only the players, who stand behind the curtain and dress themselves in such clothes and masks as will tell the tale.” Hewney lifted his cup of ale and took a long swig, as though satisfied that he had made his point.

“Oh, but Master Nevin is talkative tonight,” said Feival, laughing, “I predict that before the cask is empty he will have explained to us all yet again that he is the round world’s greatest living playwright.”

“Or fall asleep in his own spew,” called one of the other players.

“Be kind,” said the giant Birch. “We have a visitor, and perhaps Tim was raised more gently than you fleering lot.”

“I suspect so,” said Hewney, giving Briony an odd look that made her stomach sink. The playwright struggled back onto his feet. “But, pish, friend Cloudscraper, I speak nothing but truth. The gods themselves, Zosim and Zoria and artificing Kupilas, who were the first players and playmakers, know the wisdom of my words.” He took another long draught of ale, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His beard gleamed wetly in the firelight and his sharp eyes glittered. “When the peasant falls down on his knees, quaking in fear that he will be delivered after death to the halls of Kernios, what does he see? Is it the crude paintings on the temple walls, with the god as stiff as a scarecrow? Or is it our bosom companion High-Pockets Birch that he remembers, awesome in robes of billowing black, masked and ghostly, as he came to take Dandelon’s soul in The Life and Death of King Nikolos?”

“Would that be a play by Nevin Hewney?” gibed Feival.

“Of course, and none of the other historicals as good,” Hewney said, “but my point has flown past you, it seems, leaving you as sunken in ignorance as previously.” He turned to Briony. “Do you take my meaning, child? What do people see when they think of the great and frightening things in life—love, murder, the wrath of the gods? They think of the poets’ words, the players’ carefully practiced gestures, the costumes, the roar of thunder we make with our booming drums. When Waterman remembers to beat his in the proper time, that is.”

The company laughed heartily at this, and one of the bearded men shook his head in shamed acknowledgment —obviously a mistake he had not been allowed to forget, nor probably ever would be.

“So,” Hewney went on, draining his cup and refilling it, “when they see gods, they see us. When they think of demons and even fairies, it is our masks and impostures they recall—although that may change, now that those Qarish knaves have come down from the north to interfere with honest players’ livings.” Hewney paused to clear his throat, as though acknowledging the shadow suddenly cast on their amusement. “But, hist, that is not the only way in which we players and poets are the most dangerous guild of all. Think! When we write of things that cannot be, or speak them, do we not put ideas in people’s mind—ideas which sometimes frighten even kings and queens? It is always the powerful who are most fearful (now that I think on it) precisely because they have the most to lose!” He wiped his mouth again, almost roughly, as though he did not feel much from his own lips. “In fact, in all other occurrences, is counterfeiting not a crime punishable by the highest courts? To make a false seeming of gold enough to gain the artisan the stockade at best, or the white-hot rod, or even the hangman’s rope? No wonder they fear us, who can counterfeit not just kings and princes, but the gods themselves! And there is more. We counterfeit feeling... and even being. There is no liar like a player!”

“Or a drunken scrivener,” said Feival, amused but also a little irritated now. “Who loves to see what shiny things come from his mouth like a child making bubbles of spit.”

“Very good, young Ulian, very good,” said Hewney, and took another drink. “You yet might make a poet yourself.”

“Why bother, when I can get poetry from most of ’em any time I want just by showing my bum?”

“Because someday that alabaster fundament will be old and raddled, wrinkled as a turkey’s neck,” said Hewney. “And I, once the prettiest boy in Helmingsea, should know.”

“And now you are a buyer, not a seller, and any fair young tavern maid can have your poetry for a copper’s worth of pretending, Master Hewney.” Feival was amused. “So lying, too, is for sale—that is the whole of what you’re saying. It seems to me that what you describe is the marketplace, and any peasant knows how a market works.”

“But none know so well as players,” Hewney repeated stubbornly. Briony could detect just the smallest slur in his words now.

The others gathered by the fire seemed to recognize this as a familiar game. They urged him on, pouring more ale for him and asking him mocking questions.

“What are players afraid of?” shouted one.

“And what exactly is it that players know?” said the fellow named Waterman.

“Players are afraid of being interrupted,” snapped Hewney. “And what they know is...everything that is of worth. Why do you think that the common people say, ‘Go and ask in the innyard,’ when they deem something a mystery? Because that is where the players are to be found. Why say, ‘As well ask the mask whose face it covers?’ Because they know that the matter of life is secrets, and that we players know them all and act them all, if the price is right. Think of old Lord Brone—or our new Lord Havemore! They know who it is who hears all. Who knows all the filthiest secrets....” Hewney’s head swayed. He seemed suddenly to have lost his thread of discourse. “They know what...they know who...will sniff out the truth in the back alleys. And for a little silver, who will tell that truth in the halls of the great and powerful...”

“Perhaps it’s time for you to take a walk, Nevin,” said a voice from just behind Briony, startling her so that she almost squeaked again. Finn Teodoros was standing on the steps of the wagon, his round form almost completely hiding the painted door. “Or simply to go to your bed. We have a long day tomorrow, far to walk.”

“And I am talking too much,” said Hewney. “Yes, Brother Finn, I hear you. All the gods know I would not want to offend anyone with my o’er-busy tongue.” He smiled at Briony as sweetly as a squinting, sweaty man could manage. “Perhaps our newest player would like to come for a walk with me. I will speak of safer subjects—the early days of the theater, when players were criminals and could never set up in the same pasture two nights running...”

“No, I think Master Tim will come with me.” Teodoros gave him a stern look. “You are a fool, Nevin.”

“But undisguised,” said Hewney, still smiling. “An honest fool.”

“If snakes are honest,” said Feival.

“They are honestly snakes,” Hewney replied, and everyone laughed.

“What was he talking about?” Briony said. “I hardly understood any of it.”

“Just as well,” said Teodoros, and then spoke quickly, as if he did not wish to dwell on the subject. “So tell me, Tim... my girl,” he grinned. “How long has it been since you left Southmarch?”

“I do not know, exactly.” She didn’t want to set things exactly the same as in truth—no sense making anyone think too much about Princess Briony’s disappearance. “Sometime before Orphanstide. I ran away. My master beat me,” she said, hoping to make it all sound more reasonable.

“Had the fairies come?”

She nodded. “No one knew much, though. The army was going out to fight them, but I have heard...heard that the fairies won.” She caught her breath. Barrick...“Has anyone...learned more about what happened?”

Teodoros shook his head. “There is not much to report. There was a great battle west of Greater Southmarch, in the farmlands outside the city, and fewer than a third of the soldiers made it away again, bringing reports of great slaughter and terrible deeds. Then the fairies took the mainland city, and as far as I know they are still there. Our patron Rorick Longarren was killed, as were many other noble knights—Mayne Calough, Lord Aldritch, more than anyone can count, the greatest slaughter of chivalry since Kellick Eddon’s day.”

“And the prince—Prince Barrick? Has anyone heard anything of him?”

Teodoros looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. “No word. He is presumed dead. None can go close enough to the battlefield—all are terrified of the fairies, although they have done no violence since then, and seem content to sit in the dark city, waiting for something.” He shrugged. “But no one travels west any more. The Settland Road is empty. No one passes through the mainland city at all. We had to take ship to Oscastle to begin our own journey.”

Briony felt as though someone pressed her heart between two strong hands—it was hard to breathe, hard even to think. “Who...who would believe such times would come?” “Indeed.” Teodoros suddenly sat forward. “Now, though, you must brighten a little, young Tim. Life goes on, and you have given me a most splendid idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply this. Here, these are the foul papers of The Ravishment of Zoria. I thought it was finished, but you have provided me with such a daring inspiration that I am adding page upon page. For just the jests alone I would owe you much praise—you can never have too many good jokes in a work where many bloody battles are fought, after all. The one sends the audience back for the other, like sweet and savory.”

“What idea are you talking about?” Did all playwrights babble like this? Could none of them speak in plain, sensible words?

“It is simply this. Your...plight put me in mind of it. Often in plays we have seen a girl passing for a boy. It is an old trick —some daughter of the minor nobility playing at being a rustic, calling herself a shepherd or some such. But never has it been a goddess!”

“A...what?”

“A goddess! I had my Zoria steal out of the clutches of Khors the Moonlord disguised as a serving wench, and thus did she pass herself among the mortals. But with you as my worldly inspiration, I have changed her disguise to that of a boy. A goddess, not merely passing as a mortal, but as a human boy—do you not see how rich that is, how much it adds to the business of her escape and her time among the mortal herd?”

“I suppose.” Briony was feeling tired now, sleepy and without much strength for being talked at anymore. She remembered all Lisiya had said, and could not resist tweaking Teodoros a little. “Here’s another thought for you to consider. What if Zoria wasn’t ravished by Khors? What if she truly loved him—ran away with him?”

Teodoros stared at her for a long moment, more shocked than she thought a man of ideas should have been. “What do you mean? Would you speak against all the authority of The Book of the Trigon?”

“I’m not speaking against anything.” It was hard to keep her eyes open any longer. “I’m just saying that if you want to look at things differently, why settle for the easy way?”

She slid off the edge of Teodoros’ bed to the floor and curled up under the blanket he had loaned her, leaving the playwright staring into the shadows the single candle could not reach, his expression a mixture of startlement and surmise.

28. Secrets of the Black Earth

At first Vansen could not even muster the will to sit up. The memory of the corpse-pit was like a weight on his chest.

I will say it again. Rise, Ferras Vansen.

It was not his own name that resounded in his head so much as an image of himself, although it seemed a distorted view, the skin too dark, the features coarse as those of the inbred families of the upper dales he used to see in the market at Greater Stell when he was a child. It was the Storm Lantern’s view of him, perhaps.

What do you want? Let me sleep.

We must try to make sense of what we have seen, sunlander—and there is something else, too.

Vansen groaned and opened his eyes, then forced himself into a sitting position, scraping his back and elbows on the cell’s rough wall. Barrick was still asleep, but he twitched and moaned quietly, as if trapped in a nightmare.

Let him be for the moment. I have words to share with you.

The memory of the pit would not go away. Gods protect us, what are they doing down there to work all those creatures to death?

Gyir nodded. So you too noticed that most of them showed no sign of what killed them. Yes, perhaps they were worked to death. The fairy touched the palm of one hand to the back of the other. Whatever the tale behind it, it is certainly a new page for the Book of Regret. The thought that accompanied the words was not so much of a real book as of a sort of frozen storm of ideas and pictures and feelings too complex, too alien for Vansen to grasp.

What else could it be? They looked like they’d just fallen down dead. No marks on most of them. Vansen was more familiar with corpses than he wished to be, especially those found on a battlefield, each one its own little Book of Regret, the ending written in cruel wounds for all to read.

We must not make the mistake of supposing that which we do not know for certain, Gyir said. The waters in these deep places are sometimes poisonous. Or it could be that they were felled by a plague. Or it might be something else... Even while his skin crawled at the thought of being locked in a massive prison with plague raging through it, Vansen could not help being struck by the quality of the Storm Lantern’s thinking. The creature he had considered little more than a beast, a bloodlusting wolf, was proving instead as careful as an Eastmarch scholar. Something else? What?

I do not know. But I fear the answer more than I fear poison or plague. Gyir looked to Barrick, still murmuring in fitful sleep. I wished to spare the boy talk of the dead we have seen. His thoughts are already fevered with terror and other things I do not entirely understand. But now we must wake him. I have something to say to both of you— something important.

More important than plague?

Gyir crouched beside the prince and touched his shoulder. Barrick, still twitching, immediately calmed; a moment later the boy’s eyes opened. The fairy reached into his jerkin and pulled out a handful of bread he had hoarded from the earlier meal, went to the barred window in their cell door and, as Vansen watched in astonishment, threw it into the center of the outer chamber.

After a moment of surprised hesitation the other prisoners rushed to the scattered bread like pigeons, the bigger taking from the smaller, those of similar size or health fighting viciously among themselves to keep what they had grabbed or to steal what they had failed to get by quickness. In a few heartbeats the chamber outside went from a place of quiet misery to a nest of yowling, screeching mad things.

Now we may talk—at least for a moment, Gyir said. I feel someone is listening close by—Ueni’ssoh or one of his lieutenants, perhaps—but just as noise will cover the sound of spoken voices, enough anger and fear will muffle our conversation from anyone near who can hear unspoken words.

Vansen did not like the sound of that. People can hear us talking in our heads?

Speaking this way is not a secret, sunlander, only a matter of skill or birth—or perhaps in your case, strange fortune. The Dreamless, Uein’ssoh, can certainly do it when he is close. Now give me your attention. He turned to look at Barrick, who still looked bleary. Both of you.

Gyir took something else out of his jerkin, but this time kept his hand closed. I will not show this thing I hold to you, he said. I dare not expose it, even in this chaos—but this will show you its size in case you must take it later.

Vansen stared. Whatever lay in the fairy’s long-fingered hand was completely hidden, small as an egg. What...?

Gyir shook his head. It is a precious thing, that is all you need to know—unspeakably precious. My mistress gave me the duty of carrying it to the House of the People. If it does not reach them, war and worse will break out again between our two folk, and the suffering will not stop there. If this is not delivered to the House of the People, the Pact of the Glass will be defeated and my mistress Yasammez will destroy your castle and everyone in it. Ultimately, she will wake the gods themselves. The world will change. My people will die and yours will be slaves.

Vansen glanced at Barrick, who did not look as dumbfounded as Vansen felt. The boy was staring at Gyir’s fist with what seemed only passing interest. Why...why are you telling us this?

I am telling you, Ferras Vansen, because the prince has other burdens to carry—struggles you cannot know. Yasammez has laid a task on Barrick as well. I do not know it or understand its purpose, but she has sent him to the same place as I go—the House of the People. The Pact of the Glass must be completed, and so I tell you now because I know that even if you do not believe all I say, you will follow the prince wherever he goes. Listen!

He fixed Vansen with his weird red eyes, demanding, pleading: his words swam in fearful thoughts like fish in a swift cold, current. Understand this—if I die here, you two must take this thing from me and carry it to the House of the People. You must. If you do not, all will be lost—your people, mine, all drowning in blood and darkness. The Great Defeat will have a swifter, uglier end than anyone could have believed.

Vansen stared at the strange, almost entirely expressionless face. You are asking me to perform some task...for you? Or for your mistress, as you call her—the one who has put a spell on the prince? For your people, who slaughtered hundreds of my guardsmen, burned towns, killed innocents? He turned without thinking to Barrick, but the prince only stared at him as though trying to remember where they had met before. Surely this is madness.

I cannot compel you to do anything, Ferras Vansen, said the fairy. I can only beg this boon. I understand your hatred of my kind very well—believe me, I have all those feelings for your folk, and more. Gyir lifted his head, listening. We can speak of this no longer. But I beg you, if the time should come—remember!

How could I forget? Vansen wondered, but this time his thoughts were only for himself. I have been asked to help the murderers of my people. And, may the gods help me, I think I will have to do it.

After the confusing conversation between Gyir and Vansen, only a little of which he remembered, let alone understood, Barrick fell back into sleep again. The nightmares that plagued him in the next hours were much like others he had suffered in his old life—dreams of rage and pursuit, dreams of a world that he did not recognize but which recognized him and feared him—but they seemed fuller now, deeper and richer. One thing had changed, however: the girl with dark hair and dark eyes now appeared in every dream, as though she were as much his twin as Briony, his own flesh and blood. Barrick did not know her, not even in the suspended logic of a dream, and she took no active part in any of his dire fancies, but she was there through it all like a shepherd on a distant hilltop, remote, uninvolved, but an indisputable and welcome presence.

Barrick woke up blinking. His companions had moved him into the single shaft of light (if something so weak could be graced with the name) that fell through the grille and into their cell, illuminating the crudely mortared stones.

He sat up, but the cell spun around him and for a moment he felt as if the corpse-pit itself they had seen had somehow reached up to clutch him, to pull him down into the stink and the jellying flesh. He managed to crawl to the privy-hole at the far end of the narrow cell before vomiting, but his aim was hampered by his convulsive movement. Even though his stomach had been almost empty, the sour tang quickly filled the small space, adding shame to his misery. Ferras Vansen turned away as Barrick retched again, bringing up only bile this time—an act of courtesy by the guard captain that only made Barrick feel worse. He still had not forgotten that Vansen had struck him—must the man condescend to him as well? Treat him like a child?

He tried to speak but could not summon the strength. He was hot where he shouldn’t be, cold where he shouldn’t be, and his bad arm ached so that he could barely stand it. Vansen and Gyir were watching him, but Barrick waved away the guard captain’s helping hand and ignored the throbbing of his arm long enough to crawl back to the cell wall. He wanted to tell them he was only tired, but weakness overcame him. He let them feed him a morsel of bread moistened with water, then he fell yet again into miserable, feverish sleep.

What day was this? It was a discordant thought: the names of days had become as much of a vanishing memory as the look of the sky and the smell of pleasant things like pine needles and cooked food. The silence suddenly caught his attention. Barrick rolled over and sat up, certain in his panic that the Qar and the guardsman had been taken away and he had been left alone. He gritted his teeth through a moment of dizziness and fluttering sparks before his eyes, but when the sparks cleared he saw that Vansen and Gyir were only a short distance away, slouched against the wall, heads sagging in sleep.

“Praise all the gods,” he whispered. At the sound of the prince’s voice Gyir opened his red eyes. Vansen was stirring, too. The soldier’s face was gaunt and shadowed with unkempt beard. When had the man become so thin? “How are you feeling, Highness?” Vansen asked him.

It took Barrick a moment to clear his throat. “Does it matter? We will die here. Everything I ever thought...said... it doesn’t matter now. This is where we’ll die.”

Do not give in to despair yet. Gyir’s words were surprisingly strong. All is not lost. Something in this place seems to have strengthened my... Barrick could not understand the word—the feeling was of something like a small, fierce flame. My abilities, you would say—that which makes me a Storm Lantern.

Funny. I feel worse than I have since I left the castle. It was true: Barrick had actually experienced some easing of the nightmares and strange thoughts after leaving home, especially during the days he had ridden with Tyne Aldritch and the other soldiers, but since he and his companions had entered this hellish hole in the ground the old miseries had come back more powerfully than ever. He could almost feel doom following just behind him like a shadow. Do you think it is that horrible Jikuyin who has done it to me, that giant? I felt as though his voice...it hurt me... Gyir shook his head. I do not know. But there is something strange about this place—stranger even than the presence of the demigod himself, I think. I have spent much of the last days casting out my net, gleaning what thoughts I can from the other prisoners, and even some of the guards, although most of them are little more than beasts.

You can do that?

I can now. It is strange, but this place has not only given my strength back to me, I think it has even made me a little stronger than I was before.

Barrick shrugged. Strong enough to get us out of here?

He felt sure that Gyir would have smiled regretfully if he had a mouth like an ordinary man. I think not—not by pitting strength alone against the powers of both Ueni’ssoh and great Jikuyin. But do not despair. Give me a while longer to think of something. I need to learn more of the great secret of this place.

Secret? Barrick saw that Vansen was listening raptly, too— might even be carrying on his own conversation with Gyir. Instead of the burst of jealously such a realization usually caused, this time he felt oddly connected to the man. There were moments he hated the guard captain, but others when he felt as though he were closer to Ferras Vansen than to any other living mortal—except Briony, of course. Gods protect you, he thought, his heart suddenly, achingly full. Oh, strawhead, what I would give just to see your face, your real face, in front of me...!

I have not wasted the time while you were lost in fever dreams, Gyir told him. I have found a guard who works sometimes in the pit—one who watches over the prisoners who put the bodies on the platform and send them up to the wagon-slaves. Can you...see his thoughts? Can you see what’s down below us?

No. The guard has a curious emptiness where those memories should be.

Then what good is he to us? Barrick was weary again. How absurd, when he had been awake such a short time!

I can follow him—stand inside him as I stood inside the thoughts and feelings of the woodsprite. I can see what he sees down in the depths.

Then I will go with you again, like last time, Barrick said. I want to see. Gyir and Vansen actually exchanged a look, which infuriated him. I know you two think me weak, but I will not be left behind in this cell.

I do not think you are weak, Barrick Eddon, but I do think you are in danger. Whatever about this place troubles you grew worse when I carried your thoughts with me last time. And Ferras Vansen and I will not leave—only our thoughts will. You will not be alone.

Barrick should have been too weak for fury, but he wasn’t.

Don’t speak in my head and tell me lies. Alone? How could I be more alone than stuck here with your empty bodies? What if something happens to you and your thoughts are...lost, or something like that? I would rather it happens to me, too, than to be left here with your corpses.

Gyir stared at him a long time. I will consider it. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, either,” Vansen said out loud.

Barrick did his best to regain his mask of cold control. “I know you don’t follow orders you don’t like, Captain Vansen, but unless you have given up your allegiance to me entirely, you are still sworn to my family as your liegelords. I am the prince of Southmarch. Do you think to order me as to what I may and may not do?”

Vansen stared at him, a dozen different expressions moving across his face like oil spreading on a pool of water. “No, Highness,” he said at last. “You will do what you think best. As always.”

The guardsman was right, of course, and Barrick hated that. He was a fool to take such a risk, but he had told the truth—he was far more terrified of being left alone.

“Doirrean, what are you doing? He is too far from the fire— he will be cold and then ill.” Queen Anissa leaned forward in her bed to glare at the nurse, a sturdy, sullen girl with pale, Connordic features.

“Yes, Highness.” The young woman picked up both the baby and the cushion underneath him, taking care to show just how much trouble she was being put to, and then used her foot to move the chair closer to the large fireplace. Sister Utta could not help wondering whether a healthy baby was not at more risk from flying sparks than from a few moments naked in an otherwise warm room. Of course, I’ve never had a child, though I’ve been present for my share of births. Perhaps it feels different when it’s your own.

“I just cannot understand why I am saying things over and over,” Anissa declared. Her thin frame had rounded a little during her pregnancy, but now the skin seemed to hang loosely on her bones. “Does no one listen? Have I not had enough pain and suffer...sufferance?”

“Don’t fret yourself too much, dear,” Merolanna told her. “You have had a terrible time, yes, but you have a fine, fine son. His father will be very proud.”

“Yes, he is fine, is he not?” Anissa smiled at the infant, who was staring raptly up at his nurse in that guileless, hearttugging way that babies had—the only thing about them that ever made Utta regret her own choices in life. It would be appealing, she thought, perhaps even deeply satisfying, to have an innocent young soul in your care, to fill it like a jewel case with only good things, with kindness and reverent thoughts and love and friendship. “Oh, I pray that his father comes back soon to see him,” the queen said, “to see what I have done, what a handsome boy I have made for him.”

“What will you name him?” Utta asked. “If you do not mind saying before the ceremony.”

“Olin, of course. Like his father. Well, Olin Alessandros— Alessandros was my grandfather’s name, the grand viscount of Devonis.” Anissa sounded a bit nettled. “Olin. What else would I name him?”

Utta did not point out that the king had already had two other sons, neither of whom had been given his name. Anissa was an insecure creature, but she had reason to be: her husband was imprisoned, her stepchildren all gone, and her only claim to authority was this tiny child. Small surprise she would want to remind everyone constantly of who the father was and what the child represented.

Somebody knocked at the chamber door. One of the queen’s other maids left the group of whispering women and opened it, then exchanged a few words with one of the wolf-liveried guards who stood outside. “It is the physician, Highness,” she called.

Merolanna and Utta exchanged a startled look as the door swung open, but it was Brother Okros, not Chaven, who stepped into the room. The scholar, dressed in the winecolored robes of Eastmarch Academy, bowed deeply and stayed down on one knee. “Your Highness,” he said. “Ah, and Your Grace.” He rose, then added a bow for Utta and the others. “Ladies.”

“You may come to me, Okros,” called Anissa. “I am all in a trouble. My milk, it hardly ever flows. If I did not have Doirrean, I do not know what I would do.”

Utta, who was impressed that Anissa was nursing at all—it was not terribly common among the upper classes, and she would have guessed the queen would be only too glad to hand the child over to a wet nurse—turned away to let the physician talk to his patient. The other ladies-in-waiting came forward and surrounded the queen’s bed, listening.

“We haven’t spoken to Okros yet,” said Merolanna quietly, “and this would be a good time.”

“Speak to him about what?”

“We can ask him about those strange things the little person said. That House of the Moon jabber. If it’s to do with Chaven, then perhaps Okros will recognize what it means. Perhaps it’s something that any of those doctoring fellows would know.”

Utta felt a sudden pang of fear, although she could not say exactly why. “You want to...tell him? About what the Queen’s Ears said?”

Merolanna waved her beringed hand. “Not all of it—I’m no fool. I’m certainly not going to tell anyone that we heard all this from a Rooftopper—a little person the size of my finger.”

“But...but these matters are secret!”

“It’s been a tennight or more and I’m no closer to finding out what happened to my son. Okros is a good man—a smart one, too. He’ll tell us if he recognizes any of this. You let me take charge, Utta. You worry too much.”

Brother Okros had finished with the queen and was writing down a list of instructions for her ladies. “Just remember, he is too young for sops.”

“But he loves to suck the sugar and milk from my finger,” said Anissa, pouting.

“You may give him milk on your finger, but not sugar. He does not need it. And tell your nurses not to swaddle him so tightly.”

“But it will give him such a fine neck, my handsome Sandro.”

“And bent shoulders, and perhaps even a pigeon chest. No, tell them to swaddle him loosely enough that the act would not wake him if he was sleeping.”

“Nonsense. But, of course, if you are saying it must be so...” Anissa looked as though she would probably deliberately forget this advice as soon as the physician had left the room.

Okros bowed, a smile wrinkling his thin, leathery face. “Thank you, Your Highness. Blessings of the Trigon—and Kupilas and our good Madi Surazem—upon you.” He made the sign of the Three, then turned to Merolanna and Utta, bowing again. “Ladies.”

Merolanna laid a hand on his arm as he passed. “Oh, would you wait for a moment outside, Brother Okros? I have something I would ask you. Will you excuse us, Anissa, dear? I mean, Your Highness? I must go and have a little rest—my age, you know.”

Anissa was gazing raptly at her infant son again, watching Doirrean swathe him in linen. “Of course, dear Merolanna. You are so kind to visit me. You will come to the Carrying, of course—Sandro’s naming ceremony? It is only little while from now, on the day before the Kerneia—what do you call that day here?”

“Prophets’ Day,” said Merolanna.

“Yes, Prophet’s Day. And Sor Utta, you are most certainly welcomed for coming, too.”

Utta nodded. “Thank you, Highness.”

“Oh, I would not miss it for a bag of golden dolphins, Anissa,” Merolanna assured her. “Miss my newest nephew being welcomed into the family? Of course I will be there.”

Okros was waiting for them in the antechamber. He smiled and bowed again, then turned to walk beside them down the tower steps. Utta saw that the duchess really was tired —Merolanna was walking slowly, and with a bit of a limp because of the pains in her hip.

“What can I offer you, Your Grace?” Okros asked.

“Some information, to be honest. May I assume you still have not heard anything from Chaven?”

He shook his head. “To my deep regret, no. There are so many things I would like to ask him. Taking on his duties has left me with many questions, many confusions. I miss his counsel—and his presence, too, of course. Our friendship goes back many years.”

“Do you know anything about the moon?”

Okros looked a little startled by the apparent change of subject, but shrugged his slender shoulders. “It depends, I suppose. Do you mean the object that rides the skies above us at night and sometimes in the day—yes, see, there it is now, pale as a seashell! Or the goddess Mesiya of the silver limbs? Or the moon’s effect on women’s courses and the ocean’s tides?”

“Not any of those things,” said Merolanna. “At least I don’t think so. Have you ever heard of anything called the House of the Moon?”

He was silent for so long that Utta thought they had upset him somehow, but when he spoke he sounded just as before. “Do you mean the palace of Khors? The old moon demon conquered by the Trigon? His palace is spoken of in some of the poems and stories of ancient days, called by that name, House of the Moon.”

“It could be. Did Chaven ever own something that could be called a piece of the moon’s house?”

Now he looked at her carefully, as though he hadn’t really noticed the duchess until just this moment—which was nonsense, of course. Utta knew it was her own nerves making her see phantoms.

“What makes you ask such a question?” he said at last. “I never thought to hear such dusty words of scholarship from you, Your Grace.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Merolanna was annoyed. “I’m not a fool, am I?”

“Oh, no, Your Grace, no!” Okros laughed—a little anxiously, it seemed to Utta. “I meant no such thing. It’s just that such old legends, such...trivial old stories...it surprises me to hear such things from you when I would more expect them from one of my brother scholars in the Eastmarch library.” He bowed his head, thinking. “I remember nothing about Chaven and anything to do with the House of the Moon, but I will give it some thought, and perhaps even have a look at the letters Chaven sent to me over the years—it could be some investigation he had undertaken that I have forgotten.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “May I ask what makes you inquire about this?”

“Just...something that I heard,” Merolanna said. “Doubtless a mistake. Something I thought I remembered him saying once, that’s all.”

“And is it of importance to you, Your Grace? Is it something that I, with my humble scholarship and my friends at the academy, could help you to discover?”

“No, it’s really nothing important,” said Merolanna. “If you find anything about Chaven and this House of the Moon thing, perhaps we’ll talk more. But don’t worry yourself too much.”

After Okros had taken his leave the women made their way across the Inner Keep toward the residence. Flurries of snow were in the air, but only a few powdery scatterings had collected on the cobbled paths. Still, the sky was dark as burned pudding and Utta suspected there would be a lot more white on the ground by morning.

“I think that went rather well,” said Merolanna, frowning. Her limp had become more distinct. “He seemed willing to be helpful.”

“He knows something. Couldn’t you see?”

“Yes, of course I could see.” Merolanna’s frown deepened in annoyance. “All these men, especially the scholars, think that such knowledge belongs to them alone. But he also knows now that he’ll have to give something to get something.”

“Did it ever occur to you such a game might be dangerous?”

Merolanna looked at Utta with surprise. “Do you mean Brother Okros? The castle is full of dangers, dear—just the Tollys alone are enough to give someone nightmares—but Brother Okros is as harmless as milk. Trust me.”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” said Utta, but she could not stay angry with her friend for more than a few moments. She took Merolanna’s elbow, letting the older woman lean on her as they walked back through powdery snow in swiftly darkening afternoon.

Even with a dumb brute like this it will not be as easy as prying at unprotected thoughts, Gyir said. I must have silence just to bring him to the door of our cell.

Barrick was only too happy to comply. He was already regretting his insistence. The memory of being trapped in the woodsprite’s dull, hopeless thoughts, of handling corpses like they were discarded bits of clothing dropped on the floor, still roiled his stomach and made him lightheaded.

A bestial, leathery face appeared in the grille, the brow so bony and low that Barrick could not even see the creature’s eyes. It grunted and then snarled, angered by something, but was clearly compelled to remain where it was.

Gyir stood eye-to-eye with it for what seemed to Barrick like a terribly long time, in a silence broken only by the occasional pained cry of a prisoner in the other chamber. The guard-beast swayed but could not free itself from Gyir. The fairy stood almost motionless, but Barrick could sense a little of the tides of compulsion and resistance flowing back and forth between the two of them. At last the creature made a strange, rough-throated noise that could have been a gasp of pain. Gyir wiped sweat from his pale brow with his sleeve, then turned toward them.

I have him, now.

Barrick stared at the guard, whose tiny eyes, rolled up behind half-open lids, had finally become visible as slivers of white. But if you’ve mastered him, couldn’t he free us? Help us to escape?

He is only a minion—one who brings food. He has no keys for this inner cell. Only Ueni’ssoh has those. But this dull savage may yet give us better aid than any key. Sit down. I will show you something of his thoughts, his sight, as I send him on his way.

Even as Barrick settled himself on the hard stone floor, the guard turned and staggered away across the outer cell. Prisoners scurried to avoid him, but he walked past them as though they were invisible.

Gyir’s presence pressed on Barrick’s thoughts. He closed his eyes. At first he could see nothing but red darkness, then it slowly began to resolve into shapes he could recognize—a door swinging open, a corridor stretching out beyond.

Barrick could feel very little of the creature’s own thoughts beyond the muted jumble of perceptions, of sight and sound, and he wondered whether that was because the guards were not much more than mindless beasts. No. The fairy’s voice came swiftly and clearly: Gyir truly had gained strength. Barrick could even feel Vansen’s presence beside him in the beast’s thoughts, like someone breathing at his own shoulder. He is not just an animal, Gyir said. Even the animals are not just animals in the way you are thinking. But I have quashed his mind with my own as best I can, so that he will do what we like and not remember it afterward.

The guard-beast trudged down into the depths, a long journey that took him far beneath even the level of the corpse-room. Despite the odd gait forced on him by Gyir’s awkward control of his movements, he was avoided by prisoners and the other guards barely seemed to acknowledge his existence. They might not be mere beasts, Barrick decided, but even among their own kind they showed little life. For the first time it occurred to him that maybe these large, apelike guards were, in their own way, prisoners just as he and his companions were.

Every few hundred paces something boomed and rumbled in the depths, a noise Barrick could feel more than hear through the creature’s muffled perceptions.

What is that noise? It sounds like thunder—or cannons!

You are closer with the second. Gyir was silent for a moment as the creature stumbled, then righted itself. It is Crooked’s Fire, or at least so we call it. Your people call it gun-flour.

Then they truly are shooting off cannons down there?

No. I suspect they are using it to dig. Now let me concentrate.

Down and down and down they went, until the guard-beast reached a room where corpses were being loaded into the huge corpse basket to be winched to the top by more of the neckless, mushroom-colored men. The dead were being unloaded from ore wagons pushed by more servitors, and the guard-beast followed the dirt track of the wagons down into darkness.

They were still descending, but this slope was more gradual so that the haulers could push their carts up it. The wagons were not just bearing bodies, either: at least ten times as many were coming up from the depths full of dirt and chunks of raw stone, but these were being rolled away down another branch of the tunnel.

Barrick could almost feel Vansen and Gyir trying to make sense of the arrangement, but he was already feeling queasy from the depth, the heat, and the frequent rumble of the concussive, hammering sounds farther down in the deeps. If they put me to work here, he thought, I wouldn’t last long. Barrick Eddon had fought all his life against being called frail or sickly, but living with a crippled arm had made him hate lying to himself as much as he hated it when others did it to soothe him. I could not do what these creatures are doing, working with hardly any water in this dreadful, dust-ridden place. I would die in a matter of hours.

The guard-beast trudged downward into an ever increasing throb of activity. The inconstant thundering of what Gyir called Crooked’s Fire was much stronger now, so loud that the staggering guard-beast almost fell over several times. Hundreds of prisoners pushed carts past him up the long, wide, sloped passage, but no matter how monstrous their burden, they always moved out of the guard-beast’s way.

At last Barrick saw the end of the passage, a huge, low arch at least twice as wide across as the Basilisk Gate back home. When the guard stepped through it into the cavern beyond, a monstrous chamber which dwarfed even the cave that housed the corpse-pit, Barrick could feel hot air rush up at his host, tugging the matted fur, bringing tears to the creature’s already blurry vision. A line of torches marked the broad track down through the swirling dust and marked off the cross-paths where other guards and prisoners labored with the weight of ore carts. To Barrick each step seemed to take a terrible effort—the powerful discharge of hot air he had felt at the doorway continued to buffet the guard-beast at every step, as though he walked down the throat of a panting dragon. It pressed at Barrick’s thoughts like crushing hands and Barrick thought he might faint away at any moment, simply swoon into insensibility like the frailest girl-child.

Can’t you feel it? he cried to the others, his thoughts screaming. Can’t you? This is a bad place—bad! I can’t hold on anymore!

Courage. Gyir’s thought came with the weight of all his power and knowledge, so that for a moment Barrick remembered what it was to trust him completely.

I’ll try. Oh, gods, don’t you and Vansen feel it? Not as powerfully as you do, I think.

Barrick hated being weak, hated it worse than anything. All through his childhood nothing could more easily prompt him to act foolishly than the suggestion, however kindly meant, that his crippled arm or his young age might give him an excuse to avoid doing something. Now, though, he had to admit he could not hold out much longer. No amount of steadying words could obliterate the cramping pain from his stomach, the queasiness that did not grow any less wretched by having been nearly constant since they had reached this place.

Why do I feel this way? I’m not even really here! What is doing this to me? This was more than just pain and weariness—waves of fear rolled through him. He had spoken a truth to Gyir that he could feel in his bones, in his soul: this was a bad place, a wrong place.

We don’t belong here. He might have said it so the others could hear. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He wasn’t even ashamed anymore.

The air grew hotter and the sounds grew louder. The guardbeast was clearly familiar with it all, but still seemed to feel almost as frightened as Barrick did himself. The rising stench was not that of spoiling bodies and unwashed slaves, although there was a hint of each—Barrick could clearly recognize them even through the alien thoughts of the guard. Instead something altogether stranger billowed over him, a scent he could not identify, something that had metal in it, and fire, and the tang of ocean air, and something even of flowers, if flowers ever grew in blood.

The edge of the pit was just before him now, glaring with the light of hundreds of torches, swimming in the haze of the burning, dust-laden air. If he could have hung back while the other two went forward, he would have—would have happily acknowledged himself a coward, a cripple, anything to avoid seeing what was in that chasm before him. But he could not leave them. He no longer knew how. He could only cling to the idea of Gyir and the idea of Vansen, cling to the creature that carried them as if it were a runaway horse and wait for it all to end. The chaos in his head was constant now and seemed to have little to do with what was actually around him—mad sounds, unrecognizable voices, moving shadows, flashes of ideas that made no sense, all hissing in his skull like angry wasps.

The light was bright. Something sang triumphantly in his head now above all the other noise, sang without words, without a voice, but sang. He stumbled forward, or the thing that carried him stumbled forward, like a blind man into a cave full of shrieking bats. He stood at the edge and looked down.

The great hole in the stone had been dug almost straight downward. Far below, the bottom of the pit was alive with the beetling bodies of slaves like a carcass full of maggots, hundreds of them with sweating, naked bodies and rags around their heads and faces. In the center, its peak half a hundred feet below him, sunk into the very stone of the wall and only half-uncovered by digging, was a strange shape that Barrick could not at first understand, something upright and unbelievably huge. It gleamed strangely in its exposed matrix of rock, a monstrous rectangle of black stone trimmed with dull gold and fishscale green beneath the shroud of dust and stone that clung to its exposed surface. It was astonishingly tall—almost as high as Wolfstooth Spire and far, far wider. Somebody had carved a rune deep into the black stone, a pine tree that covered most of the black rock face. Another carved shape, a crude bird with two huge eyes, had been superimposed over the tree. The far-distant shape looked immensely old, like something that had fallen down to the earth from the high stars. In the chaos of his thoughts, Barrick struggled to make sense of it, then abruptly saw it for what it was.

A gate—a gigantic stone portal scribed with the ancient signs of the pine tree and the owl. The symbols of Kernios, god of death and the black earth.

Dizziness at its sheer size overcame Barrick then. He let go of Gyir, let go of the guard-beast’s dull, terrified thoughts, and fell away into emptiness, unable to look at the blasphemous thing a moment longer.

29. Bells

Her dreams were becoming stranger every night, full of shadows and fire and the movements of barely seen pursuers, but all distant, as though she watched events through a thick fog or from behind a streaked and dirty window. She knew she should be frightened, and she was—but not for herself. They will catch him, was all she could think, although she did not know who he was, or who they were, for that matter. The boy she had dreamed about, the pale one with red hair in sweaty ringlets—was he the quarry of the shadowy creatures? But why should she dream repeatedly of a face she did not recognize?

Qinnitan woke to find Pigeon half underneath her. Although the mute boy himself remained happily asleep, his bony elbows and chin and knees were poking her in so many places she might as well have been trying to get comfortable on a pile of cypress branches. Despite the aches, though, it was hard to look at his face and be angry. His innocently gaping mouth with that pitiful stub of tongue behind his teeth made her ache with a love for him unlike anything she’d felt even for her own younger brothers and sisters, perhaps because she was responsible for Pigeon in a way she hadn’t been for them.

It was odd to lie here in this cramped, uncomfortable bed in a foreign land thinking about two people, one the child lying next to her (shivering slightly now that she had made some space for herself ), the other entirely a creature of dream. How had her life come to this? Once she had been an ordinary girl in an ordinary street, playing with the other children; now she had traveled on her own to a far country, fleeing from the autarch himself.

Qinnitan still didn’t understand it all. Why had Sulepis, the ruler of all the southern world, chosen her in the first place? It was not as though she were a rare beauty like Arimone, his paramount wife, or even much of a beauty at all: Qinnitan had seen her own long features enough times, her thin lips pursed, her watchful, slightly suspicious eyes peering back at her from the polished mirrors of the Seclusion, to know that beyond question.

Enough worrying, she decided, and yawned. It must be almost dawn, although she hoped the wheels of Nushash’s great cart were at least an hour from the daylight track: she wanted a little more sleep. She arranged Pigeon so that she could stretch out; he made a scraping sound of annoyance through his nose but allowed himself to be prodded into a less painful configuration.

As she was drifting back down into the warmth of slumber she heard a dull tone so low that she could feel it rumbling in the floor. It was followed a moment later by another, pitched higher. The two notes sounded again, then a third tone joined them—bells, she finally realized, ringing in the distance. At first, in her sleepy confusion, Qinnitan thought it must be the summons to morning service in the Hive, then she remembered where she was and sat up, freeing herself from the complaining boy. Around her others were beginning to stir. The ringing went on.

Qinnitan climbed out of bed and hurried across the dormitory room and out into the dark hallway. A few other women stumbled out with her, clumsy phantoms in their shapeless nightdresses. The bells were so loud and constant now that she could not remember what it had been like only moments before, in the silence of the night.

She clambered up to the passage window, the one that looked east toward mighty Three Brothers temple. The sun hadn’t risen, but she could see lights in the tower windows where the bells were ringing. It was so strange—what did it mean? She looked down to see if anyone was in the streets yet, and by the light of the lantern burning at the corner of the courtyard she saw a smear of pale-haired head as a man—the man she had seen the previous night, she felt certain—moved with a certain casual hurry from below the residence window into the shadows. Her heart felt squeezed in a cold hand. Him again. Watching her, or at least watching Kossope House, the dormitory in which she lived. Who was he? What did he want?

She stood as the first sheen of dawn turned the sky purple, cold air on her face, her skin pebbled with goosebumps. Bells were ringing all over the city. Something terrible was happening.

The bells in Three Brothers began to peal while Pelaya was saying the Daybreak Prayer in the family chapel, ringing so loud that it seemed the walls might tumble down. She and her sisters, brother, and mother were all crowded into the chapel, and when Pelaya turned she almost knocked her brother Kiril off the bench.

“Zoria’s mercy!” Her mother hurried to the chapel door and handed Pelaya’s infant sister to the nurse as the bells continued to crash and clang. “It is a fire! Get the children to safety.”

“That’s not the fire bell,” Pelaya said loudly.

Despite her fear, Teloni was irritated. “How do you know?”

“Because the fire bell is only one bell, rung over and over. All the bells are ringing.”

Her mother turned to Kiril, Pelaya’s younger brother. “Go and find your father. Find out what is happening.”

“He’s not old enough.” Pelaya was too excited and frightened to stay with her mother and sisters. “I’ll go!”

She was up before her mother could stop her, heading for the chapel door. “You headstrong little beast!” her mother called. “Teloni, go with your sister, keep her out of trouble. No, Kiril, you’ll stay, now—I’ll not have all my children scattered.”

Pelaya was out the door just as Kiril’s bellow of dismay erupted, but it was still loud enough to hear even above the clangor of the bells.

“You’re wicked!” gasped Teloni, catching up to her on the first landing. “Mama said Kiril was to go.”

“Why? Because he’s a boy?” She pulled up her skirts so she wouldn’t trip over them as she hurried up the stairs. Already the stairwell and the landings were filling with people, some still half-dressed in their nightclothes, wandering out like sleepwalkers to see what the clamor was about.

“Slow down!”

“Just because you climb like a cow trying to go over a gate doesn’t mean I have to wait for you, Teli.”

“What if it is a fire?”

Pelaya rolled her eyes and began leaping the stairs two at a time. Didn’t anyone else take note of things but her? That was why she enjoyed talking to the foreign king, Olin Eddon: he paid attention to what was around him, and he complimented her cleverness when she did so too. “It’s not a fire, I told you. It’s probably the autarch attacking the city.”

Teloni slid to a stop and grabbed at the wall to keep herself from falling. “It’s what?”

“The Autarch of Xis, stupid. Don’t you ever listen to what Babba says?”

“Don’t you dare call me that—I’m your elder sister. What do you mean, the autarch...attacking?”

“Babba’s been preparing for it for months, Teli. Surely you must have noticed something.”

“Yes, but...but I didn’t think it was really going to happen. I mean, why? What does the autarch want with Hierosol?”

“I don’t know, what do men ever want with the things they fight wars about? Come on—I want to find Babba.”

“But he can’t get in, can he? The autarch? Our walls are too strong.”

“Yes, the walls are too strong, but he might besiege us. Then we’d all have to go hungry.” She poked her sister’s waist. “You won’t last long without sweetmeats and honeybread.”

“Stop! You are a beast!”

“But you’ll get better at climbing stairs. Come on!” The jokes rang a little hollow even to Pelaya herself. It was hard to tease her sister, who was good and kind most of the time, with those terrible bells sounding all across the citadel hill, echoing and echoing.

They found their father in an antechamber to the throne room, surrounded by frightened nobles and patient guardsmen. “What are you girls doing here?” he asked when he saw them.

“Mama wanted to send Kiril to ask you what is happening,” Teloni said quickly. “But Pelaya ran quick like a rabbit and I had to run after her.”

“Neither of you should be here—you should be with your mother, helping with the little ones.”

“What is it, Babba?” Pelaya asked. “Is it the autarch...?”

Count Perivos frowned at her, not as if he were angry, but as if he wished she hadn’t asked him the question at all. “Probably. We’ve had a signal from the western forts that they are under attack, and also reports of a great army marching down the coast from the north toward the Nektarian Walls—the land walls.” He shook his head. “But it may be exaggerated. The autarch knows he can never break down our fortifications, so it may be he simply wishes to frighten us into giving him the right to navigate our waters on his way to attack someone else.”

Pelaya didn’t believe it, and she felt fairly certain her father didn’t either. “Well, then. We’ll tell Mama.”

“Tell her we should move the family down to the house near the market. Here on top of the citadel it may be dangerous, although even if the autarch manages somehow to take the western forts, the guns cannot reach us here. Still, better to spend your last dolphin on your roof, as my father used to say, just in case it rains. Go tell her to pack up. I’ll be back before the noon prayers.”

Pelaya stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Only a few years earlier she could only reach his face if he bent almost double. Now she could put her arms around his broad chest and smell the pomander scent in his robes. “Go,” he said softly. “Both of you. Your mother will need your help.”

“We’ll be all right down in the city,” Teloni said as they trotted back down the citadel’s main staircase, weaving through distracted and fearful folk, all scurrying as if the bells were summoning them to the gods’ judgment. “Even if the Autarch does fire his cannons, they can’t reach that far.”

Pelaya wondered what Teloni thought armies carried heavy cannons around for if not to fire them. “Unless he brings that army up to the Salamander Gate and fires into the city from that side.” She felt almost cruel saying it.

Teloni’s eyes went wild and she stumbled as they reached the landing at the base of the stairs; Pelaya had to grab her sister’s sleeve. “He wouldn’t!”

Pelaya realized there was nothing she could do by talking, even about truthful things, except make life worse for her sister, and soon thereafter, for her mother and the little ones as well. She gave Teloni’s arm a quick squeeze.

“I’m sure you’re right. Go tell Mama. I’ll be there in a short while—I need to go do something.”

Her older sister watched in openmouthed astonishment as Pelaya abruptly turned and darted across the hall toward the gardens. “What...where are you going?” “Go to Mama, Teli! I’ll be there soon!”

She cut through the Four Sisters Courtyard and very nearly ran headlong into a colum of citadel guards wearing the Dragonfly on their sky-blue surcoats, the symbol of the old Devonai kings, still the touchstone for legitimacy in Hierosol centuries after the last of them had reigned. The guards, who in ordinary circumstances would have at least paused to let her by, hardly even broke stride, booted feet slapping on the floor as they hurried on, their faces set in looks so firm-jawed and unrevealing it made her chest hurt.

Surely Babba’s right—the autarch must know better than to try to conquer Hierosol. No one has ever managed in a thousand years! But she couldn’t believe things would be quite so easy. She felt a disturbing thrill in the air, like a wind carrying scents from savage foreign lands. Even the bells finally falling silent did not make the world seem any less strange; if anything, the silence that followed seemed to quiver just as dangerously as it had while the bells clamored.

Olin Eddon was just being led back inside by his guards when she reached the garden. After a few moments’ discussion, he managed to convince them to let him linger for a moment at the wall on the side of the garden that looked out across the low western roofs of the palace and the seawall, out across the strait and, beside it, the wide, green ocean. The water, despite the chill wind that circled through the garden, looked smooth as the marble of a painted statue. She remembered what her father had said about the western forts and looked out toward the peninsula, but she could see nothing there except a bank of mist; the water of the strait and the gray morning sky seemed to blur together into a single vagueness.

“I did not expect to see you today, and certainly not so early.” His smile was a little sad. He looked thinner than the last time she’d seen him. “Don’t you have your lessons in the morning? Sor Lyris will be angry.”

“Don’t tease. You heard the bells—how could you not hear them?”

“Ah, yes. I did notice something ringing...”

She scowled. She didn’t like him saying foolish things and pretending he was serious about them, treating her like a child who needed to be amused. She wondered if he had done that with his own daughter, the one he spoke of so sadly, the one he so clearly missed. (He didn’t speak about his son very much, though, she couldn’t help noticing.) “Enough. I have to hurry back to my family. What of you, Your Majesty?”

“A formal title. Now I am worried.” He nodded his head, almost a bow. “I will be well, my lady, but I thank you for your concern. Go with your family. I have a nice, safe room with bars on the window and a warm coverlet.” He stopped. “Oh, but you are truly frightened. I’m sorry—it was cruel of me to make sport.”

She was about to deny it, but suddenly felt warmth in her face. She was terrified she might cry in front of this man who, for all their friendly conversations, was a stranger, a foreigner. “A little,” she admitted. “Aren’t you?”

For a moment something showed through his mask of charming manners—a deep, bleak wretchedness. “My fate is entirely in the hands of the gods.” A moment later he had regained his composure and it was as if the mask had never slipped.

Of course it is, she thought. And my fate is, too. Why should that be so frightening, if we do as they want us to do? Aloud, she said, “But what do you think the autarch wants with us?”

“Who can say?” Olin shrugged. “But Hierosol has stood for a long time. Many kings have tried to pull it down and failed —many autarchs, for that matter. A hundred years ago Lepthis...” He paused, then frowned. “Forgive me, but I cannot remember which Lepthis, the third or fourth. They called this one ‘the Cruel,’ as if that was enough to mark one Lepthis from another, let alone one autarch from the rest of the bloody-handed crew. In any case, this autarch swore he would shatter this city’s walls with his cannon, which were the mightiest guns in the world. Do you know about that?”

“A little.” She took a shaky breath. Olin had seemed genuinely upset to have frightened her, and now she could not help wondering who was making whom feel better. “He failed, didn’t he?”

Olin laughed. “Evidently, for we are speaking Hierosoline and you see no temple of fiery Nushash or black Surigali here on Citadel Hill, do you? Lepthis the Cruel swore to destroy the temples of all the false gods, as he called them, and put all Hierosol’s inhabitants to the sword. He pounded the walls with cannonfire for a year but could not even nick them. The flies and mosquitoes bit and bit down in the valley below the northern walls, and the Xixians died there in droves of fevers and plagues. Thousands more died of fiery missiles from inside the citadel. At last his men demanded he let them go back to Xis, but Lepthis would not hear of such a compromise to his honor. So his men killed him and made his heir the autarch instead, then they all sailed back to the shores of Xand.”

“His own men killed him?”

“His own men. Ultimately, even the most bloody-minded troops will not fight when they are hungry and exhausted, or when they understand their deaths will be for nothing except to glorify their commander.”

She stared out at the expanse of blue-green water in the strait, then looked south toward the place where she knew the great city of Xis must lie somewhere beyond the mists, its long walls hot and dry and white as bones bleaching in the desert sun. “Do you think that will happen this time? That we will have to live through a siege of a year—or even more?”

“I do not think it will be so bad,” Olin said. “I suspect that the present autarch mainly wants to keep Hierosol’s fleet occupied and her defenders busy so that he can turn his attentions on other, less well-defended targets—perhaps the Sessian Islands, which still hold out against him.”

For the first time since the bells had begun to ring Pelaya felt a little looseness in her chest, which had felt so tight she feared breathing too deeply. Both her father and Olin said that all would be well. They were grown men, noble and educated men: they knew about such things. “I hope...” she began, then stopped. Without thinking, she raised her hand to shade her eyes then realized that the sun was behind her. It was only the low-lying mist causing that glare on the water, making it so hard to see out into the southern strait.

“Pelaya? What is it?”

She realized after a moment that she was praying to the Three, mumbling words she had known since childhood but which had never seemed as desperately important as they did now. “Look,” she said.

King Olin moved up to the wall and stood beside her, staring out across the strait toward the Finger. “I see nothing. Your eyes are young and strong...” “No, not there. Toward the ocean.”

He turned, following her finger, and even as he did the bells began to ring again, all across Citadel Hill, loud as the gods clanging spears against their battle-shields.

As it rolled toward them out of the southeast, the great, lowlying blanket of spiky shadow seemed to Pelaya an immense thicket of trees and clouds—as though somehow an entire forest had torn free of the shore and floated out into the middle of Kulloan Strait and was now drifting toward the walls of Hierosol. It was only when she could see the shapes more clearly that she realized they were ships. It took several moments more before she understood that this was the autarch’s fleet, hundreds upon hundreds of warships—thousands, perhaps, a snowstorm of white sailcloth bearing down upon Hierosol out of the fog.

“Siveda of the White Star preserve us,” said Pelaya quietly. Her own name had become a horrid jest—the ocean was now the city’s worst enemy. “Three Brothers preserve us. Zoria and all Heaven preserve us.” So many ships filled the strait that surely the gods themselves, looking down, would not be able to see water between them. “May Heaven save us.”

“Amen, child,” said Olin Eddon in a stunned whisper. “If Heaven is still watching.”

The streets were full of murmuring crowds as Daikonas Vo reached his rooming house, a dilapidated place near the Theogonian Gate, just inside the city’s ancient walls and just beneath the ramshackle hillside cemetery which had once been the estate of a wealthy family. The narrow street was not in the least fashionable now, but that didn’t bother Vo, and in all other ways a house full of transients suited him excellently.

Most of the people seemed to be heading for the nearest Trigonate temple or across the city toward Three Brothers and the citadel. When he had passed through Fountain Square on his way back from the stronghold, hundreds of citizens had already gathered outside the citadel gates, staring anxiously at the lightening sky as though the clamor of bells would be explained by heaven itself.

Many of them had guessed the cause of the alarm, and shouts and curses directed toward the Autarch of Xis were mixed with some harsh words about their own so-called protector, Ludis Drakava.

Vo, of course, was pleased. He had thought the invasion still months away, and had been creating and examining plan after plan for smuggling the girl out of the city. He had experienced a few bad moments when she seemed to attract the attention of one of the noble prisoners in the citadel, Olin Eddon, the king of Southmarch, but to Vo’s relief whatever flash of interest had provoked the northerner seemed to have died away. He had been aghast at the idea that the Marchlander might plan to make the girl his mistress: nothing would make his task harder than having to smuggle her out of Drakava’s own palace under the noses of Drakava’s own guards. But instead, she was still in Kossope House and still unprotected as far as he could tell.

He would be able to sneak her out of Hierosol now in the confusion of the autarch’s attack. Easier still, if the triumph of the invaders was quick, he would be able to walk out of the city with Autarch Sulepis’ safe-conduct in his hand and approach the Living God-on-Earth in high honor, to hand over the prisoner and receive his reward—and, he hoped, to have the noxious thing inside him removed. Daikonas Vo was not so naïve as to feel certain that would happen—after all, why should the autarch take him off the leash precisely when he had proved helpful? But the Golden One was notoriously whimsical, so perhaps if Vo pleased him he would do just as he had promised.

Just now, Daikonas Vo couldn’t imagine needing more from life than to serve a powerful patron like autarch Sulepis, but he was no fool: he could imagine a time might come when he might wish to be free from this living god. Vo decided that if the autarch didn’t immediately remove the invader from inside his body, he should find his own way to loose himself from his master’s fatal control, just to be on the safe side.

He reached the inn by the Theogonian Gate. Most of the patrons seemed to be out, summoned from their fleainfested beds even earlier than usual by the clamoring bells. He made his way up the rickety stairway and into his room, which was empty now. He climbed under the reeking blanket and listened to the sound of a city woken to war. Everything would change. Death would lay a skeletal hand on thousands of lives. Destruction would reshape everything around him. And Vo would move through it as he always did, stronger, faster, smarter than the others, a creature that lived comfortably in disaster and thrived on chaos.

It was exciting, really, to think about what was to come. He closed his eyes and listened to his blood rushing and buzzing in sympathy with the vibration of the bells.

30. The Tanglewife

Matt Tinwright stood for a long time in the muddy, rain-spattered street, surprised at his own timidity. It wasn’t going back to the Quiller’s Mint that made him fret so, or even having to deal with Brigid, although he certainly hadn’t forgot her cuffing him silly the last time he’d seen her. No, it was the line he was about to cross that frightened him. Elan M’Cory, sister of the wife of the Duke of Summerfield—who was he to have anything to do with her at all, let alone to meddle in this most profound and dreadful of decisions?

Courage, man, he thought. Think of Zosim, stepping forth to save Zoria herself, the daughter of the king of heaven!

Tinwright had been considering the god of poets and drunkards quite a bit—he was thinking of making him the narrator of the poem Hendon Tolly had demanded. Zosim had acted bravely, and he was but a small god.

God? He had to laugh, standing in the street with cold rain dribbling from his hat brim and running down his neck. And what of me? He wasn’t even much of a man, according to most. He was just a poet.

Still, he thought to himself, if we do not reach, as my father used to say, our hands will always be empty. Of course, Kearn Tinwright had likely been talking about reaching for his next drink.

“Look what the wind has blown in.” A sour smile twisted Brigid’s mouth. “Did they run out of room up at the castle? Or did you leave something behind the last time you were here?”

“Where’s Conary?”

“Down in the cellar trying to kill rats with a toasting-fork the last I heard, but that was hours ago. He never bothers to tell me anything—just like you.” Even the false smile disappeared. “Oh, but of course, you don’t remember me, do you? You were telling your wrinkled old friend just that while he stared at my tits as if he’d never seen anything like them.”

At this time of the morning there were only two or three other patrons nodding in the dim lamplight—all flouting the royal licensing laws, which said that no one might visit a tavern until an hour before noon. Tinwright suspected it was because they had all slept on the straw floor and only recently woken up. Conary, the proprietor, must be getting slack not to have noticed them, but it was fearfully dark in the place with the window shuttered against the winter chill and the fire not yet built up again.

Tinwright stared at Brigid, who had gone back to gathering tankards from beneath the stained benches. He was about to make an excuse for his last visit—for a moment a multitude of explanations swarmed in his head, although none of them seemed entirely convincing—but then, and somewhat to his own surprise, he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Brigid. That was a shabby thing to say, about not remembering your name. But don’t blame Puzzle for staring —you are something fine to look at, after all.”

She looked hard at him, but her hand stole up and brushed a curl of her dark hair away from her face, as if she remembered all the sweet words he had whispered to her only the previous spring. “Don’t try to honey-talk me, Matty Tinwright. What do you want? You do want something, don’t you?” Still, she seemed less angry. Perhaps there was something to be said for a simple, truthful apology. Tinwright wasn’t certain he wanted to make a regular practice of it, though. It would take up a lot of his time.

“Yes, there is something I’d like to ask, but it’s not just as a favor. I’d pay you for your trouble.”

Now suspicion returned. “The Three know that enough men come in here asking if I’ll do the honors for their sons, but I can’t say anyone’s ever come in asking on behalf of his great-grandfather. I’m not going to let your ancient friend poke me, Tinwright.”

“No, no, nothing like that!” It was too disturbing to think about, in fact. People Puzzle’s age were done with the sweaty business of love, surely. It would be indecent otherwise. “I need to find someone. A...a tanglewife.”

“A tanglewife? Why, have you got some castle servingmaid up the country way, then?” Brigid laughed, but she seemed angry again. “I should have known what kind of business would bring you back begging to me.”

“No. It’s not...it’s not about a baby.”

She raised her eyebrow. “A love potion, then? Something to moisten up one of those wooden-shod harlots you’re following around these days?”

He let out a long breath in frustration. Why must she make everything so difficult? Of course, she always had been a woman with her own mind. “I...I can’t tell you, not yet. But it isn’t the kind of thing you think. I need help to...to save someone a great deal of pain.” His heart stuttered for a moment at the enormity of what he was thinking. “And I have another favor to ask, too.” He reached into the sleevepocket of his shirt and produced a silver gull. He had needed to borrow money from Puzzle, money he had no way of paying back, but for once something greater than even his own self-interest drove him. “I’ll give you this now and another just like it afterward if you’ll help me, Brigid— but not a word to Conary. Bargain?”

She stared at the coin in real surprise. “I’ll not help you murder someone,” she breathed, but she looked as though she wasn’t even certain about that.

“It’s...it’s complicated,” he said. “Oh, gods, it is horribly complicated. Bring me a beer and I’ll try to explain.”

“You’ll need another starfish to pay for the two beers, then,” she said, “—one of them for me, of course!—if I’m to be getting that whole gull.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he had visited the neighborhood around Skimmer’s Lagoon in daylight—not that he had come here so many times. It was surprising, really, since the Mint, the tavern in which he had lived and spent most of his time, was only a few hundred steps away on the outer edge of the lagoon district. Still, there was a distinct borderline at Barge Street, which took its name from an inn called the Red Barge at one end of it: except for the poorest of the Southmarch poor, who shared the lagoon district’s damp and fishy smells, only Skimmers spent much time in the area. The exception was after nightfall, when groups of young men came down to patronize the various taverns around the lagoon.

Tinwright turned now onto Barge Street and made his way along it toward Sealer’s Walk, the district’s main thoroughfare, which ran along the edge of the lagoon until it ended in Market Square in the shadow of the new walls. There was no sun to speak of, but Tinwright was grateful for such light as the gray, late-morning sky offered: Barge Street was so narrow that he could imagine Skimmer arms reaching out to grab him from doorways on either side. In reality, he saw almost no one, only a few women emptying slops into the gutters or children who halted their games to watch with wide, unblinking eyes as he passed. There was something so unnerving about these staring children that he found himself hurrying toward Sealer’s Walk, a street he knew fairly well, and where he might find a few of his own kind.

Sealer’s Walk was perhaps the only part of Skimmer’s Lagoon that most castle folk ever visited, fishermen and their women to purchase charms—the Skimmers were said to be great charmwrights, especially when it came to safety on the water—and others to visit the lagoon-side taverns and eat fish soup or drink the oddly salty spirit called wickeril. Many though, especially from outside Southmarch, came for no purpose more lofty than to see something different, because Sealer’s Walk, the lagoon, and the Skimmers themselves were about the strangest things that anyone in the March Kingdoms could see this side of the Shadowline. Even visitors from Brenland and Jael and other nations came to the lagoon, because outside of the lake-folk of Syan and a few settlements in the far southern islands, the Skimmers of Southmarch were unique.

Their food came almost entirely from the bay and the ocean beyond—they ate seaweed!—and even wickeril tasted like something scooped from the bottom of a leaky boat. The long-armed Skimmer men wore few clothes above the waist even in cold weather, and although the women generally wore floor-length dresses and scarves wrapped around their heads, Tinwright had heard it was only for modesty—that they were no more susceptible to the cold than were their menfolk. In other circumstances, as with some female travelers he’d seen, even an occasional woman from Xand, bundled in secrecy to the eyeballs, he’d found the mystery quite appealing, but something about Skimmer women was different. He’d heard men boast of their exploits among the lagoon women—tellingly, though, never in front of Skimmer men—but he himself had never been particularly tempted. Even in the bawdy house behind the Firmament Playhouse, the knocking-shop Hewney and Teodoros had liked so much, Matt Tinwright had never found the Skimmer girls particularly interesting. They had cold skin, for one thing, and even bathed and perfumed they had an odor he found disturbing—not fishy, but with a certain undeniable whiff of brine. And even the naked faces of Skimmer girls were disconcerting to him, although he could not actually say why. The shape of their cheekbones, the size and slant of their eyes, the almost complete lack of eyebrows—Tinwright had always found them obscurely shuddersome.

Still, there were worse places to visit than Sealer’s Walk; Tinwright had even been looking forward to seeing it again. It had a vigor unlike any other part of Southmarch, even the exciting bustle of Market Square. When the catch came in each morning just before dawn, or the fishermen who went far out to sea returned at evening, the place was alive with strange songs and exotic sights.

Today, though, the district seemed much more subdued, even for the doldrums of late morning. The people were quiet and fewer were on the street than he would have expected. Most of the men he saw seemed to be gathered at the site of a recent fire, where a row of three or four houses and shops had burned. Half a dozen adults and twice that many children were picking through the blackened rubble; a few turned to look at him as he passed, and for a moment he felt certain that they were staring angrily at him, as though he had done something wrong to them and then returned to gloat.

As he passed a fishmonger’s warehouse, two other Skimmer men gutting fish with long, scallop-backed knives also stopped to stare at him, their heads swiveling slowly as he walked past. It was hard not to imagine something murderous in their cold-eyed, gape-mouthed gazes.

He came at last to narrow Silverhook Row and turned right as Brigid had told him, following its wandering length for a few hundred paces until he found the tiny alley that seemed to match her description. On either side loomed the windowless backs of tall houses, blocking out all but a sliver of the gray sky, but at the end of the short, dark passage stood the narrow front façade of another house, with a few steps leading down to the door.

Tinwright was about to knock, but stopped when he saw the long, knurled horn, as long as a man’s arms outstretched, hanging over the door. A superstitious prickle ran up his back. Was it a unicorn horn? Or did it come from some even stranger, more deadly creature?

“Planning to steal it?”

He jumped at the unexpected voice and turned to see a short, lumpy shape blocking the entrance to the alley. Thinking of the Skimmer men with their scalloped blades he took a step back and almost fell down the stairs. “No!” he said, waving his arms for balance. “No, I was just... looking. I’ve come to see Aislin the tanglewife.”

“Ah.” The figure took a few steps forward; Tinwright balled his fingers into fists but kept them behind him. “Well, that would be me.”

“You?” He couldn’t help sounding surprised—the voice was so low and scratchy he’d thought it a man’s.

“I do surely hope so, drylander, otherwise I’ve been living someone else’s life this last hundred years.” He still couldn’t see much of her face, which peered out of a deep hood. He could see the eyes, though, wide and watery, yet somehow quite daunting even in the darkened alley. “Move out the way, you young clot, so I can open the door.”

“Sorry.” He sprang to one side as she shuffled past him. He felt uncomfortable watching her mottled hand reach out with the key, so he turned his eyes up to the great horn above the door. “Is that from a unicorn?”

“What? Oh, that? No, that’s the tusk from an alicorn whale taken up in the Vuttish Seas. Unless you’re in the market for a unicorn’s horn, that is, in which case I could be persuaded to change my story.” Her laugh was halfway between a gurgle and a hacking cough, and she emphasized it by leaning into him and jabbing him with her elbow. If this really was Aislin, she smelled to the high heavens, but he found himself almost liking her.

The door open, she went gingerly down the steps. Tinwright followed her inside and found himself beneath a ceiling so low he could not stand straight and so crowded with objects hanging from the rafters that he might have been in a hole beneath the roots of a huge tree. Dozens of bundles of dried seaweed and other more aromatic plants, sheaves of leathery kelp stems and bunches of flowers brushed his face everywhere he turned. Countless charms of wood and baked clay dangled between the drying plants, spinning and swinging as he or the tanglewife brushed them, so that even just standing in one place made him dizzy. Many of the charms were in the shape of living things, mostly aquatic beasts and birds, seals and gulls and fish and ribbony eels. Those not hanging from the ceiling had been set out on every available surface, including most of the floor.

Tinwright had to walk carefully, but he was fascinated by the profusion of animal shapes. Some even had little glass eyeballs pressed into the clay or glued to the wood, making them seem almost alive... “Ah, there you are, small bastard,” said Aislin suddenly, to no one he could see. “There you are, my love.”

The black and white gull, which had been staring back at Tinwright so raptly he had thought it only another particularly well-made object, yawped and shrugged its wings. Tinwright flinched back and almost fell over. “It’s alive!”

“More or less,” she cackled. “He’s missing a leg, my Soso, and he can’t fly, but the wing should heal. Still, I don’t think he’ll go anywhere—will you, my love?” She leaned down and offered her pursed mouth to the gull, which pecked at it in an irritated fashion. “You have it too good here, don’t you, small bastard?”

Aislin had taken her hood off and unwrapped her head scarf, freeing a bristling tangle of white hair. Her face showed the usual Skimmer features, eyes far apart, lips wide and mobile. Like other old Skimmer-folk he’d seen she also had a curious hard look to her skin, as though instead of sagging and growing loose as ordinary folk’s flesh did when they aged, hers had begun to turn into something thick and rigid. Even the curl of inky tattoos on each cheek and at the bridge of her nose seemed to be disappearing into the horny flesh like unused roads disappearing under grass and weeds.

“Will you have something to drink, then?” she asked. “Warm yourself up?”

“Wickeril?”

“That muck?” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t drink it. That’s for Perikali sailors and other barbarians. Black Wrack wine, that’s your drink.” She slid between dangling charms toward the corner of the little house where pots and pans hung from wooden pegs—the kitchen, you’d have to call it, Tinwright supposed. She was shaped like a brewer’s barrel, but without the heavy cloak she moved with surprising nimbleness through the confines of her crowded nest.

“What’s it made with?” he asked—“Black Wrack” didn’t sound all that promising.

“What do you think? Don’t you know what wrack is? Seaweed! Grandsire Egye-Var protect you, boy, what do you expect? You wanted a tanglewife—what do you think ‘tangle’ means? Seaweed, of course.”

Tinwright didn’t say anything. He hadn’t known—he’d thought it was just the word for an old woman who made healing simples and...and other things.

“What do they call someone like you in a place where they don’t have seaweed—or Skimmers?”

She chortled with pleasure, a sound like a joiner’s rasp. “A witch, of course. Now drink this. It will take the hair right off your chest.”

Aislin was frowning as she emtpied her cup. She clearly contemplated pouring herself yet another, but instead sat back in the room’s only chair with a sigh. Tinwright was balanced much more precariously on his stool, especially after finishing his own cup. He couldn’t remember how much of the smoky wine he’d drunk while trying to explain the difficult, frightening business that had brought him, but he had downed more than a few. The wine was almost as salty as blood but still quite refreshing, and his fear had receded into a general smear of unconcern. He stared at the old woman, trying to remember how exactly he had come to this strange place.

“It’s not that I have any scruples, boy,” she said. “And I’m not frightened of much of anything, which you can see by me letting you in here in the first place.”

Tinwright shook his head. Soso the gull gave him a baleful look and feinted toward his ear. The bird didn’t seem as fond of the poet as he was of Aislin, and he especially didn’t like it when Tinwright moved—he’d given him a few painful pecks on the ankles and hands already. “What do you mean, letting me in? I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me? Should say not—I’d pop you like a bulb of rockweed, boy,” she said with an evil, self-satisfied chuckle. “No, because you’re a drylander...what was your name?” She stared at him, blinking slowly. “Ah, never mind. Because you’re a drylander, and your kind isn’t much liked around here just now.”

“Why?” There was no resisting the notion, once it had crept into his head, that Aislin the tanglewife looked and sounded like nothing so much as a huge, gray-haired frog in a shapeless dress. It made conversation tricky. That last cup of wine wasn’t helping, either.

“Why? By the Grandsire’s soggy cod, boy, didn’t you see? Big piece of Sealer’s Walk burned down? Who do you think did that?”

Tinwright stared aghast at the goggle-eyed Skimmer woman. “It wasn’t me!”

“No, you fool, and be glad it wasn’t, but it was drylanders from up in the town, a gang of them, young and stupid and hateful. Three of our people were killed, one of them a child. Folk around here aren’t very happy.”

“Why did they do it?” Suddenly he understood the way some of the Skimmers had watched him and a chill swept over him. “I hadn’t heard anything about a fire.”

“You wouldn’t. We take care of our own, and what happens here doesn’t interest the ordinary run of castle folk—not unless the whole place went up in flames and threatened the rest of the town.” The tanglewife settled back again, waving her broad hands as though to waft away a foul smell. “It’s been bad ever since those Qar creatures crossed the Shadowline. We folk are different—they used to call us kilpies and sea-fairies, did you know?—so things go bad for us. It happened when they came the last time, too, in my great-grandmother’s day. Everyone was driven out of Southmarch by them, eventually, but our folk were driven out first—and by our own neighbors.”

“Sorry.” The cursed wine had fogged his brain—how had they started talking about this? “What’s...what’s a Kwar?”

“You’re not quite saying it right, but close enough for a drylander. Qar is another name for the Old Ones living beyond the Shadowline—the Twilight People.” She stared at him for a moment. “You’ve been sitting here much of the afternoon, boy. Better get up and going before it turns dark. I don’t think it’s going to be a good night for someone like you to be wandering around land-legged on Sealer’s Walk.”

“Right, then.” Tinwright stood up, sketched a somewhat uneven bow, and began to bob through the dangling charms in search of the door, doing his best to ignore the black and white gull pecking aggressively at his feet.

“What are you doing?” Aislin called. “Didn’t you come here to buy something from me?”

He stopped, a thought suddenly gnawing at his mind. “Ah. Yes.”

“You have no head for Black Wrack, boy, that’s certain.” She grunted as she lifted herself to her feet. “Let me get to my powders and potions. Don’t sit down again, you’ll fall asleep.”

After she had been gone for no little time (a span during which Tinwright and the gull eyed each other with feigned disinterest) she came back carrying a small stoppered glass bottle no bigger than a child’s thumb.

“This venom comes from an octopus out of the southern seas—a small thing you would never think to be so deadly. Dip a needle in it and use that one drop only. Just that, and her journey will be painless. But be careful with it or you will murder yourself. This poison knows no master.”

Tinwright took it and stared at the thing in his hand. It was hard to know for certain through the blue glass vial, but the fluid inside looked clear and harmless as water. “Careful...” he breathed. “I’ll be careful.”

“You had better.” Her laugh was sharp and raw. “There’s enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. I don’t like handling it, myself. I had an accident once.” She sat down heavily. “And it goes without saying that from here out, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ve no qualms about much of anything but I don’t want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, someone will come looking for you in turn. Understand?”

“Yes.” Those Skimmer men testing the blades of their fishgutting knives as they watched him pass was a picture he wouldn’t soon forget. The Black Wrack in his stomach seemed to sour and bubble. He hesitated for a moment before carefully putting the little flask into his sleeve pocket.

“Grandsire’s sake, boy, wrap it in something,” she said, disgusted. “Here, take this bit of kelp leaf, that’s thick enough. If you fall down and break the jar while it’s sitting in your shirt like that, you’ll never get up again.”

When he was finished Tinwright was feeling ill indeed. He stared at Aislin for a moment, swaying, then swiveled toward the door.

“Didn’t you forget something?”

“Pardon?” He turned back. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“No, you daft herring, my money. That’s a gull and two coppers you owe me.” She smirked. “And I’m giving you the lovesick poet’s rate.”

“Of course.” He fumbled out the money, handed it to her. After a moment’s assessment, which seemed mostly to consist of running her thumb around the circumference of each coin, she whisked them down the gap in her shiny, wrinkled bosom, an expanse which looked like nothing so much as a well-worn saddle. “Now be on your way. And remember what I said. Better you drink that whole jar right now than breathe a word to anyone of where you got it.”

Feeling as though some poison had already taken away his powers of thought and speech, Tinwright nodded and staggered toward the door, then out into the cold gray day, or what was left of it.

When he reached Silverhook Row he turned to look back down the alley. Aislin the tanglewife stood in her doorway beneath the great length of pale horn, staring at him. She lifted a hand as if to wave him farewell, but her strange, pop-eyed face had gone cold and remote. She turned and went back inside.

Matt Tinwright hurried out of the lagoon district as fast as he could, acutely conscious of both the fast fading afternoon light and the tiny jar full of treason and murder concealed in his shirt.

Opal came back from market with her sack mostly empty and her face full of worry.

“You look terrible, my old darling,” Chert told her. “I’ll only be gone up to the castle for the day. I’m sure there’s nothing to fear.”

“I’m not worrying about you,” she growled, then shook her head angrily. “No, of course I’m worried about you, all caught up in this big-folk madness again. But that’s not what’s bothering me. There’s nothing to eat in this house and scarcely anything to be had even at the market.”

“Why is that?”

She snorted. “You are a dunderhead, Chert! Why do you think? The castle is surrounded by fairy folk, half the merchants won’t send their ships here to Southmarch, and there’s no work for the Funderlings. Surely in your time loitering around the guildhall you must have heard something of that?”

“Of course.” He scratched his head. She was right: it wasn’t as though there were no ordinary problems. “But Berkan Hood, the new lord constable, promised that he’d put two hundred of ours to work repairing the castle walls, so Cinnabar and the rest are saying not to worry.”

“And what are they going to pay them with?” She had her shawl off now and was washing her hands vigorously in a bowl of water. “The Tollys are already spending money hand over fist trying to lure merchants to bring in food and drink for Southmarch, not to mention the ships they’ve had to buy and mercenary seamen they’ve had to hire, all to protect the harbor.”

“You heard all this at the market?”

“Do you think we spend all day talking about vegetables and sewing?” She dried her hands off on her shapeless, oft-mended old dress and Chert felt a pang that his wife had nothing nicer to wear. “Honestly, you menfolk. You think you do it all yourselves, don’t you?”

“Not for years, my good old woman.” He laughed ruefully.

“Not since I’ve had you around to keep me straightened out.”

“Well, just go and talk to the boy before you disappear for the day. He’s had a bad night and I have a hundred things to do if I’m going to make a meal out of these sad leavings.”

Flint was sitting on the bed, his white-gold hair disarranged, his face distant and mournful.

“How are you, lad?”

“Well.” But he didn’t meet Chert’s eye.

“I wonder if that’s really true. Your mo...Opal says you had a bad night.” He sat down beside the boy and patted his knee. “Did you not sleep well?”

“Didn’t sleep.”

“Why not?” He peered at the pale, almost translucent face. Flint looked as though he needed sun. It was a strange thought—he certainly couldn’t remember ever thinking it about anyone else. Of course, most of the people he knew never even saw the sun if they could help it.

“Too noisy,” the boy said. “Too many voices.”

“Last night?” It was true that in the early part of the evening Cinnabar and some of the other Guildsmen had stopped by to talk about where Chert was going today, but they had been gone by the time the darklights came on. “Really? Well, we’ll try to keep it more quiet.”

“It’s too crowded,” Flint said. Before Chert could ask him to explain, he added: “I have bad dreams. Very bad.”

“Like what?”

Flint shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Eyes, bright eyes, and someone holding me down.” His chest heaved with a sob. “It hurts!”

“Come on, lad. Don’t be feared. Things will get better, you’ve just had a rough time.” Helplessly, Chert put his arm around him and felt the child’s entire body shudder.

“But I want to go back to sleep! Nobody understands. They won’t let me sleep! They keep calling me!”

“Lie down, then.” He did his best, half helping, half forcing the child back into the bed. He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Ssshhh. Go to sleep, now. Opal’s just in the other room. I have to go out to work, but I’ll be back later.”

Flint miserably allowed himself to be stroked and soothed into a thin, restless slumber. Chert got up as quietly as he could, desperate not to wake him.

What have we done to that boy? he wondered. What’s wrong with him? Odd as he was before, he was always alert, lively. He seems only half alive since I found him down in the Mysteries.

He didn’t even have the heart to talk about it to Opal, who felt the boy’s distraction and strangeness even more than he did: he only waved to her as he passed, tying on his tool belt.

“Vermilion Cinnabar had a message for you from her husband,” Opal called.

Chert stopped in the doorway. “What’s that?”

“She said to tell you that Chaven wants to see you again before you go upground.”

He sighed. “Why not?”

The physician was waiting in the middle of the mirrored floor of the Guild’s great hall. Several Funderlings were preparing the hall for the next meeting, politely avoiding him as he stood staring down, like children circling an absentminded father. For the first time Chert’s own people looked small to him in their own great hall.

The physician didn’t look up even after Chert coughed politely. “Chaven?” he said at last. “You wanted to speak to me?”

Startled, Chaven turned. “Oh, it’s you! Sorry, so sorry, it’s just...this place. I find it strangely...restful is not the right word, not quite. But it is one of the few places where my cares, they just...slip away...”

Chert had never felt the presence of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be particularly restful, even in statue form. He looked up to the image of Kernios sunk deep in the ceiling, then down to the mirror-version below their feet. Being suspended, as it were, between two versions of the blackeyed, somber-faced earth god seemed even less soothing, especially when the mirroring rendered Chaven and himself as blobs with feet in the middle and heads at each end, suspended halfway between Heaven and the Pit. “I heard you wanted me.”

Chaven dragged his attention away from the representation of the god. “Oh, yes. I just felt I should talk to you again about what you should say.”

“Fracture and fissure, man,” Chert cursed, “we’ve been over this a dozen times already! What more can there be to say?”

“I am sorry, but this is very important.”

Chert sighed. “It would be different if I were actually going to pretend to know something I don’t, but if he asks me something I don’t know an answer for I’ll just make important-sounding humming noises, then tell him I need to confer with my Funderling colleagues.” He gave Chaven an annoyed look. “And then, yes, I’ll come right to you and tell you, and find out what to say.”

“Good, good. And what will you look for to know if it’s my mirror?”

“A dark frame of cypress wood, with wings that open out. It is carved with pictures of eyes and hands.”

“Yes, but if there’s no frame, or if he’s put a new one on it?”

Chert took a deep breath. Patience, he told himself. He’s been through a great deal. But it was more than a little like dealing with a drunkard, someone forever trying to shake the last dribbles of mossbrew out of an empty jar. “The glass itself has a slight outward curve to it.”

“Yes. Good!”

“May I go now? Before Okros decides to ask someone else to do it instead?”

“Will you write down anything you are unsure about? It will help me understand what Okros is trying to do. Do you promise?”

Chert said nothing, but tapped the slate hanging on a string around his neck. “Really, I must go now.”

Worriedly repeating all that they had just discussed, Chaven followed him to the door but, to Chert’s relief, went no farther, as if he did not want to travel far from the reassuring presence of the earth lord and the haven of the guildhall’s great room.

Chert hadn’t been out of Funderling Town for many, many days—was it almost a month?—and he was surprised by the obvious differences since the last time he’d been upground. The spirit of ragged camaraderie he’d seen everywhere in the castle had now just as obviously expired, overcome by weariness and fear of the unchanging siege conditions, the strange, suspended watchfulness that in some ways was worse than even a real and imminent danger of attack.

The faces bundled up in scarves and hoods were red with cold and very grim, even as he reached the Raven Gate and the vicinity of the royal residence itself, where at least the people did not yet have to worry about starving. Still, these comparatively well-fed courtiers had a wolfish look about them, too, as though even the most kindly and cheerful of them were spending a large part of their thoughts considering what they were going to do and to whom they were going to do it when things became really bad, when they would have to struggle to survive.

The castle itself looked different, too. The walls around the Inner Keep were built over with wooden hoardings and crawling with guards, the greens were full of animals (mostly pigs and sheep) the wells were guarded by soldiers, and there seemed to be twice as many folk as usual milling in the narrow roads and public squares. Still, when he showed the letter from Okros he received only cursory attention before being allowed through Raven’s Gate, although he thought he heard a few of the guards mutter uncomplimentary things about Funderlings. That was certainly not the first time in Chert’s life such a thing had ever happened, but he was a little surprised by the vehemence in their voices.

Well, bad times make bad neighbors, he reminded himself. And there were always rumors that the king fed us —as though we were animals in a menagerie, instead of us earning our own way, which we always have. Just the kind of thing to make the big folk resentful when times are hard.

It was disturbing to find that Okros had openly usurped Chaven’s residence in the Observatory, but Chert supposed it made sense. In any case, he was not even supposed to know Chaven, so he certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it.

A young, jug-eared acolyte in an Eastmarch robe opened the door and silently led him to the observatory itself, a high-ceilinged room with a sliding panel in the roof, permeated with the smell of damp. Okros rose from a table piled with books, brushing off his dark red smock. He was a slender man with a fringe of white hair and a pleasant, intelligent expression. It was hard to believe he was the villain Chaven believed him, even though Chert himself had heard Brother Okros talking to Hendon Tolly about Chaven’s glass.

In any case, he would let discretion rule. He bowed. “I am Chert of the Blue Quartz. The Guild of Stone-Cutters sent me.”

“Yes, you are expected. And you know much of mirrors?”

Chert spoke carefully. “I am of the Blue Quartz. We are part of the Crystal clan and a mirror is merely an object made from crystal or glass, so all Funderling mirror-work is overseen by us. And yes, I do know some few things. Whether that will be enough for your needs, my lord, we shall see.”

Okros gave him an appraising look. “Very well. I will take you to it.”

The scholar took a lantern from the tabletop and led Chert out of the high-ceilinged observatory and down a succession of corridors and stairways. Chert had been in Chaven’s house before, of course, but not often, and he had little idea where they were now except that they were traveling downward. For a moment he became fearfully certain that the man was taking him to the secret door Chert himself had employed when Chaven lived here, that he knew exactly who Chert was and what had brought him here, but instead, when they had gone down several floors, the little physician opened a door off the hallway with a key and beckoned him inside. An object covered with a cloth stood in the middle of an otherwise empty table, like an oddly shaped corpse waiting burial—or resurrection.

Okros removed the cloth with careful fingers. The mirror was just as Chaven had described it, but Chert did his best to look at it as though he had never seen it or heard of it before. Carved hands, the fingers spread in different arrangements, alternated with crude but compelling eyes around the dark wood of the frame. The curve was there, too, just enough of a convexity to make the reflection slightly unstable to a moving observer: in fact, it was disturbing to look at it for more than a few moments.

“And what exactly did you wish to know, my lord?” Chert asked carefully. “It looks like an ordinary...that is, it looks as though it is...unbroken.”

“Yes, I know!” For the first time, Chert could detect a hint of something strange under the physician’s words. “It is...it does nothing.”

“Nothing? I’m sorry, what...?”

“Don’t pretend you are ignorant, Funderling.” Okros shook his head angrily, then calmed himself. “This is a scrying glass. Surely you and your people did not think I would send for help to deal with an ordinary mirror? It is an authentic scrying glass—a ‘Tile,’ as they are sometimes called—but it remains dead to me. Do you still pretend ignorance?”

Chert kept his eyes on the glass. The man was not just angry, he was frightened somehow. What could that mean? “I pretend nothing, Lord, and I am not ignorant. I just wished to hear what it was you wanted. Now, what more can you tell me?” He tried to remember Chaven’s words. “Is it a problem of reflection or refraction?”

“Both.” The physician seemed mollified. “The substance seems intact, as you see, but as an object it is inert. As a scrying glass, it is useless. I can make nothing of it.”

“Can you tell me anything of where it comes from?”

Okros looked at him sharply. “No, I cannot. Why do you ask?”

“Because the literature of scrying glasses, and the unwritten lore as well, must be applied to that which is known, to help discover that which is unknown.” He hoped he didn’t sound too much like he was making things up (which he was): Chaven had told him a few facts and a name or two to drop when the occasion seemed to warrant, but there was no way of knowing ahead of time precisely what Okros would want to know. “Perhaps I could take it back to the Funderling Guild...”

“Are you mad?” Okros actually put his arms around the thing as if guarding a small, helpless child from a ravening wolf. “You will take nothing! This object is worth more than Funderling Town itself!” He stared at Chert, eyes narrowed to slits.

“Sorry, my lord. I only thought...”

“You will remember that it is an honor even being called to consult. I am the prince-regent’s physician—the royal physician!—and I will not be trifled with.”

Chert suddenly and for the first time felt frightened, not just of Okros himself—although the man could call the guards and have Chert locked in a dungeon in moments if he wished—but of his strange feverishness. It reminded him more than a little of the odd behavior he had seen from Chaven. What was it about this mirror that turned men into beasts?

“If anything,” Okros said, “I should come and examine the library in Funderling Town. The Guild would make it available to me, of course.”

Chert knew this would be a bad idea in many ways. “Of course, my lord. They would be honored. But most of the knowledge about subjects like these glasses cannot be found in books. Most of it is in the minds of our oldest men and women. Do you speak Funderling?”

Okros stared at him as though he were joking. “What do you mean, speak Funderling? Surely no one down there speaks anything but the common tongue of the March Kingdoms?”

“Oh, no, Brother Okros, sir. Many of our older folk have not left Funderling Town in years and years and they speak only the old tongue of our forefathers.” Which was not entirely a lie, although the numbers who could only speak Old Funderling were tiny. “Why don’t you let me go back to the Guild with your questions—and my observations too, of course—and see what answers I can bring back in a day or two. Surely for someone as busy as yourself, with all your responsibilities, that would be the best solution.”

“Well, perhaps...”

“Let me just make a few notes.” He rapidly sketched the mirror and its frame and made notations in the margin just as he would have while planning a particularly intricate scaffolding installation. When he had stalled as long as he could, he remembered something else Chaven had told him, which had made no sense but which he wanted Chert to discover. There had been some artful way he had wanted Chert to pose the question, but he couldn’t remember, so he just asked bluntly. “Have you seen anything unusual in the mirror? Birds or animals?”

Okros looked at Chert as though he had suddenly sprouted wings or a tail himself. “No,” he said at last, still staring. “No, I told you it was lifeless.”

“Ah. Of course.” Chert bowed, hung his slate around his neck, and backed toward the door. He no longer thought Okros quite as friendly and harmless as he first had. “Thank you for the honor of asking for us, my lord. I shall consult with my fellows in the Guild and return soon.” “Yes. Well, just do not wait too long.”

Chert had his hood up against the cold, so even though she was twice his height he nearly walked into her when she stepped out of the shadows near the Raven’s Gate. Startled, he stopped and looked up, but it took him a moment to recognize her—he had only seen her once, of course, and that had been well over a month ago.

“You’re the one who came to my house,” he said. She still had the same distracted look, like a sleepwalker. “You never told me your name.”

“Willow,” said the young woman. “But it does not matter. That was someone’s name who is gone now, or has changed.” She did not move on. Clearly, she wanted something, but Chert began to feel if he did not ask her she might never disclose it, that they would both remain standing here until night fell and then dawn came again.

“Do you need something?”

She shook her head. “Nothing you can give me.” Chert’s patience, never his best feature, had been tested beyond belief this year, and it seemed the tests were far from over. “Then perhaps you will excuse me—my wife will be holding supper.”

“I wish to speak to you about the one called Gil,” she said. Chert suddenly remembered. “Ah, of course. You were very attached to him, weren’t you?” She didn’t speak, but only watched him attentively. “I’m very sorry, but we were both captured by the fairy-soldiers. They let me go, but their queen, or their general, or whatever she was, sentenced Gil to death. He’s dead. I’m sorry I could not do more for him.” She shook her head. “No. He is not dead.”

He saw the look in her eyes. “Of course. His spirit lives on, no doubt. Now I must go. Again, I’m sorry for how things happened.”

The young woman smiled, an almost ordinary thing, but it still had a quality of ineffable strangeness. “No, he is not dead. I hear his voice. He speaks to Lady Porcupine every day. She hates what he has to say, because he speaks with the king’s voice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It does not matter. I only wished to tell you that I heard Gil speak of you just yesterday, or perhaps it was today.” She shook her head, as though Chert must know how hard it was to remember when one last heard from dead people. “He said he wished he could tell you and your people that they are not safe beneath the castle. That soon the world will change, and that the door will open under Funderling Town and dead time will escape.” She nodded as though she had performed some small trick with an acceptable level of skill. “I am going now.”

She turned and walked away.

Chert stood in the lengthening shadows, feeling a chill crawl across his body that was out of all proportions even to the cold day.

31. The Dark-Eyed Girl

He had been falling for so long he could not remember what it was like not to fall, could not remember which direction was up, or even what having an up and down meant. The last thing he remembered was seeing the gates, the sign of the owl and pine tree, and then—as if those monstrous gates had swung open and a black wind had lifted him and carried him through—he had been tumbling in darkness like this, helpless as a sparrow in a thunderstorm.

Sister, he called, or tried to, I’m falling. I’m lost...! But she did not come, not even as a ghost of memory; they were separated by some gulf that even their blood tie could not bridge.

Sister. I’m dying... He could never have guessed that it would happen this way—that they would have no last farewell. But she must know how he loved her. She was the only thing in this corrupted world that mattered to him. He could take solace in that, anyway... Who...are...you...?

It came to him as a whisper—no, less than a whisper, it came like the sound of a flower unfolding on the far side of a meadow. Still, in the midst of such utter emptiness, it was a glorious sound, glad as trumpets.

Who’s there? Is that you, Storm Lantern? But he knew that the fairy’s words could never feel like that in his mind, each one as cool, gentle and precise as water dripping from a leaf after the rains had stopped. It was a woman speaking, he could feel it, but that still didn’t seem quite right: the touch seemed even too light for that. And then he knew. It was the dark-haired girl, the one who had watched over his other dreams.

Who are you? he asked the emptiness. He was still falling, but the movement seemed different now, no longer plunging toward something but sailing outward. Do I know you?

Who am I? She was silent for a time, as if the question surprised her. I...I don’t know. Who are you?

A silly question, he thought at first, but found he had no easy answer. I have a name, he insisted, I just can’t think of it right now.

So do I, she told him, still no more than a ghostly voice. And I can’t think of mine, either. How strange...!

Do you know where we are?

He could feel the negation even before he caught the wordthoughts. No. Lost, I think. We’re lost. For the first time he recognized the sadness in her voice and knew he was not the only one who was afraid. He wanted to help her, although he could not help himself or even say what it was that troubled him. All he knew was that he was falling endlessly outward through nothing, and that it was a blessing beyond price to have someone to share it with.

I want to see you, he said suddenly. Like before. Before?

You were watching me. That was you, wasn’t it? Those things were chasing me, and the halls were on fire... That was you. It was not a question, but almost a sweet note of satisfaction. I was afraid for you.

I want to see you.

But who are you? she demanded.

I don’t know! When he grew angry her presence became fainter and that frightened him. Still, it was interesting to know he could still feel anger. When he had been falling alone, he had felt almost nothing. I just know that I was by myself, and then you were here. I haven’t felt... It would have been almost impossible to explain in his waking life— in this wordless, directionless place it was far beyond impossible. I haven’t felt anyone in my heart since I lost her. He could not summon the name, but he knew her, his sister, his twin soul, his other half.

The other was silent for a long moment. You love her.

I do. But there was a misunderstanding between them, a sort of cloud of confusion, and again the girl’s presence became remote. Don’t go! I need to see you. I want to... There was no word for what he wanted—there weren’t even thoughts that could be strung together—but he wanted a reason to exist. He wanted a place to be, and to feel someone waiting for the thoughts in his head, so that he knew there was more to the universe the gods had made than simply a few whispers in endless darkness. I want to... There is a place around us, she said suddenly. I can almost see it.

What do you mean?

Look! It’s big, but it has walls. And there’s...a road?

He could see it now, at least its faint lineaments. It was a space only slightly smaller than the endless dark through which they had been falling, and only a little more bright, but it had shape, it had boundaries. At the center of it he saw what she had called a road, an arching span of safety over an astonishing, terrifying dark nothing—a nothing even more profound than the void through which he had been falling. But this pit of blackness beneath the span was not simply nothing, it was a darkness that wanted to make everything else into a nothing, too. It existed, but its existence was a threat to all else. It was the raw stuff of unbeing.

No, that’s not a road, he said as the one stripe of something slowly hardened into visibility. It’s a bridge.

And then they were facing each other on the curving span, the boy and the girl, shifting and vague as objects seen through murky water. Neither of them were really children, but neither were they grown or anywhere close to it. They were raw, frightened, excited, and still new enough to the world that a thing like this made as much sense as anything else.

Her eyes were what held him, although he could not keep his stare fixed on them for more than a moment— everything here was inconstant, shifting and blurring as though he had exhausted his sight with hours of reading instead of just regaining it.

It wasn’t the eyes themselves that fascinated him, although they were large and kind, brown like the eyes of some creature watching with caution from the forest depths. Rather it was the way her eyes looked at him and saw him.

Even in this fit of madness (or whatever had swallowed him) the brown-eyed girl saw him, not what he said or what he seemed or what others imagined him to be. Perhaps it was only because they were in this place without names— perhaps she could have seen him here in no other way— but the way she looked at him felt like a welcoming campfire summoning a freezing, exhausted traveler. It felt like something that could save him.

Who are you? he asked again.

I told you, I don’t know. Then she smiled, a surprising flash of amusement that transformed her solemn little face into something astounding. I’m a dreamer, I suppose, or maybe I’m a dream. One of us is dreaming this, aren’t we?

But that was a jest, he knew. She was no idle wisp of either his fancy or her own—she was strong and practical. He could feel it. And who are you?

A prisoner, he told her, and knew it was true. An exile. A victim.

Now for the first time he felt something other than kindness from her, a sour taste in her reply. A victim? Who isn’t? That isn’t who you are, that’s just what’s happening to you.

He was torn between his desire to feel her sweetness again and the need to explain just how badly life and the gods had treated him. The gods? They were trying to kill him!

You don’t understand, he said. It’s different with me. But he found that here on this bridge over Unbeing, this span that led away in either direction to unseen and unknowable ends, he couldn’t explain why that was. I’m...wrong. Crippled. Mad in the head.

If you expect me to feel sorry for you because you dream of impossible places and people without names, she said, some of her sly humor creeping back, then you’ll have to try something else instead.

He wanted to let himself enjoy her, but he could not. If he did —if he belittled his own miseries—how could he even exist? The only thing that made his suffering bearable was the knowledge that it also made him different—that he had been elected somehow for this pain. But I didn’t ask to be like this! His despair rose up in a howl of fury. I didn’t want things to be this way! I don’t have the strength for any more!

What do you mean? Her amusement was gone—she was looking at him again, really looking. He would not recognize this blurry, occulted phantom even if he stood face-to-face with her, at least not by her features, but he would know the quality of attention she gave him anywhere, in any disguise.

I mean it’s too much. One horror after another. The gods themselves... The monstrousness of it all could not be explained. I’m cursed, that’s all. I’m not strong enough to live with it any longer. I thought I could—I’ve tried—but I can’t.

You don’t mean that. It’s a kind of...showing off.

I do mean it! I’d rather be dead. Dead, he might not see his beloved twin soul ever again—or this one either, this new friend in darkness—but at this moment he didn’t care. He was tired of the burden.

You can’t ever say that. Her thoughts were not plaintive but angry again. We all die. What if we only get one chance to be alive?

What if it’s all pain?

Push against it. Escape it. Change it.

Easy to say. He was disgusted and furious, but suddenly terrified she would leave him alone on this bone-white span over nothing—no, worse than nothing.

No, it’s not. And it’s even harder to do, I know. But it’s all you have.

What is?

This is. All of it. You have to fight. Will you...will you come back to me if I do?

I don’t know. A flash of sweetness in the nothing, a smile like a fluting of birdsong in the dark before sunrise. I don’t know how I found you, so I can’t say if I’ll ever find you again, dear friend. Who are you?

I can’t say—I’m not sure. But come back to me—please! I’ll try...but live!

And then the bridge, the pit, the girl, everything was gone, and Barrick Eddon was swimming slowly back up through the ordinary soundings of dream and sleep.

Ferras Vansen was relieved to see that the prince’s miseries seemed to have eased a bit. Barrick was no longer making that terrible wheezing noise, and although he still lay stretched on the stone floor of their cell he seemed to be resting now instead of suffering. Vansen, who had tried to comfort the prince once and had been hit in the face by a flailing hand for his trouble, let out a breath. Apparently he would live, although Vansen was still not entirely certain what had sickened him so badly. It seemed to be something to do with... So what was that thing? he demanded of Gyir. That...door. You haven’t told me anything since we came back into our own heads except “Grab the boy’s legs” when he was thrashing on the floor. Why do you keep silent?

Because I am trying to understand. Gyir’s thoughts traveled slowly as summer clouds. What we saw seemed to have only one explanation and I do not trust such seemings. But the more I think, the more I come back again and again to the same conclusion.

What conclusion? Vansen looked to the prince, who had sat up, but was hunched over like a small child with a bellyache. I am only a soldier—I know nothing of gods, fairies, magic. What is happening here?

You saw the pine tree and the owl, Gyir said. They are Black Earth’s symbols. What else could we have seen except the fearful gate of Immon, as you would name him —the way into the palace of Immon’s master, bleak Kernios himself?

It was not the familiar Trigonate god Vansen saw in his mind’s eye now, not a statue or a painting on a church wall, but a memory from his early life in the dales—whispers of the dark man with his mask and his heavy gloves, who would grab wicked children (or maybe even good ones if he caught them alone) and drag them down beneath the ground.

Kernios...the god of the dead? Are you telling me that we are standing on top of the entrance to his palace? It was one thing to meet even a terrifying giant like Jikuyin and be told he was a demigod, another thing to be told that one of the all-powerful Trigon made his home just beneath their feet in this very spot, the dark brother whose frowning eyes had been on Ferras Vansen since he had drawn breath, the shadow that had haunted his dreams as long as he could remember. But how could that be? Why would it be here?

It could be anywhere. It simply happens to be here. Or a doorway does, at least. Where other doorways are, who can say...?

But what does that mean? If the gate’s here, the whole palace has to be here, too, doesn’t it? Buried down there in the stone?

Gyir shook his head. There was a small furrow between his eyes that showed his worry, the only sign of recognizable feelings on that bleak expanse. The ways of the gods, their dwellings and habits, are not like ours. They walk different roads. They live in different fields, some of which we cannot even tread. One side of a doorway is not always in the same place or even time as what is on the other side.

The fairy lifted both hands, made a sign with them that spoke first of connection, then separation. It is confusing, he admitted.

Vansen thought about his own experiences trying to find his way around behind the Shadowline, then tried to imagine something that would confuse even creatures like Gyir who had been born and raised in these shifting, unfixed lands. But why are they digging it out? he asked. The giant and that gray man—why would they want to go near it? Ferras Vansen had a sudden, terrifying thought. Is...Kernios on the other side of that? Waiting?

No, he is gone, Gyir said. All the gods are gone, Perin Shatterhand and Kernios and Immon the Black Pig—at least all those gods whose names I know. Banished to the lands of sleep.

“Then why are they digging?” In his agitation Vansen spoke aloud. After so much time, the croaking sound of his own voice irritated him. “For treasure?”

“Because they are mad,” grunted Barrick, rolling over. “The Qar are mad, but the gods and demigods are even more so. This whole land is cracked and deathly.” The prince couldn’t yet sit up straight, but he was doing his best to hide his discomfort, and Vansen couldn’t help admiring him for it.

Gyir must have said something to him then, because there was a pause before the prince said aloud, “Because I can’t. It hurts my head too much. I’ll just have to be careful what I say. Can you talk to both of us at the same time?”

I will try, Gyir said. You think us all mad, man-child? I wish it were only so, then our problems might not be so great. You speak from pain, because the essence of the gods hurts you, even when they are absent. In a way, you seem much like me. We have both felt the power of this place, only in different ways.

“What are you talking about?” Barrick asked.

You are sensitive, it seems, as I was and as all the Encauled would be—sensitive to the voice of Jikuyin, sensitive to the Pig’s gate and to the throne room of Black Earth beyond. But it is a little strange, almost as if...as if... Gyir closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. No, he told them, opening his eyes again. It matters not. Listen, though, and I will tell you some things that do matter. The fairy settled himself on the stone floor of the cell and briefly closed his red eyes in thought.

When Kernios was driven out, he told them at last, he left behind everything that was material, all that was of flesh or the world... Vansen was puzzled, uncertain if he had understood Gyir correctly. Driven out?

“Explain,” Barrick said. “I’m tired of guessing.”

Yes, driven out. He and the other gods were banished from these lands and cast into the realm of sleep and forgetting.

“Banished by who?”

I will try to explain all, but you two must not interrupt me with questions—especially you, Prince Impatience, since you are speaking aloud so anyone can hear. Gyir’s anger flashed like lightning through his thoughts. We are fortunate —I sense there is no one near who can hear what I say in your heads or who speaks your mortal tongue—but do not stretch your luck. We are in terrible, terrible danger— worse even than I had feared. The fairy raised his fingers to his temples as though his head pained him. Please, let me begin where I need to begin. Even to Vansen, still not entirely familiar with this way of conversing, it was impossible to mistake the desperation in Gyir’s every thought.

Prince Barrick raised his hand in surrender or permission.

First you must understand something of my own history. I am not merely a warrior. In fact, it is the most unlikely thing I could have become. Those of my folk who are most like your people in shape—for it was a shape we all shared, once—are called “the High Folk,” not because looking like a sunlander is comely, but because it is the old way of seeming. But even some of the High Ones are so different from your kind as to be almost unrecognizable, either born dissimilar or because they can change their outward appearance. Some of them have been figures of terror to your kind for thousands of years. Others, like the Guild of Elementals, take earthly shapes only when it suits them, like the gods themselves.

And then there are folk like me, who although we come from the great families of power that have kept the most of the old seeming, yet we ourselves are born different— freakish even among our varied folk. I am one such—one of the Encauled, as those of my malady are named. We are born with this tissue of flesh over our faces that we must wear all our lives, but we are granted other gifts— senses that are stronger than most, an understanding that allows us to find our way when even the powerful might become lost. Among the People, we Encauled often become the guides, the searchers, those who explore different ways. Some of us take service in the Deep Library in the House of the People, which is our great city and capital. The Library is where we speak with the spirits of those who have left their flesh, as well as with some who have never worn flesh. Serving the Library is an exacting and noble pursuit.

That would likely have been my calling, but my parents fell afoul of one of the court rivalries and my father was killed. My mother was driven out of the House of the People by a faction who held strong allegiance to King Ynnir—although, to be fair, they did not always act as the king would have wished, nor could he always control them. My mother and I wandered for years, taking service at last with Yasammez—Lady Porcupine, the great iconoclast, the woman who belongs to no one but herself. In her house in the Wanderwind Mountains I grew, and when my mother at last became weary of the many defeats and disappointments of her life and surrendered to death, I was raised in Yasammez’s martial service, my gifts used not for contemplation but for warfare on behalf of the woman who had taken me in and raised me almost as her own.

Because of her, Jikuyin is not the first of the demigods I have met. When I was barely old enough to carry a sword I fought with my mistress at Dawnwood against Barumbanogatir, a fearsome bastard of old Twilight—the one you sunlanders call Sveros the Evening Sky. Giant Barumbanogatir killed three hundred of my lady’s finest warriors before she brought him down at last with a spear through his great shield and into his throat. After that we fought other wars for the People, against the Dreamless and the treacherous mountain Drows, struggling and dying to keep our people safe even as the people themselves shunned us—even as all but Queen Saqri treated us like vicious animals to be tied at the edge of camp but never to be allowed any closer.

You see, only Saqri of the Ancient Song recognized us for what we were—the sharp sword in the People’s sheath, which even when it is not drawn gives others pause, makes them think and weigh their lusts against their fears. Yasammez is of the queen’s own family, and Saqri honored her as one of the oldest and purest of the High Ones still living. Queen Saqri knew that my mistress had been given in long life and in courage what the king and queen and their ancestors had surrendered in return for the gift of the Fireflower, the boon of the last god to our ruling family.

A boon that has now become a curse... Ferras Vansen could feel thousands of years of confusing, dangerous history swirling like deep black waters just behind the fairy’s words. He wanted to ask what the Fireflower was, but Gyir for once was speaking so openly that Vansen feared to distract him.

My lady Yasammez had been fighting for the People long centuries before ever I was born. At the dreadful, infamous battle of Shivering Plain, during one of the last of the wars of the gods, she destroyed the earthly form of Urekh, no god’s bastard but a true god himself, who wore the pelt of a magical wolf as his invulnerable armor. For that alone she would be remembered and celebrated until time’s candle gutters out, but it is not why I speak of that battle. That was the same day of which I told you before, where Jikuyin delayed his coming, hoping to manipulate the results to his own advantage, and instead was struck down by Kernios himself, blinded and nearly killed.

Vansen remembered the story of Jukuyin riding late onto the field with his Widowmakers, then realizing he had bought more trouble than he could afford, since Perin, Kernios, and the gods called the Surazemai were winning and the rest of the gods and Qar were already in flight.

Kernios hurt him, you said.

Indeed. Black Earth wounded Jikuyin so gravely that he would never heal. But now, for some reason, the demigod is digging his way into the very throne room of Black Earth —the one your kind call Kernios.

So what is Jikuyin going to do?

Make right what was done to him, somehow. Perhaps the god’s mighty spear Earthstar lies behind that gate, or perhaps Jikuyin seeks a more subtle prize. But if he does manage to open that doorway into Kernios’ earthly realm, I can feel that Jikuyin will gain in power—gain immeasurably. His long-ago defeat cast him down into weakness—what you see before you is scarcely a shadow of what he was on the day he rode out onto Shivering Plain—but he is one of the last living bastards of the true gods. If he gains that strength back he will be the most powerful thing that walks on the green world.

But we can’t do anything to stop him, Vansen said. Can we?

I fear we must, said Gyir.

Are you telling me it is up to us to defend all the world?

Vansen turned to Barrick to see if the boy understood Gyir’s riddling words, but the prince only stared back at him balefully, still struggling for breath.

Of course—but also to save our own lives. Great magicks —the oldest, most powerful magicks—need blood and essences—what your kind call the souls of people or animals—to succeed. They need sacrifices. The word came like the tip of a dagger, cold and sharp, almost painless at first. Especially the sacrifice of those who are themselves powerful in some way.

What are you talking about? But Vansen had already guessed.

I suspect now that we have not been worked to death like the other poor creatures poisoned by the gateway to the gods’ realm because Jikuyin needs one of us—most likely me, since I am of the Encauled—or perhaps even all of us to unlock the way into Kernios’ throne room. He needs our blood. He needs our souls.

One thing you had to say for Ferras Vansen, Barrick decided. The guard captain never stopped...trying. If his stolid normality and his rude health had not already been sufficient reasons to hate him, then his relentless willingness to keep pushing and fighting—as if life were a game and there would be some ultimate tally, some adding-up of accounts—would have more than sufficed. Barrick had always thought optimism was another name for stupidity.

But the dark-eyed girl would admire him, he realized with a pang.

“So what do we do?” Vansen asked Gyir quietly, speaking aloud so the prince could hear. The man was also thoughtful. Barrick wanted to hit him with something. “Surely we cannot simply wait for them to...to burn us on some barbarous altar.”

“You might want to consider the small matter of a mad demigod and all the demons and beasts who serve him and who would happily tear us to shreds,” Barrick pointed out with more pleasure than one would normally expect to accompany such a sentence. He was tempted to help Gyir and the soldier anyway, just so they could discover the futility of all such scheming. He supposed it wasn’t entirely their fault. They had not felt, as he had, the true strength of this place, the horrific, overwhelming power that remained in Greatdeeps even if the god himself was gone—if he was truly gone. Whatever made Barrick sensitive also clearly made him wise: he alone seemed to understand the pointlessness of all this discussion.

But would she think it was pointless? Barrick knew she wouldn’t, and that made him feel ashamed again. Shame or certain death, he thought —what splendid choices I am always given.

Of course, said Gyir. We would be fools if we thought our chances anything but bad. However, we have no choice. As I told you, I have something here which must be carried to the House of the People at any cost, so we must resist Jikuyin and his plans.

“It’s all very well to talk,” Barrick said. “But what can actually be done? What hope do we have?”

There must be no more talking in spoken words, Gyir told him, even if it causes you pain. I will speak to both of you, and I will translate what each of you say to me, back and forth. It will be slow, but even though I do not feel anyone spying on us, if we are going to talk about what we might do, I can no longer risk being wrong.

Very well, Barrick said. But what point is there in talking about fighting Jikuyin, anyway? He’s a giant—a kind of god!

Gyir slowly nodded. Pointless? Likely. It will take preparation and luck, and even so we will probably gain nothing but a violent death—but at least the death will be of our own choosing, and that is worth more than a little.

However, first I must find the serpentine, and think of a way to lay my hands on it.

The what? Barrick did not recognize the idea that went with the snaky word-picture—a trail of fire, a sudden expansion like a pig’s bladder too full of air. What do you mean?

Gyir paused for a moment as if listening. I spoke of it before. The burning black sand, the Fire of Kupilas. Ah, Ferras Vansen reminds me that your people call it “gunflour.”

Gun-flour? How would we get our hands on such stuff, locked in this cell? demanded Barrick. Might as well ask for a bombard or a troop of musketeers while we’re at it— we won’t get any of them.

They are using the swift-burning serpentine in the earth below us every day, Gyir told him. They pack it into the cracks and speed their digging that way, by smashing apart the stones. It is here in Greatdeeps, somewhere. We have only to find it, and steal some.

And then fly away like birds, said Barrick. How will we do any of those things? We are prisoners, don’t you realize? Prisoners!

Gyir shook his head. No, child. You are only a prisoner when you surrender.

32. Remembering Simmikin

It was odd, Briony reflected, how much traveling with a troop of players was like going on a royal progress. In each town you stopped for a night and entertained the locals to keep them sweet, pretending as though you had never been in a more delightful place until they were safely behind you, then complaining about the take and the poor quality of local food and lodgings.

The main difference between this journey and her father’s occasional jaunts through the March Kingdoms was that as part of the king’s progress you stood a smaller chance of having stale vegetables thrown at you if the local citizens didn’t like the way you spoke your piece. That, and the royal faction brought along enough armed guards that no one cheated anyone too obviously.

Tonight, this thought occurred to her with some force. Although the hour was long past midnight, instead of sharing a comfortable hayloft or even a spare tavern room, they were making their way along a rutted roadway through southernmost Kertewall in a drenching rain. It had turned out that the keeper of Hallia Fair’s biggest tavern, which they had just left, was also the brother of the local reeve, and when he had claimed that the Makewell troop had cheated him on the takings from the night’s performance— although Pedder Makewell’s sister Estir swore it was the other way around—they got no support from the reeve and his men, and in fact were stripped of an even larger pile of coin than the innkeeper had claimed in the first place. Thus, here they were, poor and hungry again despite an evening’s hard work, soaking wet in the middle of the night as they trudged off in search of a town more congenial to the playmaking arts.

Briony was walking in the cold rain because the giant Dowan Birch was unwell and she had given him her place in the wagon. She did not mind doing so—he was a kind person, and even when he wasn’t ill walking made his oversized feet ache—but she wished this adventure could have begun in a friendlier month of the year, like Heptamene or Oktamene, with their bonny, balmy nights.

“Zoria, give me strength,” she murmured under her breath. Finn Teodoros lifted the shutter and leaned his head out the tiny window of the wagon. “How are you faring, young Tim?” It amused the poet to call her by her boy’s name, and he did so as often as possible. “Miserable. Miserable and wet.”

“Ah, well. The price we must pay for the gifts the gods grant us.”

“What gifts are those?”

“Art. Freedom. Masculine virtue. Those sorts of things.” Pleased with himself beyond any reason, the fat playwright pulled the shutter down just before she could hit him with a gob of mud.

In this most extraordinary of times, traveling with the players had begun to seem almost ordinary. It had been almost half a month since Briony had come upon them, and possibly longer—it was hard to keep track without the machineries of court etiquette to remind her of things like what day it was. Eimene, the year’s first month, had become Dimene, although it was hard to tell the difference: there had been little snow in this dark, muddy year, which was a small blessing, but the rains continued to fall and the wind continued to blow, frigid and unkind. Despite all that had happened since Orphanstide, Briony was not used to living out of doors and doubted she ever would be.

They had made their way roughly south, following the Great Kertish Road along the Silverside border, back and forth across the edge of Kertewall, stopping in every town big enough to have a place to perform and enough money in the citizen’s pockets to make it worthwhile. That said, on every stop some people paid with vegetables or other foodstuffs, and in many of the smaller villages there were no coins at all in the box at the end of the night, but a few small loaves set on Estir Makewell’s wooden trunk (which served as the company’s turnstile gate) along with enough dried peas and parsnips to provide the players with a meal of soup and bread after they had finished performing. Although the spiritual instruction of The Orphan Boy in Heaven was popular, and scenes from the Theomachy (the war of Perin and his brothers against the bad, old gods) were always a favorite, what the villagers liked best were the violent history plays, especially The Bandit-King of Torvio and Hewney’s infamous Xarpedon, where Pedder Makewell always provided such a monstrous, entertaining death for the title character. Briony, who had seen too much of the true heart’s essence of late, was still not entirely comfortable with watching Makewell or Nevin Hewney staggering about spouting pig’s blood from a hidden bladder, but the spectators could not seem to get enough of it. Although they reacted with anger and outrage over the death of a hero or an innocent, especially if it was well-staged, they yelped with glee when the wicked, horned god Zmeos was pierced with Kernios’ spear, and they laughed uproariously as Milios the Bandit-King coughed out his life after having been mauled by a bear, moaning, “What claws! What foul, treacherous claws!”

The rainswept roads of Kertewall and southern Silverside were surprisingly busy, with peddlers’ carts bumping in the rutted tracks and unbound peasants, whole families or even small companies, heading south to seek work for the coming spring. Briony, who had long since recovered from wounds and burns got in Dan-Mozan’s house, and from her worst starving days lost in the forest, was feeling stronger and healthier than she had in a long time. For one thing, the pleasure of getting up each day and putting on boy’s clothes did not dim, although she could have wished them a deal cleaner and less lousy. It was not that she loved the clothes themselves or wished to be a boy, although she had always envied her brothers their ease of movement and expression, but she mightily loved the freedom of wearing nothing more confining than a loose tunic and rough hose. She could stand, sit, bend over, and on those few occasions where she was allowed to, even ride the company’s hard-working horse without having to give thought to propriety or practicality. Why had no one back in Southmarch been able to understand that?

Thinking of the old days at Southmarch and the almost daily battle with Rose and Moina over what she should wear made her feel homesick, but although she missed the two girls very much, not to mention Merolanna, Chaven, and many others, it was as nothing compared to how she ached every time she thought of Barrick.

Had she really seen him in Idite’s looking glass, or had it just been her pained heart creating a phantom of what it wished to see? What had the demigoddess Lisiya meant when she had said, “There are stranger things afoot with you and your brother than even I can guess”? That it hadn’t just been a dream or Briony’s feverish imagination, but somehow the truth? But Briony knew she was no Onirai— the gods chose their oracles early in life. In any case, the Barrick she saw had been a prisoner—shackled and miserable. It was almost better to think she had not truly seen him, even though that vision proved him alive, than to think of him so wretched, so...alone.

That was the nub of it, of course: she and her brother were both alone, and in a way that only twins could be, who had scarcely been separated their entire lives before this, and certainly never in such fearful conditions. If it was a true vision, had he seen her too? Did he mourn for her as she did for him, or was he still such a prisoner of anger and discomfort that he spared hardly a thought for his loving sister?

And what, she suddenly thought, has happened to Ferras Vansen, charged with my brother’s safety? She had to fight through a flare of anger at the thought he had let her poor, crippled brother be captured. After all, who was to say that the guard captain had not saved Barrick from something worse? Or that he hadn’t given up his own life trying to protect the prince?

That last thought brought a shockingly powerful pang of remorse—even of fear: Vansen dead and her brother alone? She could not in that moment say which would be the worse result.

I must pray for them, she told herself. She saw Vansen in her mind’s eye, tall but not overbearing, his hair the color of a walnut husk, his face either carefully expressionless or open and wounded like that of a puzzled child’s. Who was he to stay in her thoughts so? Others far more important were also lost, like her brother and father, and Shaso and Kendrick were dead. Why should she think of Vansen? He was a guardsman, a nobody—a failure, to be absolutely fair, since he had lost half his troop or more the first time he had been given a responsibility. What female weakness or pity or even—the Three defend her from her own foolishness!—desire had made her give him a second chance, she wondered, and especially with the care of the most precious thing she could have given him to protect?

She pushed all thoughts of Vansen out of her mind, tried to concentrate on her brother, to make sense out of the mysterious mirror-vision. How had it come to her? If Lisiya was alive, was some other god watching over them too? Had Erivor, their house’s patron, granted her the vision for some reason she was too blind to understand?

Great lord of the sea, help your foolish daughter! Zoria, lend me your wisdom for a little while!

Her heart sank again to think of her brother lost in some foreign place. He had always been like a hermit crab, the claws of his anger no real threat to others at all. Only his shell protected him, because without it he was too soft to live, too frightened to keep the world at bay.

One year—they had both been, what, nine or ten?—their father had allowed the Master of Hounds to give them a puppy to be their own, a beautiful black hound. Barrick had wanted to name him Immon, but Briony had refused. She had been very religious then and had not used even the mildest curses, not even silently to herself. Barrick had always laughed at her, calling her “the Blessed Briony,” but she had been firm. They were certainly not going to name him after the powerful god of burial, the Earthfather’s gatekeeper—that would be blasphemy. She named the puppy Simargil instead, after the faithful dog of Volios (although she toyed with sacrilege herself by generally referring to him as “Simmikin”) and except for the ordinary high spirits and growling, nipping play of a young male dog he had been an exceptionally sweet animal. Briony had been as attached to him as if he had been a baby brother.

She had been shocked, then, when Barrick refused to play with him, saying that he was vicious and evil.

Being who she was, Briony would not let her brother rest until she had forced him to join her in playing with the dog— or at least being in the same room with the animal, since at first Barrick hung back in the doorway while Briony scratched Simargil’s stomach and engaged him in playful, mock-fights, the dog growling in delight and throwing himself from side to side as he struggled to catch up with Briony’s moving hand.

When she at last convinced Barrick to come forward, she quickly saw the problem. He approached the dog like someone entering a wolf’s den. Simargil was already on his guard, watching Barrick not as he had watched Briony, with the bright gaze of a friend waiting to see what new fun would come, but with the narrowed eyes of someone who expected to be cheated or worse.

“Just stroke him gently,” she said. “Reach out and scratch his head—he likes that. Don’t you, Simmikin? Don’t you, my Simmikin?”

The dog looked to Briony, white showing at the corners of his eyes as he struggled to keep watch on Barrick, too. If he had spoken to her, told her out loud that he was confused by this sudden change of mood, the animal could not have more clearly let her know what he felt.

Barrick’s hand moved toward the dog’s face as though toward a hornet’s nest. When Simargil let out a low growl, Barrick snatched it back, making the dog lunge. Briony caught his collar.

“Do you see?” Barrick said.

It was her brother, not the dog. Something about him, perhaps only his mistrust, but maybe some scent of fear, had the dog’s hackles up. Still, Briony could not believe that her beloved Simmikin could ever do anything really bad— not with her right here on the floor beside him. “Stroke him again. I’ll hold his head. He just needs to get to know you.”

“He has known me since he was born, and each day he hates me worse.”

“Hush! That’s not true, redling. Just let him smell your hand and don’t yank it away just because he growls.”

“Oh, should I let him bite it off?” He scowled. “It’s not as though I have one to spare like most folk.”

Briony rolled her eyes. She felt sorry about her brother’s terrible injury, of course, and would have done anything to spare him the pain it brought him every day, but she was not going to let it be an excuse to treat him like a child half his age. “Stop sniveling. Put your hand out.”

His scowl deepened but he did as he was told. Simargil growled, but only for a moment, and Barrick actually managed to touch his head. Briony should have known that the dog’s sudden silence was a bad sign rather than good, but she was too pleased with her own peacemaking activities between her favorite animal and her beloved twin to pay the sort of attention she should have. As Barrick gave the animal a tentative touch on the head, letting his fingers slip down near Simargil’s throat, Briony let go of the collar to stroke the dog’s chest. The dog’s ears went back and he snarled, a high sound almost like a yelp of fear, and snapped at Barrick’s right hand, getting his sharp teeth into the meat behind the knuckles. Barrick shrieked and leaped back. For a moment, the dog hung on, but Barrick hit him on the snout hard enough to make him whimper and let go.

An instant passed, the dog’s ears still back, Barrick staring at the beast as though he had never seen anything worse in his life. Her brother’s face was bone-white, his eyes wide in horror. Then blood came flooding back into his features like waves rushing onto a muddy strand, a demon-mask of red that almost blurred into the roots of his hair, as though his entire head had caught fire. He snatched up one of Briony’s bows from where it leaned against the wall and brought it whistling down so fast she could not even move as the end of the staff hissed past her face. He beat at the dog until the bow cracked and the animal scrambled snarling and whining onto the floor, then tried to retreat under Briony’s bed, snapping at the bloody weals on its own back as Barrick continued to belabor its hindquarters. Shrieking, she grabbed her brother’s arm, and was splattered by blood that might have been from his hand or the dog’s tattered back, or both.

At last, with the dog wedged so far under the edge of the bed that only its feet could be seen, Barrick had thrown down the splintered bow and run out, sobbing and cursing the gods.

If it had been anyone else but her brother, Briony would not have understood now why she missed him with such a painful yearning. Simargil would not have understood: the dog had limped thereafter, and used to lay himself down on the floor at the first sound of a raised voice. Although her brother never touched him again, he would also dart out of any room some time before Barrick arrived, which often made it easy to track the prince: wherever black Simargil was moving hurriedly, she had only to retrace the dog’s steps to find Barrick.

If it had been anyone else, Briony would have cursed them as a bully and a coward and that would have been the end of it—an enemy forever. No one else convicted of such crimes in her private court could expect to have the sentence of her disgust commuted. But she knew her twin too well, had known even at that tender age that all his worst angers were the spawn of his fears, those night terrors that followed him around in the way that Simargil, before he limped, had followed Briony herself.

Barrick was monstrous sometimes, but she ached for him. No one but Briony knew the sweetness that lay behind that sour, even cruel mask he showed the world. Since their mother had died, only she had held him in the night, when he woke crying and uncertain where he was or even who he was. Only she had heard him say she was his very heart, that without her he would die. And how he feared that when he did die his soul would wander homeless forever, because of his blasphemous thoughts and his stiff neck which would not bend even to Heaven, as Father Timoid always said of him.

“My black thorn bush,” their father had often called Barrick, alluding to the colors the boy had worn ever since he was old enough to choose his own clothing. “Fit to lash the fiercest penitent’s back,” Olin had gently mocked.

Had her father always known the curse he had passed on to his younger son? It was painful to think about it—not the thing itself, their shared ailment, although that was terrible enough, but the fact that her twin and her beloved father had conspired to keep this thing secret from her. It made all Briony’s other memories seem suspect or outright false. At best they felt shallow now, as though her entire childhood, her life, had been nothing more than something devised by her family to keep her busy while the real matters of importance were being settled.

Each thought of her lost brother and father carried enough pain that the gods would have forgiven her for trying never to think of either of them again. And yet, of course, she did think of them, and suffered anew when she did so, which was at least once in almost every hour of every single day.

As they reached the lake lands near the Syannese border the road wound between the fens and across the ridges of the tiny principality of Tyrosbridge, and Makewell’s Men went several days without encountering a town or even a village large enough to be worth mounting a performance. They were short of food and drink, so, on a large farmstead just inside the border of Syan they earned themselves a few meals and a few night’s dry lodging by helping the landowner to repair his old lambing pen and sheepfold and to build a new lambing house and several new walls around his pasture land as well. The work of carrying and stacking stones was hard, the day cold and wet, but the company was good, and to Briony’s surprise she found herself feeling almost happy.

But what kind of life is this when our family’s throne has been stolen? Up to my knees in mud like a peasant, hands red and sore, struggling in the rain to prop up a stone wall, doing nothing to save my family or get revenge on the Tollys. Still, they had reached Syan, the first of her destinations, and she had to admit it was a relief to deal with only what stood just in front of her, to think about nothing but the action of the moment. Most of the people of her kingdom worked this hard every day, she realized. No wonder they flocked to see the players. And no wonder they grew restive in hard times, when their lives were already so hard! If she ever regained her throne she would have all her courtiers join her in building sheepfolds in the dampest, most chill pasture she could find.

She laughed out loud, startling huge, kind Dowan Birch. “Blood of the Three, boy!” he swore. “I thought I dropped a stone on you and crushed you, a noise like that.”

“I’ll try to find a different way to laugh when I’ve been crushed, so you’ll know,” she said.

“Hark to him,” Birch called to Feival, the principal boy. “Our Tim has a tongue as sharp as Hewney’s.”

“Let us hope for the child’s sake his tongue has not been in as many foul spots as Master Nevin’s has,” said Feival tartly. “Nor uttered half so many blasphemies.”

“Did the child live six lifetimes,” Hewney shouted, “he could not curse as much in all of them together as I do each morning when I wake up with my head and bladder both swollen misery-full of last night’s ale and realize I am still a part of this wretched troop of thieves, blockheads, and hewhores.”

“He-whore? He-whore? Do I hear an ass braying?” Finn Teodoros, who with the excuse of his age and portly figure, seemed to spend more time resting than working, pushed himself away from the wall. “Ah, no, it is only our beloved Nevin kicking at the door of his stall again. But were we to throw the door open, would he run away or fling himself at our feet and beg to be put back in harness?”

“It is an inexact metaphor,” Hewney grumped. “No one keeps an ass in a stall. Unless he is so rich that he is able to act the ass himself.”

“Besides,” said Feival, “no one will ever get a harness on Hewney until he’s dead, which will be too late to get any good out of him.”

“Unless someday a man is needed who can drink a river of ale dry and save a city, as Hiliometes drained the flood,” said Pedder Makewell.

“Too much talking, not enough working,” his sister complained. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go claim our meal and some dry lodgings.”

“Which will be a stable,” Feival said. “Leaving none happy but our lead donkey, Master Hee-haw Hewney.”

“Quiet, you, or you will find out what a kick truly is,” Hewney said, glowering.

Briony worked on, amused and, for the moment, cold but content.

“Here,” she said to the red-faced young player Pilney. “Try again. Remember, this stick is a sword now, not a stick. You don’t beat someone with it, you use it as an extension of your arm.” She scraped an empty place in the straw to make better footing, then lifted her own stick. “And if you’re going to hack at someone like that, they’re going to do this.” She flicked his weapon aside, sidestepped his crude charge, and poked him in the ribs.

“Where did you learn that?” he asked, breathless. “My...my old master. He was gifted at swordplay.”

“Gather around me, children,” Finn Teodoros called. “You may beat each other to death later.”

Most of the company was already seated in the comfortable straw of the large stable, quite willing to ignore the smell of the horses and cows, since the presence of so many animals kept the place as warm as a fire would have.

“I have been thinking,” said Teodoros, “that we will be in Tessis in less than a tennight, and if we are to impress the Syannese in that venerable capitol, we will have to show them something new. They have enough players of their own, after all, and the audiences are a hardened lot. Tessis has more theaters east of the river than exist in all the north of Eion put together. So we must bring them a spectacle.”

“My Karal is spectacle enough,” growled Hewney. “Even Makewell cannot help but make a royal impression in it.”

“Never have a drunkard’s words had such fair speaking before,” Makewell said. “I refer to my playing of Hewney’s work, of course. But he is right—the Tessians love The Death of Karal, since it is their own beloved king whose life we play. And we have other historicals and a comedy that we can give them.”

“Yes, they loved Karal when we brought it to them four years ago,” Teodoros agreed. “And it has remained in good enough favor that several Tessian companies have mounted it, too. But that does not mean the groundlings will come to see it again.”

“Even with the playwright himself upon the stage?” Hewney was so outraged that he spilled some of his ale on his sleeve, which he then lifted to his mouth and sucked dry.

“What are you saying, Finn?” Estir Makewell demanded. “That we must buy some Tessian court play, some bit of froth done up for the Revels? We cannot afford it. We shall barely be able to feed ourselves until we get to Tessis, even with the money we had from...” She trailed off as Teodoros gave her a harsh look.

“Less speaking, more listening,” he growled. Something had just happened, although Briony could not recognize what it was. “A loose tongue is an unbecoming ornament to anyone, but especially to a woman. I do not speak of buying anything. I have written a play—you have all heard it. Zoria, Tragedy of a Virgin Goddess is its name.”

“Heard it?” Makewell put his hand on Feival Ulosian’s knee, but the boy removed it. “We have rehearsed it for most of a year, and even performed it a few times in Silverside. What is new about that?”

“If nothing else, it would be new to the Tessians,” Teodoros said with an air of great patience. “But I have changed it— rewritten much of the play. Also, I have made a larger part for you, Pedder, as great Perin, and for you, Hewney, as the fearsome dark god Zmeos, despoiler of a thousand maidenheads.” He smiled. “I know it will test you to play so against your own character, but I feel certain you will give it your best.”

“Sounds like rubbish,” said Hewney. “But if it’s good rubbish, it won’t chap me to mount it in Tessis.”

“And I suppose you feel certain that I will let you clap a hundredweight of new speeches on me as the beleaguered virgin?” said young Feival. “I won’t have it, Finn. Already I have twice the lines of anyone.”

“Ah, but now we come to my idea,” said Teodoros. “I sympathize with your plight, Feival, and so I have written you a new part instead—shorter, but with a great deal of verve and bite, so that the eyes of the audience will be rapt upon you whenever you enter.”

“What does that mean? What part?”

“I have made the goddess Zuriyal an important part of this new play—the wife of Zmeos and Khors’ sister-in-law. Although darkly beautiful, my Zuriyal is jealous and fierce and murderous, and it is she whose cruelties most threaten pure Zoria.”

“Darkly beautiful is not beyond my skills,” Feival said lazily, “but surely in a play called after Zoria the virgin goddess, somebody must play the virgin herself? I would be happy to carry a lesser load, but is not Waterman here a jot too thickset and whiskery to play the divine mistress of all the pure virtues?”

“Doubtless—so why not let Tim play the part?” Teodoros spread his hands and gestured toward Briony like an envoy delivering a gift to a jaded monarch. “He is younger than you, even, and fair enough in his way to pass for a girl, if not viewed from too closely?” He turned and gave Briony a pleased smile that made her want to take a stick to him.

“Are you mad?” sputtered Makewell. “The child has no training, no skill. Does he know the Seven Postures of Femininity? Just because he held a spear for us when we played Xarpedon in some cow-byre does not mean he can stand up before the Tessians and pass as a woman—let alone a goddess! Are you really so desperate to claim another share, Teodoros, that you would put this boy up as a cheap front for your ambition?”

“In other times I would have you for that, Makewell,” said the playwright coldly. “But I realize I have brought this to you as a surprise.”

“I think he could do it,” said Birch. “He is clever, young Tim.”

“Thank you, Dowan,” Briony said. “But I do not want to be a player at all, still less to go on the stage and mime my dear, holy Zoria, who would never forgive me.”

“What, is our craft too low for you, then?” said Hewney. “Were we mistaken? Do we have a duchess in our midst after all, traveling in secret?”

Briony could only stare at him. He must be making fun of her, but he was uncomfortably close to the mark. “Do not look so frightened,” Feival said, laughing.

“Everyone here knows you are a girl by now.” “What?” Dowan Birch shook his head. “Who is a girl?”

Feival Ulian whispered in his ear. The giant’s eyes grew round.

“I knew he could not be a boy when he chose to stay with you, Teodoros,” said Pedder Makewell haughtily. “No handsome young man would subject himself to your pawings.”

“And I haven’t seen anything but halfwit farm boys succumb to your charms, dear Pedder,” said Teodoros. “But this is beside the point.”

“You all know?” Briony could not shake off her astonishment. And she had thought herself so clever!

“You have traveled with us two tennights or more, after all,” Teodoros said kindly.

“I didn’t know,” said Birch, wide-eyed. “Are you sure?”

“Enough of this yammering,” said Feival. “If anyone should be unhappy at the thought of our Tim—shall we still call you that?—playing at the goddess Zoria, it should be me, since it is my contracted due to play the leading woman’s role. But if I like this Zuriyal-bitch that Finn has jotted out for me, I will raise no objection.” He smiled. “I am with Dowan on this. I think you have many hidden depths.”

“Think on it, Tim,” said Teodoros. “And yes, we shall still call her...him that, because you may remember it is not lawful to have a woman on stage. If you will consent, we would have a new play for the Tessians, one that I can humbly say is my best. Much of my inspiration came from the talks you and I have had.”

“Talks, is it?” Makewell shook his head and made a razzing noise with his lips. “Does that mean there are many scenes in this new work of a fat old playwright futtering a disguised child? I thought your winds only blew one direction, Finn.”

“Don’t be jealous, Pedder,” said Teodoros serenely. “I promise you my relationship with young Tim has been as chaste as it would have been with Zoria herself. But Tim, the crudeness of Master Makewell left to one side, what do you say? You could be a great help to us and earn yourself a player’s share, which can be rich indeed in Tessis, since the Syannese love plays the way the Hierosolines love religious processions.”

“I am flattered, I suppose,” Briony said carefully—she would be traveling with these people for days more, perhaps months, and didn’t want to offend them. “But the answer is no. Under no circumstances. It will not happen in this world or any other. You must think of something else.”

She only had a tennight to learn the lines. There were dozens upon dozens of them, in teetering rhyme-that-wasnot-rhyme. Rehearsals came at night after whatever performance they made for their supper, so most of the work was done by candlelight in tavern courtyards and barns, while chill winds blew outside and snow and rain fell, but they could also speak lines and discuss blocking—a word she had learned meant where the actors went in and out or stood—as they made their way down the Great Kertish Road toward Syan.

I have fallen so far, she thought. From a princess in a castle to a false goddess with no home, with straws in my hair and fleas in my woolen hose.

Still, there was an unfamiliar freedom in such a collapse from grace. Briony was not happy, but she was not sad, either, and she had to admit that however lonely and uncomfortable it might be, and however much she missed her home and family, she was having something that could only be described as an adventure.

33. The Crocodile’s Roar

Already smoke lay over the Kulloan Straits like thick fog, great curtains of gray and black torn ragged by the wind. The Xixian ships churned up and down before the walls of Hierosol, their long banks of oars stabbing at the water like the legs of insects, fire spouting from their cannons. The defenders fired back: white spouts leaped up to show where the Hierosoline cannons were finding their range, and many of the Xixian sails were tattered, the flaming eye insignia in flames, but none of the besiegers had been sunk yet. Still, it was a little solace to Pelaya to see that the cannonfire that reached Hierosol’s walls did almost no damage.

“Look, Babba,” she said, tugging on her father’s arm. “They bounce off like pebbles!”

He smiled, barely. “Our walls are strong and thick. But that does not mean I want you here watching. You have given me your mother’s message, and my midday meal.” He turned to the armed servant, a tall man with the longsuffering look of someone in minor but almost constant pain. “See her back, now, Eril. And tell my wife that she and the children are no longer to come to the palace, not unless I say they may.”

The servant bowed. “Yes, Kurs Perivos. And I will inform the kura, as you say.”

Pelaya rose onto the tips of her toes to throw her arms around her father’s neck, not caring one little bit about either Eril’s frown of disapproval or her father’s distracted, half-attentive squeeze in return.

“You should not act so, Kuraion,” the servant reproached her as they made their way out of the antechamber and onto the landing. He had called her “Little Mistress” since she was small enough to enjoy it—a time long past. “Not before strangers.”

“What strangers, Eril?” She was particularly nettled because she always did her best to uphold the honor of her house—and it was high honor, too: the Akuanai were of the blood of the Devonai, the dynasty that had ruled all Hierosol only a few short centuries before, and whose funeral masks lined the entrance hall of the family estate in Siris like an assembly of patient, placid ghosts. She might not be as timid as Teloni of speaking out in public, but neither did she run or giggle like a child: those who saw her, she had always felt sure, saw a young woman as grave and seriousminded as befitted her upbringing and her noble house.

“There were soldiers there,” he said. “Your father’s men.” “Theo and Damian? And Spiridon? They have all been in our house,” she told him. “They are not strangers, they are like uncles.” She thought of Damian, who was really quite handsome. “Young uncles, perhaps. But they are not strange to me, and it is no shame to embrace my father in front...”

She did not finish her statement because something outside the antechamber boomed like thunder, making the statue of Perin sway in the wall shrine above the landing. Pelaya squeaked with fear despite herself, then ran to the window.

“What are you doing, child?” The servant almost grabbed her arm to pull her away, but then thought better of taking such a liberty. “Come away. A cannonball will kill you!”

“Don’t be foolish, Eril.” Whatever else she might be, Pelaya was her father’s daughter. “They cannot shoot their cannon this far, all the way to the citadel, not unless they are inside our walls already. But, oh, sweet mother Siveda, look!”

A thick plume of gray black smoke was rising beside the ancient walls—one of the buildings along the quay of the Harbor of Nektarios.

“It must be the powder magazine, hit by some stray shot. Oh, look at it burn!” Had her forward-thinking father not moved much of the powder stored for convenience in the immense harbor magazine, parceling it out to at least a dozen different storage places all over the city, half of the city’s black powder would be gone now, not to mention the harbor itself, which would have almost certainly been destroyed. Instead, it looked as though only one building, the magazine itself, had been ruined, and if the fire could be put out quickly the loss would be bearable.

“I must tell my father,” she said, leaving Eril to catch up as best he could as she scuttled back up the stairs.

“What are you doing?” her father shouted as she came in. He looked angry, truly angry, and for the first time she realized that the city might fall—that they all might die. She was so overwhelmed by this sudden, terrifying understanding that for a moment she could not speak.

“The magazine...” she said at last. “The one in the Harbor of Nektarios. It was hit by...it’s exploded.”

His expression softened a little. “I know. There is a window in the next room, do not forget. Go, and hurry to your mother as I told you. She will be frightened—I’m sure she could hear that crash in Landsman’s Market.”

He is defending the whole city, she thought, staring at him. Her father had already turned back to the table and was examining his charts again, his big hands splayed across the curling parchments like the roots of tall trees. For a moment she found it hard to breathe.

Pinimmon Vash, Paramount Minister to the Golden One Sulepis, Autarch of Xis, did not like traveling on ships. The sea air that had so delighted his ancestors when they came out of the deserts of Xand and settled on the northern shore of the continent smelled to him of putrefaction. The rolling motion of the waves made him feel again as he had in his childhood, when he had caught the bilious fever and lain for days near death, unable to keep anything in his stomach, shivering and sweating. In fact, his survival of that fever had been so unexpected that his father had dedicated the sacrifice of an entire ram to the goddess Sawamat (something that Vash would never have mentioned to the autarch, who barely acknowledged that any other gods beside Nushash existed).

Now, as he teetered down the ramp, he was so grateful to be on dry land again that he offered a silent prayer of thanks to her and to Efiyal, lord of the sea.

The long bight of land known as the Finger, which jutted out into the Kulloan Strait parallel to the western shore of Hierosol, was almost invisible from where he stood at its southernmost tip. Billows of gray and stinking yellow smoke hung close to the ground, so that in the few places where the walled fortifications could be seen at all they seemed to float atop clouds like the palaces of the gods. The fighting, which had begun at midnight with an invasion of the autarch’s marines from both the landward edge of the Finger and the place where Vash’s ship had just landed, was almost over. The Hierosoline garrisons, undermanned because Drakava had (against the recommendations of his leading advisers) withdrawn so many soldiers in preparation for the siege, had put up a brave resistance, but the small fortresses had proved vulnerable to the missiles of burning sulfur and straw the autarch’s catapults had flung over the walls by the hundreds before the morning sun had climbed above the horizon. The defenders, choking, blinded, many of them dying from the poisonous smoke, had been unable to repel the autarch’s marines, who, protected by masks of wet Sanian cotton, were able to hoist their siege ladders and clamber over the walls almost unopposed once the worst of the smoke had blown away. The defenders had offered resistance, but weakened, breathless, and blinded, they had fallen before the marines like brave children fighting grown men.

If we could use that tactic on Hierosol itself, Vash thought, the war would be over in a few days. But there was not enough sulfur for that in all of Xand, nor enough catapults to throw it, even in the autarch’s huge army. Still, he could not help admiring how well Ikelis Johar and the other polemarchs had planned for the siege. The cannons jutting from the walls of the fortresses along the Finger might not be able to reach the walls of Hierosol, but they were an invaluable aid to its defense, able to rake the near side of any ships in the strait, or drive them in under the bigger guns of the city walls.

The autarch’s pavilion had already been mounted on the slope beside the gangplank of his flagship, the Flame of Nushash, a towering four-masted warship painted (in defiance of any secrecy about its semi-divine passenger) in blindingly bright shades of red and gold and purple, with the great, flaming god’s eye on either side of the bow and the autarch’s royal falcon spread-winged in gold across the red sails. The recently erected pavilion was no more restrained, a striped cone almost fifty paces across flying two dozen falcon banners. Vash limped toward it, angrily waving away the offers of help from his guards. Sulepis, the Golden One, had already made it clear he suspected his paramount minister’s loyalty: the last thing Vash needed was for the youthful autarch to see him staggering in on the arms of soldiers. He might as well announce himself old and useless and be done with it.

The autarch, dressed in his fanciful battle-array of golden armor and the flame-scalloped Battle Crown, was sitting on his war throne atop a raised platform at the center of the tent, talking to the Overseer of the Armies. Dozens of slaves and priests surrounded him, of course, along with a full troop of his Leopard guards in armor, muskets in hand, their eyes as brightly remorseless as those of their namesakes.

“Vash, welcome!” The autarch spread his fingers like claws, then scratched himself under the chin with the figured tip of his golden gauntlet. “You should have stayed on the ship a little longer, resting yourself, since we are going back to the landing spot soon anyway.” “I’m sorry, Golden One, I don’t understand.”

The autarch smiled and looked to Ikelis Johar, who nodded but maintained his customary stony expression. “The Royal Crocodiles are coming ashore.”

For a moment Vash was completely confused, wondering what bizarre new plan his impulsive master had conceived. Was he going to put some of the massive reptiles from Xis’ canals into the strait, or even introduce them somehow to the waterways behind the Hierosoline walls? The great beasts were certainly fearsome enough, even the younger adults longer than a fishing boat and armored like a siege engine, but who could make them do anything useful?

It was a mark of how strange and impulsive the autarch was, and how unpredictable life was in his service, that Vash was still trying to understand how crocodiles could be used in warfare even as he and Ikelis Johar and a crowd of servants and soldiers followed the autarch’s litter back toward the ships. Only as he saw the monstrous thing being swung up from the hold of one of the six biggest cargo ships did Pinimmon Vash remember.

“Ah, Golden One, of course! The guns!”

“The largest, most beautiful in the history of mankind,” said the autarch happily. “Each crafted like exquisite jewelry. What a roar they will make, my crocodiles! What a fiendish, terrifying roar!”

The immense bronze tube was six or seven times the length of a man, and even without its undercarriage, its weight was clearly staggering—several pentecounts of seamen were pulling on the ropes, trying to steady it as they swung the cannon barrel out over the side of the boat, the massive winding-wheels and pulleys creaking with the strain. The weapon had indeed been cast to resemble some monstrous river reptile, with inset topaz eyes and fanged jaws stretched wide to make the cannon’s mouth, and the creature’s rounded back ridged with scaly plates. This one and its brothers would fire huge stone balls, each missile ten times the weight of a man, and if the autarch’s engineers were correct (they had been informed they would die painfully if they were wrong) they would easily be able to reach the far side of the strait from the forts along the Finger.

“Come,” said the autarch after they had watched the sweating sailors lower the gun onto a giant wheeled wagon. “How fortunate for us that the old emperors of Hierosol made this fine, paved road for their supply wagons, otherwise we would have to drag the guns through the sand and the waiting would be even more tedious. I will have my morning meal, and then perhaps about midday we will be able to hear our first lovely crocodile speak. Come, Vash. We will attend to all other business as I eat.”

The autarch had rather conspicuously not said anything about his paramount minister being fed. An hour on dry land had settled Vash’s stomach and he was feeling extremely hungry, but he effortlessly stifled a sigh: all of the autarch’s servitors either mastered the art of hiding their feelings and stifling their needs, or else their cooling bodies were picked clean on the vulture shrines.

Vash bowed. “Of course, Golden One. As you say.”

“I ask your pardon for disturbing you, King Olin,” said Count Perivos.

The bearded man smiled. “I am afraid I cannot entertain you in the way I could have in my old home, but you are welcome, sir. Please, come in.” He waved to the page, who was watching with trepidation: Olin was only a foreign king, but everyone knew his visitor was of an important and ancient Hierosoline family. “Be so good as to pour us some wine, boy,” Olin said. “Perhaps some of the Torvian.”

Perivos Akuanis looked around the king’s cell, which was furnished in moderate comfort, though not exactly overlarge. “I am sorry you must live this way, Your Highness. It would not have been my choice.”

“But Ludis wished it so. He must have some hidden qualities, the lord protector, that he has a man as famous as you in his employ.”

Perivos began to say something, then looked over to the guards standing on either side of the door. “You may wait outside, you two. I am in no danger.”

They eyed him for a moment before going out. Count Perivos cleared his throat.

“I will be honest with you, Olin Eddon, because I believe you are an honorable man. It is not so much loyalty to Ludis that keeps me here, although the man did pull the country back into stability after a long civil war, but loyalty to my city and nation. I am a Hierosol man, through and through.”

“But you are of high blood yourself. Why is it that you yourself did not try to take the throne, or support someone more to your liking?”

“Because I knew with things being as they are I could do more good this way. I am not a king or even a king’s counselor. I am a soldier, and of a particular kind at that. My science is siege war, which I learned from Petris Kopayis, the best of this age. I knew I had no choice but to use that knowledge to try to save my city and its people from the bloody-handed autarchs of Xis. Thus, I could not afford to take sides in the last throes of the civil war.”

“I remember Kopayis—I met him when we fought the Xandian Federation here twenty years ago. Gods, he was a clever man!” Olin smiled a little. “And everything I have heard suggests you are his true successor. So you do not bear a grudge against Ludis, you say—and he bears none against you?”

Perivos frowned. “Never underestimate him, King Olin. He is a rough man, and his personal habits are...are disturbing. But he is no fool. He will employ any man who can help him, whether that man admires him or not, whether that man fought for him or not. He has servants of all shapes and religions and histories. Two of his advisers fought against him in the civil war, and came to their new positions straight from the gallows-cells, and one of his chiefest envoys is a black man out of Xand—from Tuan, to be precise.”

Olin raised his eyebrow in amusement. “An unusual choice, but not unheard of.”

“Ah, that is right—you had a Tuani lord as your retainer too, did you not? But things have not gone so well with him, I hear.”

The March King’s face twitched with pain—it was almost shocking to see in a man so controlled. “Do not remind me, I pray you. I have been told he murdered my son, although I can scarcely believe it, and now there is talk he has taken my daughter as well. It is...agony to hear such things and be able to do nothing—you are a father, Akuanis, you can imagine! Agony beyond words.” Olin rose and paced for a moment, then returned to take a long swallow of his wine. When he lowered the cup his face was precisely expressionless again. “Well,” he said at last, “we obviously have some measure of each other, Count Perivos. If for no other reason, I would give you whatever assistance I honorably can because of the kindness your daughter has shown me. So what do you wish?”

Akuanis nodded. “It is about Sulepis of Xis. You have fought against one of the autarchs before, and you have warned about the Xixian menace for a long time. Your suggestions were canny and I am skilled enough at what I do that I have no shame in asking others for help. What else can you suggest that will help me save this city? You must know that the strait is full of his warships, and that already he has made two different landings on Hierosoline soil.”

“Two?” Olin looked puzzled. “I had heard about his assault on the Finger forts—the guards were full of talk about it this morning. But what else?”

Count Perivos looked to the door, then back to Olin, his thin face with its two-day growth of beard pale and troubled.

“You must speak of this to no one, King Olin. The autarch, although only the gods of war know how, has managed to land a sizable force at the northern mouth of the strait, near Lake Strivothos. King Enander of Syan sent a force of twenty pentecounts led by his son Eneas to reinforce the garrison on the fort at Temple Island north of the city, and on their way they met a Xixian army on the Kracian side of the strait. The Xixians fired on them, but luckily for the Syannese the autarch’s men had not set their cannon yet and were able to use only muskets. Some of the Syannese escaped and were able to send us the news.”

“And grim news it is,” said Olin. “How could the Xixians have got there? Did they slip unnoticed up the strait?”

“I am cursed if I can tell you.” Akuanis scowled. “But you can see my desperation. If they conquer our forts on the Finger we cannot keep more of their ships from sailing up the western side and reaching the great lake. They will be able to seal in our allies there, especially the Syannese. We will face this siege entirely alone.”

Olin shook his head. “I would not dare to tell you your craft, Count Perivos. Your reputation has traveled where you have not, and I knew your name before I began my...visit here in Hierosol. I have studied this autarch a little but not fought him, of course—the southerners I fought here twenty years ago were a loose collection of Tuani and others, and although Parnad’s troops fought with them, it was a very different sort of battle.” He raised his hands. “So you see...”

“But you have been studying him a long time—is there anything you can tell me about this Sulepis, any weakness my spies have missed I might exploit? It goes without saying I will honor my end of the bargain with any news of your family and home I can discover.”

“To be honest, I bargained only when I did not know you and feared you would not trust me otherwise—I would not knowingly aid the autarch and will do anything I can do to help.” He frowned. “But I am certain a man like yourself has explored every angle.” Nevertheless, Olin spent much of the next hour describing what he remembered of the Xixian military at war and everything he had heard about this young autarch, Sulepis.

When he had finished the count sat silent for a while, then put down his wine cup and smacked his hands on his thighs in frustration. “It is this news about Xixian marines in Krace that frights me most. He has ten or twenty times our numbers, and if we cannot be reinforced except over land, up the steep, steep valley roads, I fear that Hierosol will fall at last, if only from starvation.”

“That will take months,” Olin said. “Many things may change in that time, Count Perivos. Other ideas will come, or even new allies.” He looked at him keenly. “If I were free, it is possible I could bring a northern army to help break the siege.”

Perivos Akuanis laughed without anger. “And if I could persuade Ludis Drakava to do something he so profoundly does not wish to do, I would be a god and could save the city by myself.” He reached down for his cup and finished it with a swallow. “I am sorry, King Olin. Even with our enemies all around us, the lord protector still has hopes for using you to make some useful bargain—if not for your daughter, the gods protect her, then for something else. I cannot imagine any trade the autarch would make that Drakava would agree to, despite his strange offer for you. Whatever the case, our lord protector is not done with you yet. Apologies, your Highness, and thank you for your time. Now I have work to do.”

Before he could reach the door, Olin had sprung from his bench and grabbed the count’s arm. “Hold! Hold, damn you!”

Akuanis had his knife out in a moment and pressed it against Olin’s throat. “I will not call the guards because I still believe you a gentleman, but you abuse our hospitality, King Olin.”

“I...I am sorry...” Olin let go and took a clumsy step backward. “Truly. It is just...you said something about the autarch trying to bargain...for me...?”

“Hah!” Count Perivos stared at him carefully. “I assumed your sources had told you already. Sulepis offered the lord protector some piddling promises in exchange for you. Drakava was not interested.”

“But that makes no sense!” Olin held up his fists before him, not as someone who planned to use them, but as a man searching for something to grasp to keep himself from falling. “Why would the autarch be interested in the king of a small northern federation who has never even met him? I am no threat to him.”

The count stared at him for a long moment, then sheathed his knife. “Perhaps he thinks you are. Can you guess at why? Perhaps there is something you have forgotten— something I can use.” The weariness and desperation of Count Perivos became evident for the first time. “Otherwise we will have the siege, and fire, and starvation, and perhaps worse.”

Olin sagged back onto his bench. “Forgive my behavior, but it seems I am to suffer one shock after another. It makes no sense. I am nothing to him.”

“Think on it. I will send you what I can find of your family. As for your kingdom, I hear it is safe despite all these mad rumors of fairies. Your relatives the Tollys hold a regency as defenders of your infant child, or so I am told.” He looked suddenly stricken. “You did know you had a new son, King Olin, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” He nodded heavily, like a man who can barely keep awake after a day’s exhausting labor. “Yes, I had a letter from my wife. Olin Alessandros, he will be named. Healthy, they say.”

“Well, that is one small blessing, anyway.” Perivos Akuanis bowed his head. “Farewell, Olin. The gods grant we can talk again in days ahead.”

Olin laughed sourly. “The gods? So you fear that Drakava will sell me to the autarch after all?”

“No, I fear that the autarch will find a way over the walls and kill us all.” He made the sign of the Three, then sketched a mocking salute. “At which point, I will be home in Siris, waiting to die with my family, and you will be meeting your own fate. If it comes to that, the gods grant us good deaths.”

“I would prefer that the gods help protect you and your family instead, Count Perivos. And mine.”

The two men clasped hands before the Hierosoline nobleman went out.

It was actually the middle of the afternoon before the first of the great guns had been assembled and mounted on its mighty carriage behind the walls of the captive fortress. The air was still putrid with the eggy stench of the sulfur, and Vash was just as glad he had only managed to nibble a bit of food here and there—some flat bread, a few olives, a single tangerine.

“It is impressive, Ikelis, is it not?” The autarch smiled at the giant gun with the doting pride of a father.

“Gunnery has never had a better tool,” said the Overseer of the Armies, looking sternly at Vash as though the paramount minister might dare to argue. “We will reach the citadel itself with that. We will send the dog Drakava scuttling.”

“Oh, I will not waste this beautiful machine lobbing stones at Drakava,” Sulepis said. “May my sacred father himself protect Ludis Drakava—I do not want him dead! That might slow this entire venture down to a fatal degree.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand, Golden One.” Johar’s latest look at Vash was a great deal more humble. He clearly did not have as much experience as the paramount minister at dealing with the autarch’s strange, sudden, and sometimes apparently mad changes of plan. “Surely you wish Hierosol to fall.”

“Oh, yes, we are going to knock the walls down,” said the autarch. “We are going to knock them down so that we do not have to waste time on a siege.”

“But, Golden One, I do not think even such missiles as those,”—Johar pointed to the huge, spherical stone being rolled up a ramp toward the cannon’s mouth by a dozen sweating slaves—“can punch through the walls of Hiersol. Those walls are two dozen yards thick, and the stonework is immaculate!”

For the first time, the autarch’s smile vanished. “Do you think I am unaware of that, High Polemarch?”

Like a man who has stepped one foot over the edge of a bottomless chasm, Ikelis Johar abruptly backtracked. “Of course, Golden One. You are the Living God on Earth. I am only a mortal and a fool. Instruct me.”

“Someone ought to, clearly. We will fire the cannons at a single place on the wall until it collapses. Then we will land our troops and send them in.”

“But...but trying to force through a single breach in those wide, wide walls? They will rain fire and arrows and burning oil on our soldiers. We will lose thousands of men in such an assault!” Johar was surprised enough to momentarily forget his own danger. “Tens and tens of thousands!”

“My destiny—the world’s destiny—rides on my shoulder.” Sulepis’ pale eyes glinted, impossibly alert, impossibly lively. “These men are happy to live for their autarch, why should they not die for him happily, too? Either way, they will spend eternity in the golden glow of my father Nushash.”

The autarch laughed, the musical trill of someone contemplating with absolute, amused indifference the murder of thousands. “Now, let us see our first Royal Crocodile sing for his supper, eh?”

Johar, his brown face looking a touch more wan than usual, bowed several times as he backed away from the autarch’s chair and descended from the golden litter, then waved his arms and bellowed an order to his generals. The command was passed rapidly down the chain of command until the gunnery master bowed and ordered a last few creaks of the wheel, lifting the elevation of the snarling, reptilian muzzle. When he was satisfied, the gunnery master stood up straight, wiping at the sweat that covered his face on this chill day.

“On the Master of the Great Tent’s word!” he bawled. “For the glory of Heaven and of eternal Xis!”

The god-on-earth waved a languid hand. “You may set it off.”

“Give it fire!” shouted the gunnery master. A shirtless man dropped the head of a flaming torch on the cannon’s touchhole.

For a moment the gun was so silent that it seemed to have sucked all the noise out of the world. It was only as Vash realized that the waves were still murmuring in the strait and the gulls still keening overhead that the cannon went off.

Some moments later the paramount minister of Xis scrambled up onto his knees, certain that he would never hear anything again: his head was buzzing like the hive of the fire god’s sacred bees. A pall of smoke hung in the air around them, slowly being fanned away by the wind. The cannon had rolled back several yards, crushing two unfortunate soldiers beneath it. The gunnery master was frowning at the bloody ruin beneath the wheels. “We’ll have to put sand underneath them, or chain them,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll have to roll it back each time and firing will take even longer.” It sounded to Vash’s throbbing ears as though he whispered the words from miles away.

“It does not matter,” said the autarch, his voice almost as muffled. “Ah, it was beautiful to see. And look!” He pointed with his gauntleted hand.

On the far side of the strait a chunk of pale rock the size of a palace door had been knocked out of Hierosol’s great seawall, leaving a darker spot like a wound. Atop the walls tiny soldiers scurried like startled ants, unable to believe in anything so powerful, unwilling to think anything could throw a stone so far, let alone actually chip the mighty, ancient defenses.

“Ah, they hear us knocking on their door,” said the autarch, clapping his hands together in delight; Vash could barely hear the sound they made. “Soon we will come in and make ourselves at home!”

A few moments later, and for the first time since the previous day, the bells of Hierosol began to ring again.

34. Through Immon’s Gate

The mysterious dark-haired girl had not appeared to him in days. His hours in the cell were long and empty, he was still angry with Vansen, Gyir had shown no evidence of having come up with the promised plan of escape (nor done much at all except sit in oblique silence), and Barrick was desperate for something to distract him from his own discomfort and dread, so he brooded about her.

He had even begun to wonder if she might have been a herald of his own death—whether, despite all her words about courage and resistance, her presence actually meant he was nearing the end of his life. Perhaps she was some daughter of Kernios, awakened or summoned by the nearness of the monstrous gate. Barrick didn’t know whether Kernios had a daughter—he had never been able to keep up with Father Timoid’s endless recitations of the lineages of gods, even if his family claimed relationship to one—but it seemed possible.

Still, if the dark-haired girl was an emissary of the ultimate, he was not as afraid of dying as he had thought he would be. This Death had a kind, clever face. But so young! Younger than he was, certainly. Then again, if she was a goddess, how she appeared meant little—after all, the gods could become whatever they wanted, trees or stars or beasts of the field.

But what was the use of wondering, in any case? Day after day of throbbing pain in his head and blurred thoughts, night after night of frightening visions—Barrick was not even quite certain of what was real anymore. Why had he been chosen for this particular torment? Not fair. Not fair.

Push against it. He heard her voice again, but only in memory. Escape it. Change it.

What had Gyir told him? You are only a prisoner when you surrender. Even steadfast, stolid Vansen seemed to reproach Barrick for his weakness—everyone else was so cursedly certain about things they didn’t have to suffer.

Barrick opened his eyes a little. Vansen was sleeping next to him, the soldier’s thin face now softened by a beard which obscured but could not completely hide the hollowness of his cheeks. Though they drained every drop of the swill Jikuyin’s guards gave them, they were all slowly wasting away. Barrick had been slender to begin with, but now he could watch each bone sliding and moving beneath his skin, see the deformity of his shattered arm in more detail than he had ever wanted.

For a moment, then, his eyes half shut, he could almost see King Olin’s features hovering before him instead of Vansen’s.

I hope you’re happy, Father. You were so ashamed of what you did to me that you couldn’t even speak of it. Soon I’ll be dead and you’ll never have to see me again.

But was it really all his father’s fault? It was the curse, after all, a poison in the Eddon blood they shared, and even his father’s blood was not as corrupted as Barrick’s. For proof, he need look no farther than the days and nights just passed: when Olin had escaped the castle his own curse had become less—his letters had all but said so. Barrick, though, was in the grip of even worse fevers of madness than he had experienced at home.

He shut his eyes tight but sleep would not come. A quiet shuffling noise made him open them again. The latest shift of prisoners had just come back from their labors and one of the apish guards was coming right toward their cell. Gyir, who had been propped in a corner of the stony cell with his chin against his chest, slowly looked up. Barrick’s heart raced—what could the guard want? Had the time come for the blood sacrifice Gyir had feared?

The creature stopped in front of the grille, cutting off most of the outside light. Gyir moved toward the door, but with a swift, easy grace that took a little of the edge off Barrick’s fear: he had learned to read the fairy’s movements a bit, and what they said now was not danger but only caution.

The beastlike guard stood in silence, its face pressed against the bars. Nothing visible passed between the guard and Gyir, but after a dozen or so heartbeats the shaggy creature shook itself and then turned away, a puzzled, perhaps even frightened expression on its inhuman face.

During the course of the following hours and days, many more guards and more than a few returning prisoners enacted a similar ritual as Barrick watched with fascination. He couldn’t help wondering what this had to do with the Storm Lantern’s talk of gun-flour, since there was none of the black powder to be seen. Instead, it was like watching the Bronzes ceremony at the Southmarch court, when the leading nobles of the March Kingdoms came and laid their weapons at the feet of the king sitting in the Wolf’s Chair and each of their names was marked on a bronze tablet which was then blessed and then laid into the vault at the great Trigonate temple. But the beasts of Greatdeeps were bringing the fairy nothing that Barrick could see, nor were they taking anything away.

He realized that almost a year had come and gone since King Olin had performed the Bronzes ceremony before leaving on his ill-fated voyage. He wondered if Briony would take the fealty of the Marchwardens this year, and was suddenly filled with a homesickness so powerful it almost made him burst out sobbing. It was followed by a wave of loathing at his own helplessness, his own uselessness.

Look at me! I lie here like a child, doing nothing, waiting for death. And what is my death? A warrior’s death? A king’s death, or even a prince’s death? No, it takes the form of a girl, a doe-eyed girl full of sympathy, and I wait for her like some smitten bard, some...poet. Then, the thought burning like fire in his guts: And even she thinks that I have given up—that I am a coward.

Barrick dragged himself upright, ignoring the sharp pain in his arm, which was always worst the first time he bent it after having been asleep. He made his way over to Gyir and sat down beside him. The fairy, whose eyes had been closed as if in sleep since the last visitor or tributary had shuffled away, opened them to fix Barrick with the banked fire of his gaze.

You do not need to sit near me to talk. I could speak to you from the House of the People, almost. You grow stronger every day.

Why are those guards and other creatures coming to you? he asked.

I am schooling them in what I need, Gyir told him. I do not want to say more, since we will risk all on this throw.

Barrick sat quiet for a while, thinking. Why is all of this happening now? he finally asked. Not what I was just asking about, but...everything.

Narrow your question, please.

Everything that hasn’t happened before, or at least not for hundreds of years—the Shadowline moving, your people attacking Southmarch and warring against my people. And this demigod Jack Chain, or whatever he is, digging up the palace of Kernios. You can’t pretend those sorts of things happen all the time.

Gyir let out the gust of bitter amusement that Barrick had come to recognize as a laugh. Your people and my people at each other’s throats is not so unusual. You slaughtered us for years. And, to be fair, we have attacked you twice since then.

You know what I mean.

Gyir stared at him, then nodded. Yes, I do. There are things I cannot tell you even though circumstances make us allies—promises I have made to others and oaths I have sworn. But here are some things I can tell, and should. Your companion must hear this, too. The fairy paused. Barrick turned and watched Ferras Vansen slowly push himself into an upright position, woken by the Storm Lantern’s silent call.

Our time is short, Gyir said. You both must listen well. He spread his pale fingers. There are two ways other than experience that wisdom comes to the People. One is the gift of the Fireflower—this made a an idea in Barrick’s mind he could barely contain, something that was as large and complicated as anything Gyir had ever said—and the other is the Deep Library.

In the most hidden places within the House of the People, the wisdom of our oldest days remains mostly in the form of the Preserved and their Voices—that is the Deep Library. These Voices speak the wisdom of the Preserved and thus are the People taught and reminded. Gyir’s thoughts were rhythmic, almost singsong, as though he passed on a story that he had learned in childhood. These Voices, along with the wisdom of the Fireflower, which is sometimes called the Gift, are what lifts the High Ones above the rest of the People and what has brought us dominion over our lands and songs.

You have heard that the gods have been banished from this world into the realms of sleep. That was the work of the god we call Crooked, and about that mystery I can say little, but it is the foundation of all that comes afterward. The place where those events burned brightest, and where they still smolder thousands of years later, is at the place we name Godsfall—the place your people call Southmarch. Yes, Prince Barrick, your home.

Barrick stared at him, confused. Was the fairy trying to say that the gods had lived in Southmarch? Or died there? It was so bizarre a thought that for a moment he feared he was dreaming again.

Only a few years ago, Gyir continued, the Voices began to warn us that the slumber of the gods in their exile had grown very shallow, very fragile. Just as the moon may pull on the earthly tides when he swings close, creating perturbations in the blood of those most sensitive, so the gods, even in sleep, are closer to us now than they have been since they were driven from the waking lands. Gyir paused to listen to something Vansen asked. No, I cannot say more about it now. It is enough to know the gods were driven out of the waking lands, that for a long time they have been gone, almost as though they were dead.

But now the gods loom close, pushing into the minds and dreams of both your people and mine, and in countless other ways as well. That would be grim enough— dangerous too, because even in their eternal sleep the gods can still make mischief both small and great, and they ache to have back what was theirs. But by a grave chance, this ominous hour has arrived when another terrible thing was already happening to the High Ones of my folk, a thing that has plunged all of the House of the People into terror and mourning. Our Queen Saqri, the Mistress of the Ancient Song, is dying.

Barrick had never seen the fairy show much in the way of emotion, but it was obvious from the pain in his thoughts that what he was saying struck him to his core.

The High Ones, Gyir went on at last, at least those in the Line of the Fireflower, do not die as mortals die. We can all of us meet a violent end, and we are prey to illnesses and accidents just as you sunlanders are, but those of our highest house like Saqri and Ynnir are not like the rest of living things, either in their mortality or their immortality. That is all I can tell you. No, I hear your questions but it is not my secret to share with your kind. I have not the right.

But I can tell you this. Queen Saqri is dying, and that which she needs most was to be found only in the old sacred place of our people—your people’s home, the castle called Southmarch. Desperation had driven us to recapture it two hundred years before, but we were driven out again. Now desperation has driven us back there once more.

But this time, there was the matter of the gods’ restless sleep to consider. Your Southmarch is a place that touches closely on the realms of the gods. Even the Voices of the Deep Library agreed that there was a terrible chance that an attempt to recapture the sacred place and use its virtues to save Queen Saqri would wake the gods from their slumber and bring an era of blood and darkness over the earth.

But why? Barrick could not help asking. Why would waking the gods do such a thing? He looked to Vansen, but even in the dim light he could see that the soldier had gone quite pale, as though he had just been told the incipient hour of his own death.

“Blood and darkness...?” Vansen whispered. He looked as though he had been stabbed in the heart.

The gods would not be able to avoid it, Gyir declared, any more than a wolf could let itself starve to death while a piece of bloody meat lay before it. Such is the nature of their godhood—they have been trapped in sleep for century upon century, powerless as great beasts caught in hunters’ nets. One of the gods’ most fearsome attributes is the mightiness of their angers. But even faced with such terror, humans would not easily give up dominion. When the gods lived on the earth in the distant past, mortals were their servants, small in numbers and weaker in selfregard, but they have grown in both wisdom and numbers.

If the gods wake, there will be a war to end all wars. In the end, though, the gods will triumph and the pitiful survivors will begin sifting the ruins of their cities to build new temples to their greedy, victorious, immortal masters.

Barrick wasn’t certain he understood everything, but it was impossible to ignore the dreadful certainty in Gyir’s thoughts.

So in our fear of waking the gods, the House of the People became divided between those who wished to see the queen saved at any cost, led in spirit by my lady Yasammez, and those who sought some other path. That was King Ynnir’s way, and although I fear it will only delay the inevitable, or perhaps make it worse when it comes, his wishes had enough support that a compromise was made.

We call that compromise the Pact of the Glass, and at this moment it is all that stands between your people and annihilation, because we of Yasammez’s party believe that what we serve is more important than any mercy and is worth any risk.

Barrick felt light-headed again. And...and you still feel that way, Gyir? That killing every man, woman, and child in Southmarch would be an acceptable cost to reach your goal?

You will never understand without knowing the true stakes.

The fairy’s thoughts came to him like drips of icy water on stone. And I cannot tell you all—I have not the stature to open such secrets to mortals.

So what are you saying? That your king and queen are at war with each other? But they’ve made some kind of truce?

War is too simple a word, Gyir told him. When you understand that they are not only our lord and lady, husband and wife, but also brother and sister, you of all people may understand something of the complexities involved.

They’re brother and sister...?

Yes. Enough. I do not have time to explain the full history of my people to you, or any great urge to defend the Line of the Fireflower against the ignorance of sunlanders. Be silent and listen! Gyir’s frustration was so palpable that his words came almost like blows. The Pact of the Glass is the most fragile of wisps, but at the moment it holds. We defeated your army but we have not attacked your stronghold. But if we must, we will, and I promise you with no joy that if we do the blood will run like rivers.

Barrick was angry now, too. Say your piece, Storm Lantern.

I do not wish your love, man-child, only your understanding. I am sorry if you thought that friendship between us might change the facts, but the gods themselves could not undo what is coming, even if they wished to do so.

So why do you tell us all this, curse you? If we’re all doomed, what difference does it make?

Because as I once told you, things are still balanced on a knife’s edge. We must do what we can to keep that balance from tilting. Here. He reached into his tattered shirt and pulled out a tiny bundle wrapped in dirty rags, held it out in his open hand. This is the thing I told you about but would not show you. Now I must abandon caution, hoping you will understand the terrible danger we face and how important this is. This is the prize my lady Yasammez ordered me to carry to King Ynnir. On this small thing may rest the fate of all.

What is it? It was smaller than the palm of Barrick’s hand, vaguely round in shape. He stared at it, bemused.

It is the very scrying glass around which the Pact of the Glass is built. If it does not reach the king soon, Lady Yasammez will renew her attack upon Southmarch, this time without mercy.

He handed it to Barrick, who was so surprised he almost dropped it. Why are you giving this to me?

Because I fear that Jikuyin intends to use me in some way to open Immon’s Gate into the palace of the Earthfather. If that happens, if I am lost while I still carry the Glass, then all is lost with me.

But why me? Barrick shook his head. I can barely stand up! I’m full of mad thoughts—I’m sick! Give it to Vansen. He’ll get it where you need it to go. He’s a soldier. He’s... honorable. He looked over to the guard captain and realized that he meant it—despite everything he had said about the guard captain, every petty dislike he had expressed, Barrick admired the man and envied his strength and determination. In another world, another Barrick would have given much to have such a person as a friend.

I intended to, said Gyir, but I have been thinking. There was a brief silence in Barrick’s head as the fairy spoke only to Vansen, then he turned his scarlet stare back onto Barrick. Ferras Vansen is brave, but he does not carry Lady Porcupine’s touch. My lady singled you out, Barrick Eddon and gave you an errand of your own to the House of the People—one that even I do not know. Her command will carry you on when all else would fail. But it will not keep you alive if Fate intends otherwise, the fairy could not help adding, so do not be foolhardy! Ferras Vansen can go with you, but you must be the one to carry it.

So you want me to do a kindness for the woman who wants to kill all my people?

Must I have this argument with every sunlander who can draw breath? Gyir shook his head. Have you not listened? If this does not reach King Ynnir, then Yasammez will destroy all in her way to recapture Godsfall—your home— for our folk. If the Pact of the Glass is fulfilled there is at least a faint hope she will hold back, but only if the glass reaches the king’s hand.

Barrick swallowed. He had spent most of his young life trying to avoid just such situations—a chance to fail, to prove that he was less than those around him, those with healthy limbs and unshadowed hearts—but what else could he do?

Very well, if we must. He thought of the brown-eyed girl, of what she would think of him. Yes, then! Give it to me.

Do not look into it, Gyir warned. You are not strong enough. It is a powerful, perilous thing.

I don’t want to look into it. Barrick tucked the ragged bundle into his shirt, trying to make sure it went into the one pocket that did not have a hole.

Ah, blessings. May Red Stag keep you ever safe on your path. The relief in the Storm Lantern’s thoughts was clear, and for the first time Barrick realized that Gyir, too, might have been carrying a painful, unwanted burden. Then Gyir abruptly stiffened, becoming as still as a small animal under the shadow of a hawk. Quickly, he said, what day is this? He turned his burning red eyes from Barrick to Ferras Vansen, who both stared back helplessly. Of course, how would you know? Let me think. Gyir laid one hand over the other and then brought them both up to cover his eyes, and for the space of perhaps two dozen heartbeats he sat that way, silent and blind to the world. We have a day, perhaps two, he said abruptly, dropping his hands away from the smooth mask of flesh.

A day until what? Barrick asked. Why?

Until the ceremony of the Earthfather begins, Gyir said. The sacrifice days of the one you call Kernios. Surely you still mark them.

It took Barrick a moment, but then as it dawned on him he turned to Vansen, who had also understood. “The Kerneia,” he said aloud. “Of course. By all the gods, is it Dimene already? How long have we been locked in this stinking place?”

Long enough to see your world and mine end if I have the day wrong, said Gyir. They will come for us when the sacrifice days begin, and I am not yet ready.

He would not say any more, but fell back into silence, shutting his two fellow prisoners out as thoroughly as if he had slammed a heavy door.

It was bad enough to suppose that the Kerneia marked the day of your doom, Ferras Vansen kept thinking, but it was made far worse by being trapped deep beneath the earth with no certain way of knowing what day it was in the world outside. This must be what it had been like to be tied to a tree and left for the wolves, as he had heard some of the old tribes of the March Kingdoms had done to prisoners, stopping the condemned’s ears with mud and blindfolding their eyes so that they could only suffer in darkness, never knowing when the end would come.

Vansen slept only fitfully following Gyir’s announcement, startled out of his thin slumbers every time Prince Barrick twitched in his sleep or some other prisoner growled or whimpered in the crowded cell outside.

Kerneia. Even during his childhood in Daler’s Troth it had been a grim holiday. A small skull had to be carved for each family grave, where it would be set, nestled in flowers, on the first light of dawn as homage to the Earthfather who would take them all someday. Vansen’s own father had never stopped complaining about the laziness of his adopted folk in Daler’s Troth, who made their skull carvings out of soft wood. Back home in the Vuttish Isles, he would declare at least once each year, only stone was acceptable to the Lord of the Black Earth. Still, Ferras Vansen didn’t doubt that with three of his own children gone to their graves and also the resting places of his wife’s parents and grandparents to be adorned, Pedar Vansen must have secretly been grateful he could make his death-tokens in yielding pine instead of the hard granite of the dales.

Skulls, skulls. Vansen could not get them out of his thoughts. As he had discovered when he came to the city, people in Southmarch purchased their festival skulls in the Street of Carvers, replicated in either stone or wood, depending on how much they wanted to spend. In the weeks before Kerneia you could even buy skulls baked of special pale bread in Market Square, the eye-sockets glazed dark brown. Vansen had never known what to think of that: eating the offerings that should go to Kernios himself seemed to trifle with that which should be respected —no, feared.

But then, they always said I was a bumpkin. Collum used to make up stories to amuse the other men about me thinking thunder meant the world was ending. As if a country boy wouldn’t know about thunder!

Thinking about poor, dead Collum Dyer, remembering Kerneia and the black candles in the temple, the mantises in their owl masks and the crowds singing the story of the god of death and deep places, Vansen wandered in and out of something that was not quite sleep and that was certainly not restful, until at last he woke up to the tramp of many feet in the corridor outside.

The gray man Ueni’ssoh drifted across the floor as though he rode on a carpet of mist. His eyes smoldered in the dull, stony stillness of his face and even the prisoners in the large outer cell shrank back against the walls. Vansen could barely stand to look at him—he was a corpse-faced nightmare come to life.

“It is time,” he said, his words angular as a pile of sharp sticks. The brutish guards in their ill-fitting armor spread out on either side of Vansen and his two companions.

“For what, curse you?” Vansen raised himself to a crouch, although he knew that any move toward the gray man would earn him nothing except death at the ends of the guard’s sharp pikes.

“Your final hour belongs to Jikuyin—it is not for me to instruct you.” Ueni’ssoh nodded. Half a dozen guards sprang forward to shackle Gyir and loop a cord around his neck like a leash on a boarhound. When Barrick and Vansen had also been shackled the gray man looked at them all for a moment, then silently turned and walked out of the cell. As the guards prodded Vansen and the others after him, the prisoners in the outer cell turned their faces away, as if the three were already dead.

Do not despair—some hope still exists. Gyir’s thoughts seemed as faint to Ferras Vansen as a voice heard from the top of a windy hillside. Watch me. Do not let anything steal your wits or your heart. And if Ueni’ssoh speaks to you, do not listen!

Hope? Vansen knew where they were going and hope was not a very likely guest.

The brute guards drove them deep into the earth, through tunnels and down stairs. For much of the journey the slap of the guards’ leathery bare feet was the only sound, stark as drums beating a condemned man’s march to the gallows. Since Vansen had only seen these passages through the eyes of the creatures Gyir had bespelled, it was strangely dreamlike now to travel them in his own body. They were not the featureless stone burrows he had thought them, but carved with intricate patterns, swirls and concentric circles and shapes that might have represented people or animals. He could recognize some of the shapes on the tunnel walls, and some of them were hard to look at—great, lowering owls with eyes like stars, and manlike creatures with heads and limbs divided from their torsos and the body parts piled before the birds as though in tribute. Other ominous shapes and symbols lined the passages as well, skulls and eyeless tortoises, both symbols of the Earthfather that Vansen knew well, along with some he did not recognize, knotted ropes and a squat cup shape with stubby legs that he thought might be a bowl or cauldron. And of course there were images of pigs, the animal most sacred to Immon, Kernios’ grim servant.

“The Black Pig has taken him!” A despairing cry rang in his head, a childhood memory—an old woman of the Dales, cursing her son’s untimely death. “Curse the pig and curse his coldhearted master!” she had screeched. “Never will I light a candle for the Kerneia again!”

Kerneia. In a faraway land where the sun still rose and set, the crowds were likely gathering on the streets of Southmarch to watch the statue of the masked god go by, carried high on a litter. They would be drunk, even early in the morning—the litter-bearers, the crowds, even the Earthfather’s priests, a deep, laughing-sad drunkenness that Vansen remembered well, the entire city like a funeral feast that had gone on too long. But here he was instead in the heart of the Earthfather’s domain, being dragged to the god’s very door!

A fever-chill swept over him and Vansen had to fight to keep from stumbling. He wished he could reach out to the prince, remind Barrick Eddon that he was not alone in this terrible place, but his shackles prevented it.

The way into the cavern that held the god’s gate suddenly opened wide before them. The enormous chamber was lit by a mere dozen torches, its obsidian walls only delicately streaked with light and the ceiling altogether lost in darkness, but after the long trip through pitch-black tunnels Ferras Vansen found it as overwhelming as the great Trigon Temple in Southmarch on a bright afternoon, with color streaming down from its high windows. The gate itself was even more massive than it had seemed through the eyes of Gyir’s spies, a rectangular slab of darkness as tall as a cliff, resembling an ordinary portal only in the way that the famous bronze colossus of Perin was like a living mortal man.

The guards prodded Vansen and the others toward the open area near the base of the exposed rock face. The slaves already assembled there, a pathetic, hollow-eyed and listless crowd watched over by what seemed almost as many guards as prisoners, shuffled meekly out of the captives’ way, clearing an even larger space in front of the monstrous doorway.

The guards shoved the prisoners to their knees. Vansen wallowed in drifts of stone dust, sneezing as it billowed up around him like smoke and Barrick collapsed beside him as though arrow-shot, scarcely stirring. Vansen nudged the youth, trying to see if he had been injured somehow, but with the heavy wooden shackles around his wrists he could not move much without falling over.

Remember what I said... Even as Gyir’s words sounded in Ferras Vansen’s skull, guards and workers began to stir all over the room—for a moment he thought that they had also heard the fairy’s thoughts. Then he heard a thunderous, uneven rhythm like the pounding of a mighty drum. When he realized he was hearing footfalls, he knew why the guards, even those whom nature had made helplessly crooked, suddenly tried to straighten, and why all the kneeling slaves began to moan and shove their faces against the rough floor of the great cavern.

The demigod came through the door slowly, the chained heads that ornamented him swaying like seaweed in a tidal pool. As terrifying as Jikuyin was, for the first time Vansen could see something of his great age: the monster limped, leaning on a staff that was little more than a good-sized young tree stripped of its branches, and his great head lolled on his neck as though too heavy for him to hold completely upright. Still, as the ancient ogre looked around the chamber and bared his vast, broken teeth in a grin of ferocious satisfaction, Vansen felt his bladder loosen and his muscles go limp. The end had come, whatever Gyir might pretend. No one could fall into the hands of such a monstrous thing and live.

The other prisoners, many of them smeared with blood from their labors, struck their heads on the floor and wailed as the demigod approached. The awful, gigantic chamber, the hordes of shrieking creatures with bloody hands and filthy, despairing faces prostrating themselves before their giant lord—for a moment Vansen simply could not believe his eyes any longer: he had lost his wits, that was all it could be. His mind was regurgitating the worst tales the deacon in Little Stell had told to terrify Ferras Vansen and the other village children into serving the gods properly.

“Perin Skylord, clothed in light,” Vansen murmured to himself, “Guard us through the awesome night Erivor, in silver mail Smooth the seas on which we sail Kernios, of death’s dark lands Take us in your careful hands...”

But it was pointless trying to remember childhood prayers —what help could such things be now? What good would anything do? The huge shape that was Jikuyin, so massive that he crushed stones that a strong man couldn’t lift into powder beneath his feet, was limping toward them, each grating step like something as big as the world chewing, chewing, chewing... Do not despair! The words came sharp as a slap.

Vansen turned to see that Gyir was still upright, though his guards had prostrated themselves. Everything in the Storm Lantern’s featureless face showed in his eyes alone, wide with excitement and fear, but also hot with rage. Just beyond Gyir, Prince Barrick swayed as if in a high wind, scarcely able to balance even on his knees, his face a pale, sickly mask in the flickering light. For a moment Vansen could see the sister’s handsome features in the brother’s, and suddenly he felt his almost-forgotten promise stab at him like a dagger. He could not surrender while there was breath in him—he had an obligation. Despair was a luxury.

Prayers to the Trigon brothers seemed pointless on the very doorstep of the Earthfather’s house. Unbidden, another prayer wafted into his thoughts like a fleck of ash floating on an updraft, a gentler prayer to a gentler deity— an invocation of Zoria, Mistress of the Doves. But although his lips moved, he could not make his clenched throat pass the words. Zoria, virgin daughter, give me...give to me... A moment later the Zorian prayer, Zoria herself, even his own name, all blew out of Ferras Vansen’s mind like leaves in a freezing wind as Jikuyin stopped in front of them and leaned down. His face was so huge it seemed the cratered moon had dropped from the sky.

“A gift to you.” The demigod’s voice shook Vansen’s bones; his breath smelled like the fumes from a smelter’s furnace, hot and metallic. “You will witness my supreme moment—and even participate.” The curtain of dangling heads swayed stared sightlessly, shriveled lips helplessly grinning.

I’ll be joining them soon, Vansen thought. How would the gods judge him? He had done his best, but he had still failed.

Jikuyin’s great, bearded head swiveled to inspect Vansen and his companions, and Vansen had to look away—the god’s eye big as a cannonball, the power of that squinting, reddened stare, were simply too much to bear. “Your blood will unseal Immon’s Gate,” Jikuyin rumbled, “open the way to the throne room of the Dirtlord himself, that pissdrinking King of Worms who took my eye. And when Earthstar is mine, when his great throne is mine, when I wear his mask of yellowed bone, then even if the gods find their way back I will be the greatest of their number!”

You are mad, said Gyir wonderingly. Many in the room heard his silent words: a moan of fear rose up, as though the slaves who could understand him expected to share his punishment.

“There is no madness among gods!” Jikuyin laughed. “How will I be called mad when I can shape everything to my own thoughts? Soon the gate will open, the blood will flow, and then what I speak...will be.”

My blood will dry to powder, to choking dust, before I let you spill so much as a drop in pursuit of this madness.

Jikuyin reached out a giant hand, fingers spreading as though he would crush Gyir to jelly. Instead, he only flicked at him, knocking the Qar warrior into a mass of shrieking prisoners. After those who could escape had scrambled away, the Storm Lantern lay unmoving where he had fallen, his featureless face in the dust.

“Who said it was your blood I wanted, you little whelp of Breeze?” Jikuyin laughed again, a booming roar of satisfaction that threatened to bring down the cavern roof. His hand reached out again, knocking Vansen to the ground, then it folded around Barrick, who let out a thin shriek of surprise and terror before the breath was squeezed out of him. Jikuyin dropped the limp prince among the guards. “Him—the mortal child. I can smell the Fireflower in him. His blood will do nicely.”

Vansen struggled helplessly against the heavy shackles as the guards dragged Barrick toward the looming gate, but they were too tight to slip, too heavy to break. Ferras Vansen let out a howl of grief. Whatever happened, he would certainly die too, but the imminent death of the prince seemed a greater failure, a more horrifying finality.

Something grabbed at his arm. Vansen kicked out and one of the stinking, shaggy guards fell back, but got up immediately and came toward him again. Fighting the inevitable, Vansen managed to land another kick (to even less effect) before he saw that something was strange about the creature’s expression. The apelike face was slack, and the eyes wandered lazily, fixed on nothing, as though the guard were blind. It was also holding a key in its clumsy, clawed hand.

If they want me unshackled before they kill me then it only means I’ll take some of them with me. But why would they want to take that risk? As the creature fumbled roughly with the shackles, he suddenly realized he had seen that befuddled expression before on the creatures Gyir had controlled. Vansen looked to the fairy. The Storm Lantern was staring up into nothingness, squinting so hard in concerntration that his eyes were little more than creases. Another guard stood behind Gyir, doing something with his bonds as well, but even if the fairy was controlling them both, time was running out.

The guards had dragged Prince Barrick to a spot just before the mighty doors which stretched above them higher and wider than the front of the great temple in Southmarch. Ueni’ssoh, the terrible, cadaverous gray man, walked slowly up to stand beside them and raised his skeletal hands in the air.

“O Fire-Eyed, White-Winged, hear us through the empty places!” he intoned in his harsh, unfeeling voice, “O Pale Question, grant us audience!”

Vansen could understand every word, but the tongue was nothing he had ever heard before, as inhuman as the sawing of a cricket: the sound of the gray man’s fluid speech was in Vansen’s ears, all tick and slur, but the meaning was in his head.

“O Emperor of Worms, see us through all darknesses!” Ueni’ssoh sang, “O Empty Box, grant us audience!”

The gray man’s voice now rose, or gained some other power, because it seemed to fill Ferras Vansen’s head like water poured splashing into a bowl, louder and louder until he could scarcely think, although the actual tones seemed as measured and unhurried as before. This was no song of Kerneia that he had ever heard, but Vansen thought he recognized a few words here and there, the ancient words of mourning his grandfather had sung at his grandmother’s grave in the hills, but the gray man’s terrible, flat voice made Ferras Vansen see pictures in his head that had nothing to do with his long-dead grandmother or his father’s burial plot. A crimson-lit world of scuttling shadows filled his thoughts, an end to all things so final and so terrible that it lay on his heart like an immense weight.

The fairy-spelled guard still scrabbled at his shackles. Vansen was not free yet—he could not let the voice overwhelm him. He could not fail.

At first, in his terror and confusion, Ferras Vansen thought the massive stone portal was beginning to fade, or to melt away like ice. But no, he realized a moment later, something much stranger was happening: the great doors were swinging inward into shadow, the darkness beyond so absolute that it could smother the stars themselves. Vansen’s heart quailed. His body felt suddenly boneless, limp as an empty sack.

Ferras Vansen, do not despair! The words came like a whisper from the other side of the world, but they gave him back a little of himself. It was Gyir speaking, Gyir in his head, but only faintly. He could feel the fairy’s powers stretched to their utmost as they touched Vansen, Barrick, the guards working at their bonds, and many others Vansen could not even name—Gyir’s will spreading among them in an invisible spiderweb of influence, although the web quivered and sagged now, near its breaking-point. The Storm Lantern’s strength was astonishing, far beyond anything Vansen could have dreamed.

Fight! Gyir demanded. Fight for the boy—fight for your home! I need more time.

Time? Why? It did not seem as though even the fairy’s heroic efforts would make much difference. Whether they were shackled or not, the world was ending right now, here in the darkness beneath the ground. Whatever was behind that door would swallow them all... But even now, when nothing mattered, Ferras Vansen could not forget his oath to Barrick’s sister. It was almost the only thing he could remember: his own name and history, all that had happened to him before this moment, were fading swiftly, swallowed in the gray man’s sonorous words.

“O Silver Beak, Send your flying ones before us O Ravens’ Prince, Make a trail in the sky Show us the way to the gate, the gate of your servant.”

The gray man’s incantation now filled the cavern like the noise of a rising storm, harsh and booming, but it was also as intimate as if he whispered in Vansen’s ear. Surely no human throat could sound like that...!

The gate was completely open, a hole into absolute blackness, but a blackness that was still somehow, inexplicably alive—Vansen could almost hear it breathing, and his heart seemed to swell in his breast until he thought it would push up into his throat and choke off the last of his air.

The gray man gestured. Two huge, hairy guards pulled Barrick up onto his knees in front of Ueni’ssoh, who was still chanting, then one of them yanked Barrick’s head back so that the boy’s chin jutted out toward Vansen and the others watching. The other guard unsheathed a strange, terrible knife with a jagged blade half as wide as it was long, and set it almost tenderly against the white flesh of the prince’s throat. Frenzied, Vansentried to struggle to his feet, and just at that moment he felt the creature behind give a last wrench at the shackles and they tumbled off his arms. Knives of pain stabbed in his joints as he raised his arms and staggered toward Barrick and the guards.

“O Narrowing Way, open the gate!”

The chanting words of the Dreamless filled every part of the world, every part of Vansen’s thoughts. They were heavy as stones, dropping on him, crushing him—or was that the thunder of Jikuyin laughing? The prince, the guards, and the gray man were washed by torchlight but framed against absolute darkness as if the gods themselves had forgotten to provide a world for them to inhabit.

Ueni’ssoh’s voice surged in triumph.

Something was in the black space of the door now, something invisible but so all-pervasive and life-crushing that Vansen shrieked in terror like a child even as he threw himself at the shaggy guard who held the knife to Barrick’s throat. A shadowy recollection of Donal Murroy’s teachings came to him as if from another person’s life: he grabbed, braced, and snapped the guard’s elbow against its own hinge, so that the creature howled with pain and dropped the queer blade. Vansen snatched it up and whirled to look for Ueni’ssoh, but the gray man seemed lost in some kind of trance, so Vansen lunged at the other guard instead, knocking Prince Barrick free from the creature’s grasp as he did so and sending the shaggy beast skidding face first across the rocky floor. Vansen snatched up a stone from the floor and began pounding on the lock of the prince’s shackles, intent on freeing him, ignoring Barrick’s cries of agony as the boy’s crippled arm was rattled in its socket.

A moment longer, something whispered in his head. Ferras Vansen’s own thoughts were so tangled and diminished that for a long instant he could not understand who was talking to him, and even when he could, he could not understand it. Keep fighting a moment longer...!

The lock broke and the prince’s shackles fell away just as the other guard attacked him. It was all Vansen could do to shove Barrick aside, then use the knife to dig at the guard’s stinking, hairy body. Vansen and the guard stood, locked in a helpless clinch, gasping into each other’s faces, each with a free hand gripping the other’s weapon, both weapons shuddering in front of an enemy’s wide, terrorstaring eye. Vansen could see the monstrous open gateway past his attacker’s shoulder, the blackness roiling and bubbling with invisible forces that squeezed Vansen’s bones and guts until he thought his heart would stop.

Vansen had a moment to wonder if Gyir really had made a plan, but that everything beyond getting the shackles off had simply failed to happen. Then the second guard hit him in the back, forcing him to let go of the other creature’s killing hand. He swung his weight and ducked to avoid the stabbing blow to his face and he and the two guards became tangled. Locked in a straining, gasping knot, the three of them hobbled a few steps, then stumbled together over the threshold of the god’s door and fell into darkness.

Black.

Frozen.

Nothing.

The apelike guards spun away and vanished into the void as they all plummeted downward; within a heartbeat their wordless screams had faded. His own voice was gone. He could feel his lungs shoving out a scream of absolute terror but he heard no sound except the almost silent whistle of his fall.

Ferras Vansen hurtled down and down. Within moments he was far beyond the point where he could survive the impact, but still he fell. At last his wits flew away in the emptiness and wind.

35. Blessings

Utta stared at her reflection. Even looking in a mirror was an unusual experience, since Zorian sisters were generally given neither opportunity nor encouragement to contemplate their own reflections. “I cannot help it,” she said. “I look like something in a mummer’s play.”

“You do not,” said Merolanna, invisible for a moment in a cloud of powder as her little maid Eilis vigorously applied the brush to Utta’s face. “You look extremely handsome— like a highborn gentleman.”

“I am not supposed to be a gentleman, even in this ridiculous imposture, but an ordinary servant. In fact, though, I am neither of those. I am an old woman, Your Grace. What am I doing got up in such a semblance?”

“You must trust me,” the duchess replied, waving away the last of the powder. The maid began to cough, so Merolanna sent the girl out of the room. “I simply cannot do what must be done,” she said when they were alone in the bedchamber, “since I am bound to be at the blessing ceremony, especially with Duke Caradon coming to Southmarch. The Tollys are swarming, so we Eddons must make a show. I have to go. That is why you must do your part, my dear.”

But I’m not an Eddon. Utta looked at the duchess with what she hoped was a certain sternness. She thought Merolanna had grown a bit careless about this matter of her lost son, her plans getting stranger and more wild, as though the steps they were contemplating now really were nothing more dangerous than a mum-show. She also clearly felt that Utta had become some kind of foot soldier in the cause, bound to obey all orders.

“I can understand how you feel about the child...” she began.

“No, you can’t, Sister,” said the duchess with unconvincing good cheer. “Only a mother can. So let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

Utta sighed.

When she was finished, with all the unfamiliar ties and buckles done up, Utta took one last look at the dour creature in the glass—an aged, effeminate servant dressed in dun-colored robes and a shapeless hat. It seemed scandalous to be showing so much hose-covered leg, but that was what men did every day. She squinted.

“You know, all the men’s clothes in the world cannot make a woman truly look like one. A man, I mean. Our faces just are not the right shape.” She traced the line of her own toodelicate jaw with her finger.

“That is why we will wrap this close around you,” Merolanna said briskly, winding the tails of the hat around Utta’s chin and neck like a scarf. “It is a cold day—no one will take much notice. Especially not today.”

“But is it wise, this plan?” She felt fairly certain it was not, but was torn between her good sense and her loyalty to Merolanna.

“To be honest with you, Utta, I don’t care.” The duchess clapped her hands together, which brought the little maid back into the chamber. “Help me with my jewels, Eilis, will you?” Merolanna turned toward back toward Utta. “Now you had best be on your way. We have only a few hours left—it is still winter, and dark so early.”

Utta wasn’t certain that hurrying off because the danger would be worse in a few hours made sense, especially when she hadn’t agreed that the plan was warranted in the first place, but she had long since learned that Merolanna could not be opposed with anything less than a wholehearted and extremely patient effort.

“Very well,” she said. “I will meet you afterward as we arranged, then.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Merolanna, remaining statue-still as her maid struggled to close the hasp on a necklace that looked as heavy as a silver harbor chain. “You’re very kind.”

Each time he looked at her Matt Tinwright had to look away after only a few moments. He felt certain that his guilt as well as his longing must shine from his face like the light of the brazier burning on the altar.

Only once had Elan M’Cory looked up to meet his gaze across the vastness of the Trigon Temple, but even from half a hundred paces away he felt the touch of her eyes with so great a force he nearly gasped aloud. Even in the midst of this nominally festive occasion she wore black clothes and a half-veil, as though she were the only person in Southmarch castle who still mourned the death of Gailon Tolly—as she might very well be. Tinwright had never been able to learn what Gailon had been to Elan, whether a secret lover, her hope for a good marriage, or something even harder to understand, but it confirmed him in his belief that nothing was less knowable than a woman’s heart.

Hendon, the dead duke’s youngest brother, stood beside Elan dressed in an elegant outfit of dove gray with black accents, his sleeves so deeply slashed that his arms seemed thicker than his legs. Elan M’Cory might be the most important person in the room for Matt Tinwright, but it was the woman on the other side who was clearly of the most interest to Hendon Tolly: Southmarch’s guardian did not even look at Elan, let alone talk to her, but spent much of the blessing ceremony whispering to Queen Anissa. It was the queen’s first day out in public since the baby had been born. She looked pale but happy, and quite willing to receive the attentions of the current guardian of Southmarch.

The nurse beside her held the infant prince; as Tinwright looked at the tiny, pink face he could not help marveling at what a strange life this child had been born into. Just a few months ago little Olin Alessandros would have been the youngest in a good-sized family, the happy child of a healthy, reigning monarch in time of peace, with nothing ahead to trouble his horizons except the business of being part of the most powerful family in the March Kingdoms. Now he was almost alone in the world, two brothers and a sister gone, his father imprisoned. If Matt Tinwright could have felt sorry for something as unformed as a baby (and Tinwright was beginning to feel he actually could)—well, then young Prince Olin was a good candidate for pity, despite having been born with everything the poet would most have liked to have himself.

Well, almost everything. There was one thing that even having been born royal would not have given him, and at this moment the lack of it burned in Tinwright’s heart so that he could barely stand still. And tonight...the awful thing he must do tonight...!

He looked at Elan’s pale face again but her eyes were cast down. If she could only understand! But she couldn’t, as had been made all too clear. She had invited Death into her heart. She wanted no other suitor.

Hierarch Sisel finished the invocation of Madi Surazem, thanking the goddess for protecting the child and his mother during the birth. Tinwright thought the hierarch looked drawn and unsettled—but then, who did not? The shadow of the Twilight People hung over the castle like a shroud, chilling the hearts of even those who pretended not to feel it. It was having its effect in other ways, too, with fewer ships coming into the harbor and, because of all the refugees from the mainland city and villages, many more mouths to feed even as many of the kingdom’s farms lay deserted and untended. Little as he knew about such things, even Matt Tinwright realized that when spring came and no crops were planted it could mark the beginning of the end for Southmarch.

Hierarch Sisel stood behind a small altar that had been erected just for this ceremony so that the ceremonial fire could be placed atop the large stone altar. The flames billowed behind him as cold air swirled in the high places of the temple. “Who brings this child before the gods?” he asked.

“I do,” said Anissa in a small voice.

Sisel nodded. “Then bring him forward.”

To Tinwright’s surprise, the queen didn’t carry the child to the altar herself, but nodded for the nurse holding the baby to follow her. When they stood before the altar, Sisel threw back the child’s blanket.

“With the living earth of Kernios,” he proclaimed, rubbing the bottoms of the child’s feet with dark dust. “With the strong arm of Perin,”—he lifted the tau cross called the Hammer and held it over the child’s head for a brief moment before setting it down—“and with the singing waters of Erivor, patron of your forefathers, guardian of your family’s house...” He dipped his fingers into a bowl and spattered the child on the top of the head. The baby began to cry. Sisel grimaced ever so slightly, then made the sign of the Three. “In the sight of the Trigon and all the gods of Heaven, and soliciting the wise protection of all their oracles on this, the prophets’ own day, I grant you the name Olin Alessandros Benediktos Eddon. May the blessings of heaven sustain you.” The hierarch looked up. “Who stands for the father?”

“I will, Eminence,” said Hendon Tolly. Anissa gazed at him with grateful pleasure, just as if he had really been the child’s father, and in that moment Tinwright felt he saw it all plain: of course Tolly did not want Elan—he had bigger plans. If Olin did not come back his wife and son would need another man in their lives. And who would be better than the handsome young lord who was already the infant prince’s guardian?

Hendon Tolly took the baby from the nurse’s arms and walked slowly around the altar, symbolically introducing young Olin to the household. Any other family, even a rich one, would have performed this ceremony in their own home, and before this day even the Eddons themselves had blessed their new children in the homely confines of the Erivor chapel, not in a vast barn like the Trigon Temple. Tinwright could not help wondering whose idea it had been to perform the blessing here in front of so many people. He had thought they were holding the Carrying ceremony ahead of Duke Caradon’s arrival because to wait a day— to hold it at the beginning of the Kerneia—would be bad luck. Now he decided that Hendon simply did not want his older brother present to steal any of the attention he commanded as guardian of the castle.

The second time around the altar Hendon Tolly lifted the infant above his head. The crowd, which had sat respectfully, now began to clap and cheer, with Durstin Crowel and Tolly’s other closest supporters making the most noise, although Tinwright could see expressions of poorly-hidden disgust on some of the older nobles—those few who had actually attended. He wondered what kind of excuses Avin Brone and the others had made to stay away —even if he were a man of power himself, Tinwright would not want to risk offending Hendon Tolly.

A moment later, as Hierarch Sisel completed the final blessing, Matt Tinwright realized the madness of his own thoughts. He was frightened of refusing an invitation from Tolly to a child blessing, but he was smuggling poison to Tolly’s mistress.

It is like a disease, he thought as the crowd began to break up, some pushing forward toward Anissa and the high nobility, others hastening out into the cold winds that swirled through Market Square. In all respects it looked like an ordinary, festive occasion, but Tinwright and everyone else knew that just across the bay a dreadful, silent enemy was watching them. A fever of disordered thinking rules the place, and I have it as badly as anyone here. We are not a city anymore, we are a plague hospital.

To his shock, Hendon Tolly actually noticed him as he tried to slip past.

“Ah, poet.” The guardian of Southmarch fixed him with an amused stare, leaning away from a conversation with Tirnan Havemore. Elan, who stood beside Hendon, did her best not to meet Tinwright’s eye. “You skulk, sir,” Tolly accused him. “Does this mean you will not have your poem ready for us at tomorrow’s feast? Or are you merely fearful of its quality?”

“It will be ready, my lord.” He had been staying up until long past midnight for almost a tennight, burning oil and candles at a prodigious rate (much to the disgust of Puzzle, who had an old man’s love for going to bed just after sundown and for pinching coppers until they squeaked). “I only hope it will please you.”

“Oh, as do I, Tinwright.” Tolly grinned like a fox finding an unguarded bird’s nest. “As do I.”

The master of Southmarch said a few more quiet words to Havemore, then turned to go, tugging Elan M’Cory after him as though she were a dog or a cloak. When she didn’t move quickly enough, Hendon Tolly turned back and grabbed at her shoulder, but wound up pinching the pale flesh of her bosom instead. She winced and let out a little moan.

“When I say step lively,” he told her in a quiet, measured voice, “then you must jump, slut, and quickly. If there are any tricks like that in front of my brother I will make you dance as you have never danced before. Now come.”

Havemore and the others standing nearby did not even appear to have noticed, and for a mad moment Tinwright could almost believe he had imagined it. Elan silently followed Hendon out, a patch of angry scarlet blooming on the white of her breast.

It was strange to step out this way, her lower limbs moving so freely. In truth, Utta felt disturbingly naked—the shape of her own legs was something she usually saw only when she bathed or prepared herself for sleep, not striding down a street with nothing between them and the world but a thin layer of worsted woolen hose.

Sister Utta had done her best not to nag at Princess Briony when the girl had become fixed on wearing boy’s clothing, although in her heart Utta had felt it was the sign of something unbalanced in the child, perhaps a reaction to all the sadness around her. But suddenly she could understand a little of what Briony had meant when she had spoken of “the freedoms men take for granted.” Was it truly the gods themselves who had made women the weaker sex, or was it something as simple as differences of dress and custom?

But they are stronger than us, Utta thought. Any woman who has been despoiled or brutalized by a man no taller than she knows that only too well.

Still, strength alone was not enough to make superiority, she reflected, otherwise oxen and growling lions would command empires. Instead, men hobbled oxen so they could not move faster than a walk. Was it true, as Briony had complained, that men hobbled their women as well?

Or do we hobble ourselves? But if so, why would we do such a thing?

Of course, women would not be the first or only slaves to aid their captors.

Listen to me—slaves! Captors! It is these times in which we live—they turn everything downside up and make us question all. But meanwhile, I am not watching what I am doing and will probably walk myself into the lagoon and drown!

Utta looked up. She hadn’t actually reached the lagoon yet, and was in fact only halfway down Tin Street, near the Onir Kyma temple—still outside the Skimmer neighborhoods. She was glad of the temple tower and the few other landmarks she recognized: she had never been this far from the castle except on the main road to the causeway when she and her Zorian sisters went to the mainland for the spring fair.

A group of men lolled in the road ahead of her, all but blocking the narrow way. As she drew closer she saw they were ordinary men, not Skimmers—laborers by the look of them, unshaven and wearing work-stained clothes. To her surprise, they did not make way as she approached but remained where they were, watching her with sullen interest.

I am used to being a woman, she thought —and a priestess at that. People step aside for me, or even ask blessing. Is this the way it is for all men? Or is there some reason they are blocking the road?

“Here now,” one of the smallest of the men said. He had a lazy, self-satisfied tone that suggested he was their leader, size notwithstanding. He pushed himself away from the wall and stood before her, blocking her path. “What do you want, little fellow?”

It was all that an outraged Utta could do not to argue: among women she was considered tall, and she was nearly the same height as this fellow, although vastly more slender. “I have business ahead,” she said in her gruffest voice. “Please let me by.”

“Oh, business in Skimmertown, have you?” He raised his voice as though she had said something shameful and he meant everyone to know. “Looking for a little fish-face girl, eh, fellow?”

For a moment Utta could only stare. “Nothing of the sort. Business,” she said, and then realized she might sound too haughty. “My master’s business.”

“Ah,” said the one who had been questioning her. “Your master, is it? And what business does he have down in Scummer Town? Hiring fishy-men for cheap, I’ll warrant, taking work away from proper fellows. Ah, see the look on his chops now, boys!” The small man brayed a laugh. “Been caught out, he has.” He took a step nearer, looked Utta up and down. “Look at you, soft as marrow jelly. Are you a phebe, then? One of those?”

“Let me go.” She tried to keep her voice from shaking but didn’t entirely succeed.

“Oh, do you think we should?” The man leaned closer. He stank of wine. “Do you?”

“Yes,” said a new voice. “Let him go.”

Both Utta and her persecutor looked up in surprise. A hairless man had come into the alley from a side-passage —a Skimmer, Utta realized, with a scar down his face that pulled one eyelid out of shape. The crowd of men blocking the alley stirred with an animal shiver of hatred Utta could feel.

“Hoy, Fish-face,” said her antagonist. “What are you doing out of your pond? This part of town belongs to pureblood folk.”

The Skimmer stared back with a face stiff as a wax effigy. He was not small, and for a Skimmer he was solidly built, but he was hugely outnumbered. Several of the men moved so that he was more nearly surrounded. He smiled—his injured eye squinted shut as he did so—then he raised his head and made a froggy, chirruping noise. Within moments half a dozen more young Skimmer men began to drift into the alley, one holding a baling hook in his fist, another tapping a long wooden club against his leg, grinning toothlessly.

“Merciful Zoria,” Utta breathed. They’re going to kill each other.

“You lot shouldn’t be past Barge Street,” said the man who had accosted her. He was grinning, too, and he and the first Skimmer had begun to circle each other, one lazy step at a time. “You shouldn’t be here. This is ours, this is.” He spoke slowly, like an invocation—he was summoning the powerful mystery of violence, Utta realized, with as much careful method as a priest used to call the attention of a god. She could not help staring at the circling pair, her skin feverchilled.

“Get out,” someone said from just behind her—one of the other Skimmers. She felt strong hands take her and pull her away, then another hand shoved her in the small of the back. She took a few stumbling steps away from the center of the now-crowded alley, slipping and tumbling into the mud. She looked back, half-expecting one of the men who had accosted her to try to stop her, or one of the Skimmers to shout at her to run away, but she was out of the center of the violence-spell now and she might as well have ceased to exist. The two main antagonists were feinting gently and almost lovingly at each other with knives she had not seen before. Their comrades were silently facing off, ready to throw themselves at their opposites when the first blow was struck.

Slipping in the wet street, clumsy as a newborn calf, Utta struggled upright and hurried away even as someone let out a shout of pain and fury behind her. A larger roar went up, many voices shouting, and people began to step out of the tiny, close-quartered houses to see what was the matter.

The child who opened the oval door was so small and so wide-eyed that at first, despite herself, Sister Utta could nearly believe the Skimmers were indeed a different kind of creature entirely. She was still shaking badly, and not just because of her encounter with the street bullies. Everything was so strange here, the smells, the look of things, even the shapes of the doors and windows. Now she stood at the end of a swaying gangplank on the edge of the castle’s largest lagoon, waiting to be admitted to a floating houseboat. How odd her life had become!

There were no Skimmers left in the Vuttish Isles of Utta Fornsdodir’s childhood, but they still featured heavily in local stories, although those in the stories were far more magical than those who lived here beside the lagoon. Still, they were strange-looking folk, and Utta realized she had spent almost twenty years in Southmarch Castle without ever really speaking to one of them, let alone knowing them as neighbors or friends.

“H-hello,” she said to the child. “I’ve come to see Rafe.” The urchin looked back at her. Because the child had no eyebrows, hair pulled back (as was the habit for both male and female Skimmers) and a face still in the androgynous roundness of childhood, Utta had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl. At last the little one turned and scuttled back inside, but left the door open. Utta could only guess that was an invitation of sorts, so she stepped up onto the deck and into the boat’s cabin.

The ceilings were so low she had to bend over. As she followed the child up the stairs she guessed that the cabin had at least three stories. It definitely seemed bigger inside than outside, full of nooks and narrow passages, with tiny stairwells scarcely as wide as her shoulders leading away both up and down from the first landing. Her guide was not the only child, either—she passed at least half a dozen others who looked back at her with no sign of either fear or favor. None of them wore much, and the youngest was naked although the day outside was cold even for Dimene and the houseboat did not seem to be heated. This smallest one was dragging a ragged doll by the ankle, a toy that had obviously once belonged to some very different child since it had long, golden tresses. None of the Skimmers Utta had ever seen were fair-haired, although their skins could be as pale as any of her own family back in the northern islands.

The first child led her up one more narrow staircase and then down another before stepping out onto the deck on what she guessed must be the lagoon side of the houseboat. Utta could not help thinking they seemed to have reached it by the most roundabout way possible.

The young Skimmer man looked up from the rope he was splicing. The little one, apparently now relieved of responsibility, skipped back into the boat’s ramshackle cabin. The youth looked up at her briefly, then returned his attention to the rope. “Who are you?” he asked in the throaty way of his folk.

“Utta—Sister Utta. I come with a message for you. Are you Rafe?”

He nodded, still watching the splice. “Sister Utta? I thought you smelled a bit unmanly, even for that place.” He meant the Inner Keep, she guessed, but he said it as though he were talking about a prison or a forest full of unpleasant wild beasts. “Did someone tell you we’d be after any woman, no matter how old?”

I am old, she reminded herself. Surely I can’t take offense. She looked at him; he carefully did not look back. He was as young or younger than any of the Skimmers who had come into the alley, and his arms seemed long even by the standards of his folk. He had slender, artful fingers, and a firm, good jaw.

“I was sent by the Duchess Merolanna of Southmarch,” she said. “She was given your name as someone who might help us. We need a boatsman.”

“Given?” He raised a hairless eyebrow. “Someone’s been free. Given by whom?”

“Turley Longfingers.”

He snorted. “Would be. He’d be happy to see me get myself killed on some drylander errand, wouldn’t he? He knows Ena and I will be hanging the nets come springtime and she’ll be old enough then he can’t stop us.” He stared at Sister Utta now with something like curiosity. “Does it pay well, still, this errand?”

“I think so. The duchess is no pinchpurse.”

“Then tell me what she wants done and what she’ll pay, Vuttswoman.”

“How did you know?”

“That you’re Vuttish?” He laughed. “You smell Vuttish, don’t you? Still, you’re better than most. Compared to a Syannese or Jellon-man, you’re spring seafoam and pink thrift-blossoms. Jellon-folk eat no fish, lots of pig, don’t they? You can smell one a mile distant. Now, if we’ve finished talking on how folks smell, let’s speak of silver.”

36. The False Woman

There were skulls for sale in all the marketplaces of Syan, some baked of honey-glazed bread, others painstakingly carved from pine boughs, and even a few shaped out of beautiful, polished marble for nobles and rich merchants to put on their tables or in their family shrines. Sprigs of white aspholdel were set out on tables to be bought and then pinned to a collar or a bodice. Kerneia was coming.

Briony realized with astonishment that she had been traveling with the players for a full month now, which was nearly as strange as what she found herself doing most days—namely, acting the part of the goddess Zoria, Perin’s daughter. In truth, it was stranger than that: as a character in Finn’s play, Briony was a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a goddess pretending to be a boy, an array of nested masks so confusing she could not concentrate on it long enough to waste much time thinking about it.

Makewell’s Men had not yet performed the whole of Teodoros’ rewritten play about Zoria’s abduction, but they had worked up most of the main scenes and tried them out on the rural population of northern Syan as the company moved from place to place. It had been strange enough for Briony to speak the goddess’ words (or at least such words as Finn Teodoros had given her) in the muddy courtyard of some tiny village inn. Now the players had begun to follow the green course of the Esterian River and the towns were getting bigger as they traveled south. Audiences were growing, too.

“But there are so many words to remember,” Briony complained early one evening to Teodoros as the others trooped back from their afternoon’s sightseeing. “And I have memorized only half the play!”

“You are doing very well,” the playwright assured her. “You are a cunning child and would have done most professions proud, I’ll warrant. Besides, most of your speeches are in the parts of the play we have performed already, so there is not much left for you to learn.”

“But still, it seems so much. What if I forget? I almost did the other night but Feival whispered the words to me.”

“And he will again if you need him to. But you know the story, my girl—ah, I mean, my boy.” He grinned. “If you forget, say something to the point. Hewney and Makewell and the rest are experienced mummers. They will come to your aid and put you back on the track.”

It was the sort of thing old Steffens Nynor had always said to her about court protocols, and as with the castellan’s instructions about the intricate details of the Smoke Ceremony she had been forced to learn for the Demia’s Candle holidays, she suspected it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as everyone was telling her.

The Esterian river valley was perhaps the most fertile part of all Eion, a vast swath of black soil stretched between rolling hills that extended from the northern tip of Lake Strivothol where the city of Tessis spread wide, up the hundred-mile length of the river to the mountains northeast of the Heartwood. Briony remembered her father saying that he guessed as many as a quarter of the people in all of Eion lived in that one stretch of land, and certainly now that she saw the farms covering nearly every hillside, and the towns (many of them as large as any city in the March Kingdoms outside Southmarch itself) butting against each other on either side of the wide, cobbled thoroughfare and along the river’s eastern shore as well, she found it easy to believe.

Ugenion, once a great trading city, now much reduced, Onir Diotrodos with its famous water temple, Doros Kallida—the company’s wagons passed through them all, sometimes traveling only a few hours down the Royal Highway (still called King Karal’s Road in some parts) before they stopped again in another prosperous village or town. Syan was at the same time so much like and unlike what Briony had known most of her life that it made her even more homesick than usual. The people spoke the common tongue with a slurring accent she sometimes found hard to understand (although it had been their tongue first, Finn Teodoros enjoyed pointing out, so by rights Briony was the one speaking with an accent). Some of the folk who came to see the players even made fun of how Makewell and the others spoke, loudly repeating their words with an emphasis on what they clearly felt was the harsh, chopping March Kingdoms way of talking. But the Syannese also seemed to enjoy the diversion, and Nevin Hewney told her one day it was because they were more used to such things than were the rustic folk of the March Kingdoms, or even many of the city dwellers of Southmarch.

“This is where playmaking grew,” Hewney explained. His broad gesture took in the whole of the surrounding valley, which in this unusually empty spot looked like a place that had scarcely seen a farm croft, let alone a theater. As always when he had downed a few drinks, the infamous poet was enjoying his own discourse. Seeing Briony’s confusion, he scowled in a broadly beleaguered way. “No, not here by this particular oak tree, but in the land of Syan. The festival plays of Hierosol—dry tales not of the gods but of pious mortals, most of them, the oniri and other martyrs —here became the mummeries of Greater and Little Zosimia and the Wildsong Night comedies. They have had plays, playmakers, and players here for a thousand years.”

“And never once paid any of them what they’re worth,” growled Pedder Makewell.

“It’s only because there are so many of them around,” said Feival. “Too many cobblers drives down the price of shoes, as everyone knows.”

“So then why did we...did you, I mean...come here?” asked Briony. “Would there not be places to go where players would be a rare and greatly appreciated thing?”

Hewney looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “You speak very well for a servant girl, our Tim. How did you learn to turn a phrase so nimbly?”

Finn Teodoros cleared his throat loudly. “Are you boring the child again with your history of stagecraft, Nevin? Suffice it to say that the Syannese love our art, and there is a sufficiency of people here who will be glad to see us. And now we have something new to show them, as well!” She frowned. “What?”

“You. Our dear, sweet little goddess. The groundlings will water at the mouth when they see you.”

“You’re a pig, Finn!” Feival Ulian laughed, but also seemed a little hurt—he was the company’s stage beauty, after all. “Don’t mock her.”

“Oh, but Tim here is special,” said Teodoros. “Trust me.”

Half the time I don’t understand what these people are talking about, Briony thought. The other half the time, I’m too tired to care.

The town of Ardos Perinous sat on a hilltop. It had once been a nobleman’s fortress, but the castle was now occupied by no one more exalted than a demi-hierarch of the church, a distaff relative of the Syannese king, Enander. Briony’s ears had pricked up when she heard that— Enander was the man whom Shaso had thought might help her, if only for a price.

“What’s he like, the king of Syan?” Briony asked Teodoros, who was walking beside the wagon for once, sparing the horse having to carry his weight up the steep road. She had never met King Enander or any of his family except a few of the more distant nephews and nieces—the lord of Syan would never send his own children to a place as backward and remote as Southmarch, of course—but she knew of him by reputation. Her father had a grudging respect for Enander, and no one disputed the Syannese king’s many deeds of bravery, but most of what she had heard were tales from his younger days. He must now be past sixty winters of age.

The playwright shrugged. “He is a well-liked monarch, I believe. A warrior but no great lover of war, and not so crazed by the gods that he beggars the people to build new temples, either. But now that he is old I have heard that some say he is disinterested in anything except his mistress, a rather infamous Jellonian baroness named Ananka—a castoff of King Hesper’s, it is said, who somehow found an even better perch for herself.” His forehead wrinkled as he thought about it. “There is a play in that, if one could only keep one’s head on one’s neck after performing it—The Cuckoo Bride, perhaps...”

Briony had to struggle to concentrate on what Finn was saying—she had been distracted by the mention of Hesper of Jellon, the traitor-king who had sold her father to Ludis Drakava. He was another one she wanted desperately to have at the point of a sword, begging for mercy... “And there is the heir, too—Eneas, a rather delicious young man, if a bit mature and hearty for my tastes.” Teodoros showed his best wicked grin. “He waits patiently. They say he is a good man, too, pious and brave. Of course, they say that about every prince, even those who prove to be monsters the instant their fundaments touch the throne.”

Briony certainly knew about Eneas. He was another young man on whom her girlish fancies had once fixed when she had been only seven or eight. She had never actually seen him, not even a portrait, but one of the girls who watched over her had been Syannese (one of Enander’s disregarded nieces) and had told her what a kind and handsome youth Eneas was. For months Briony had dreamed that someday he would come to visit her father, take one look at her, and declare that he could have no other bride. Briony had little doubt she would look on him differently now.

They were nearing the top of the hill. The walls of the castle loomed over them like the shell of some huge ancient creature left behind by retreating tides. It was a strange day: although the weather was winter-cold, the sun was clear and sharp overhead, yet the sky just above the river valley was shrouded with thick clouds. “How long until we reach Tessis?”

Teodoros waved his hand. He was breathing heavily, unused to such exercise. “There,” he gasped.

“What do you mean?” she said, staring up at the stone walls she had thought belonged to the keep of Ardos Perinous. “Are you saying that’s Tessis?” It seemed impossible—it was far smaller than even Southmarch Castle, whose growing populace had spilled over onto the mainland centuries earlier.

“No,” said the playwright, still fighting to get his breath back. “Turn...around, fool child. Look...behind you.”

She did, and gasped. They had climbed up above the treeline and now she could see what had been blocked by the bend of the river. Only a few miles ahead the valley opened out into a bowl so wide she could not see its farthest reach. Everywhere she looked there were houses and more—walls, towers, steeples, and thousands of chimneys, the latter all puffing trails of smoke into the sky so that the entire valley lay under a pall of gray, like a fog that only began a hundred feet in the air. Channels led out from the Esterian River in all directions and crisscrossed the valley floor, the water reflecting in the late light so that the city seemed caught in a web of silver.

“Merciful Zoria,” she said quietly. “It’s huge!”

“Some say Hierosol is bigger,” Teodoros replied, wiping at his streaming forehead and cheeks. “But I think that is not true anymore.” He smiled. “I forgot, you haven’t seen Tessis before, have you?”

Briony shook her head, unable to think of anything to say. She felt very small. How could she ever have felt that Southmarch was so important—an equal sister to nations like Syan? Any thought of revealing herself to the Syannese and asking for help suddenly seemed foolish. They would laugh at her, or ignore her.

“None other like it,” Teodoros said. “‘Fair white walls on which the gods themselves did smile, and towers that stirred the clouds,’ as the poet Vanderin put it. Once the entire world was theirs.”

“It...it looks as though they still own a good share,” said Briony.

By all the gods, she thought as they rolled down the wide thoroughfare, jostled and surrounded by dozens of other wagons and hundreds of other foot travelers, Finn says this is not even the biggest street in Tessis—that Lantern Broad is twice the size—but it’s still wider across than Market Square!

She had never before in her life felt so much like—what had Finn called her that first day? “A straw-covered bumpkin just off the channel boat from Connord.” Well, she might have been annoyed at the time, but it had turned out to be a fair assessment, because here she was gaping at everything like the ripest peasant at his first fair. They were still at least a mile from the city gates—she could see the crowned guard towers looming ahead like armored giants out of legend—but they were already passing through a thriving metropolis bigger and busier than the heart of Southmarch.

“Where are we going to stay?” she asked Teodoros, who was happily ensconced in the wagon again, watching it all pass by.

“An agreeable inn just in the shadow of the eastern gate,” he called down. “We have stayed there before. I have made the arrangements for a tennight’s stay, which will give us plenty of time to smooth the wrinkles out of Zoria before we go looking for a spot closer to the center of town.”

Feival Ulian wandered back. “You know, Finn, I know the fellow who built the Zosimion Theater near Hierarch’s College Bridge. I heard that he’s having trouble finding anyone to mount some work—a feud with the Royal Master of Revels or some such. I’ll wager it’s free.”

“Good. Perhaps we shall move there after the inn.” “It might be free now...”

“No!” Teodoros seemed to realize that he’d been a bit harsh in his refusal. “No, I’ve just...I’ve made the arrangements, already, good Feival. At the inn in Chakki’s Hole. We would not get our money back.”

Feival shrugged. “Certainly. But should I see if I can find out, for later...?”

“By all means.” Teodoros smiled and nodded, as if trying to make up for his earlier loud refusal.

Briony was a little puzzled by Finn’s vehemence, but she had other things on her mind. She was merely floating, she realized—letting herself be swept along this road and through this foreign land like a leaf on a stream. In fact, she had been swept along ever since meeting the demigoddess Lisiya—only some three dozens day ago, yet already it seemed like a dream from her distant childhoold. She reached into her shirt and patted the charm Lisiya had given her, stroked the small, smooth bird skull. What should she do now? The demigoddess had only pointed her toward the players, but had told her nothing of what she should do or where she should go next. Briony suspected Lisiya wanted her to make her own decisions, that in some way she was being tested—wasn’t that what gods did to mortals?

But why? No one ever explained that curious whim. Why should the gods care whether mortals are worthy of anything? It was a bit like a person walking around in a stable, testing all the animals to see which were pure of heart or particularly clever, so they could be rewarded and the other beasts punished. She supposed people might do that to find which were the most obedient animals—was that the gods’ reasoning?

See, here I am, drifting again, she chided herself. What is Briony Eddon going to do now, that’s the question. What’s next? Before his death in the fire, Shaso had talked about raising an army, or at least enough men in arms to protect her when she revealed herself, a force to defend her from the Tollys’ treachery. He had talked of appealing to the Syannese king for troops and here she was in Syan. Most of all she wanted to go to Hierosol where her father was prisoner—she ached to see his face, to hear his voice—but she knew it was a foolish idea, that at best she would only join him in captivity. Shaso would tell her to cast her dice here, among old allies.

But would that be a good suggestion, or would it simply be Shaso, the old soldier, thinking as old soldiers did—no other way to reclaim a kingdom except by force of arms?

Thinking of the old man scalded her heart, the terrible injustice she and her brother had done him, caging him like an animal for months and months...And now he is dead. Because of me. Because of my foolishness, my headstrong mistakes, my...my... “Tim? Tim, what’s wrong?” It was Feival, his handsome face full of surprised concern. “Why are you weeping, pet?”

Briony wiped angrily at her cheeks. Could it be possible to act more like a girl? It was a good thing all the players knew her secret. “Just...just thinking of something. Of someone.”

Feival nodded wisely and turned away.

The tavern called The False Woman—a somewhat illomened name, Briony couldn’t help feeling, considering her own nested impostures—crouched in the corner of an old, beaten-down market in the northeastern part of the city, a neighborhood known as Chakki’s Hole after the Chakkai people from the mountains of south Perikal who had come to the city as laborers and made this maze of dark streets their new home. The Hole, as inhabitants often called it, was so close to the high city walls that even just past noon on a clear day the winter sun was blocked and the whole neighborhood in shade. One of the city’s dozens of canals neatly separated it from the rest of the Perikalese district.

The sign hanging above the tavern doorway showed a woman with two faces, one fair and one foul, and a pointed hat of a type that hadn’t been worn in a century or more. The taverner, a stout, mustached fellow named Bedoyas, ushered them through into the innyard with the air of a man forced to stable someone else’s animals in his own bedroom. “Here. I’ll send my boy around for the horses. You will drive not a single nail into my wood without my permission, understood?”

“Understood, good host,” said Finn. “And if anyone is asking for us, send them to me. My name is Teodoros.”

When Bedoyas had stumped off to see to other guests (not that he seemed to be overwhelmed with custom this winter) Briony helped the company begin setting up a stage—the most permanent they had built since she had been with them, because they would now be at least a tennight in one place. Several of the men were in truth more carpenters than performers, and at least three of the shareholding players, Dowan Birch, Feival, and Pedder Makewell himself, had worked in the building trades.

Hewney claimed he had as well, but Finn Teodoros loudly suggested otherwise.

“What rubbish are you spouting, fat man?” Hewney was helping Feival and two of the others lash together the barrels that would be pillars for the stage. They did not bother to bring their own, since most inns had more than a few empties to spare, and The False Woman was no exception. “I have built more houses than you’ve eaten hot suppers!”

“You must have set up Tessis by yourself, then,” said Pedder Makewell. “Look at the size of our Finn!”

“It would be a more telling jest, Master Makewell,” Teodoros replied a touch primly, “if your own greatly swollen sack of guts were not falling over your belt. As it is, the nightsoil digger is suggesting that the saltpeter man stinks.”

Briony did not know why she found that so funny, but she did; she nearly fell over laughing despite (or perhaps because of ) Estir Makewell’s sour look. She and Makewell’s sister were shoveling sand into the barrels to make them stronger supports under the middle of the stage. Estir still did not really like the person she thought of as “Tim”—she would never like adding another hungry mouth to the troop, which reduced the income of the shareholdings—but she had softened toward Briony a bit.

“Leave it to a child,” said Estir, rolling her eyes, “to find such a jest so laughable.” She scowled at the others. “And you men are just as bad. You would think you were all still babies, soiling your smallclothes, to see you get such pleasure out of dribble, fart, and ordure.”

This started Briony laughing all over again—it was the same thing her prim and squeamish brother Barrick had often said about her, although her twin had obviously never blamed it on her being a child.

It was cold out and her hands were chapped and aching already from the rough handle on the shovel, but Briony felt oddly content. She was almost happy, she realized—for the first time in too long to remember: the miseries that dogged her thoughts were not by any means gone, but for the moment she could live with them, as if she and they were old enemies grown too weary to contend.

The men brought out the pieces of the stage and joined them together in one large rectangle, then set it on top of the barrels and lashed the whole thing together. Briony herself, as one of the lightest, was sent to stand on top of it to test its resilience. When she had bounced up and down on it vigorously enough to assure everyone, they continued preparing the rest of their makeshift theater. The smaller of the two wagons was rolled into place at the back of the stage where it would serve as a tiring-room for entrances, exits, and quick changes, as well as a wall on which to hang painted backdrops. They lifted up the hinged top of the wagon, folding it upward so that it could serve as a kind of wall or tower-top from which actors could speak their lines or, as gods, meddle in the lives of callow mortals from on high. Briony could see the persimmon-colored sunlight of fading afternoon on the uppermost peaks of the mountains southeast of Tessis and wondered if the gods were truly up there as she had been taught, watching her and all the other petty mortals.

But Lisiya said they were...what? Sleeping? They can hear us, she said—but can they still see us?

It was strange to think of the gods being blind and only faintly aware of the existence of Briony’s kind, like vastly aged grandparents snoring in their chairs, barely moving from the beginning of one day to its end.

No wonder they long to come back to the world again, as Lisiya said. She was immediately chilled, although she could not quite say why. She bent and returned to bracing the wagon wheels with stones.

The morning meal, a surprisingly hearty fish stew the tavernkeeper Bedoyas had served them in a big iron pot, with a spicy tang that Finn told her came from things called marashis, was not lying quietly in her stomach. It was no fault of the tavern’s cook, though: Briony was fretful. The tavern yard was already starting to fill, even though the play would not begin until the temple bells rang in Blessed Lady of Night to call the end of afternoon prayers, which was most of an hour away. She had never performed in front of more than a few dozen people in any of the villages or towns along the way, but there were twice that many here already and the yard was still half empty.

What are you frightened of, girl? she asked herself. You have fought a demon, not to mention escaped a usurper. You have stood before many times this number and acted the queen in truth—or at least the reigning princess —a far more taxing role. Players don’t lose their heads when they fail to convince, as I almost lost mine. She thought of Hendon Tolly and a little shudder of rage passed through her. Oh, but I would glory to have his head on a chopping block. I would take up the ax myself. Briony, who although rough and boyish in some ways, as her maids and family had never ceased pointing out, was not or bloodthirsty, but she wanted fiercely to see Tolly humiliated and punished.

I owe it to Shaso’s memory, if nothing else, she thought. I can’t make amends for imprisoning him, but I can avenge him.

Shaso had been innocent of her brother’s murder, but she still did not know who exactly was guilty, beyond the obvious. Who had been the guiding hand behind a murder by witchcraft? Hendon Tolly, however dark his heart and bloody his hands, had seemed genuinely surprised at Anissa’s maid’s horrific transformation—but if the Tollys had not had her brother murdered, then who was to blame? It was impossible to believe the witch-maid had conceived and executed such a scheme on her own. Could it have been one of Olin’s rival kings? Or the distant autarch? Perhaps even the fairy folk, reaching out somehow from their shadowy land, a first blow before their attack? In truth, the lives of the Eddon family had been completely shaken to pieces in a matter of months by magic and monsters. Why had any of this happened?

“Hoy, Tim.” Feival was already pulling his shirt over his head as he squeezed into the cramped wagon. “You look stuck—do you need help with your dress?” As the company’s principal boy he was more familiar with putting on a gown than Briony herself, who had always been assisted by her maids.

She shook her head, almost relieved. The workaday had returned to push out other things, no matter their importance. “No, but thank you. I was just thinking.”

“Good house today,” he said, stepping out of his tights with the indifference of a veteran player. Briony turned away, still not used to seeing naked men, although it had not been an infrequent experience since she had been traveling with the troop. Feival in particular was lithe and well-muscled, and it was interesting to realize that she could enjoy looking at him without wanting anything more.

Maybe I really am boyish, as Barrick used to say. Maybe I’m just fickle of eye and heart, like a man. There was no question, though, that she wanted more in her life than simply a handsome man at her side. She could feel it some nights, different from the yearning she felt for her lost brothers and her father: she did not want a particular person, she wanted somebody, a man who would hold her only when she wanted, who would be warm and strong.

But sometimes when she had such thoughts, she saw a face that surprised her—the commoner, the failed guardian, Ferras Vansen. It was exasperating. If there was a less appropriate person in the world for her to think about, she could scarcely imagine it. Who knew if he was even alive?

No, she told herself quickly, he must be alive. He must be fit and well and protecting my brother.

It was odd, though, that Vansen’s not-so-handsome face kept drifting into her thoughts, his nose that bore the signs of having been broken, his eyes that scarcely ever looked at her, hiding always behind lowered lids as he stared at the ground or at the sky, as though her very gaze was a fire that would burn him... She stopped, gasped in a short breath. Could it be? “Are you well?”

“No—I mean yes, Feival, I’m well enough. I just...I just poked myself with something sharp.”

It was madness to think this way. Worse, it was meaningless madness: if Vansen lived, he was lost—lost with her brother. The whole of that life was gone, as if it had happened to another person, and unless she could somehow find help for herself and Southmarch, nothing like it would ever come again. Her task now was to be a player, at least for today—not a shareholder, even, but an assistant to the principal boy, working for meals in a tavern yard in Tessis. That was all. She knew she must learn to accept that.

“We are not in the March Kingdoms any more, so speak your parts loudly and broadly,” said Pedder Makewell, as if any of them did not know that already. “Now, where is Pilney?”

The players were all crammed into a little high-walled alley behind the tavern because there was not room for them all in the tiring-room and the yard was filled by their audience, a large group of city folk finished with work and eager for the start of the Kerneia revels. One end of the alley was bricked off, the other sealed with a huge pile of building rubble, so the spot was fairly private, but a few people in the buildings that backed on the alley leaned out of their windows to stare at the crowd of actors in their colorful costumes. “Where is Pilney?” Makewell asked again.

Pilney, younger even than Feival Ulian but far more shy and not half so pretty, raised his hand. The heavyset, red-faced youth was playing the part of the moon god Khors, and although this had thrown him much together with Briony, he had scarcely spoken a word to her that Teodoros had not written.

“Right,” Makewell said to him sternly. “You have spattered me quite roundly with blood the last two performances, boy, and you have spoiled my costume both times, not to mention my curtain call. When you die today, do me the kindness of facing a little away before you burst your bladder, or next time you’ll die from a real clubbing instead of a few taps with a sham.”

Pilney, wide-eyed, nodded his head rapidly.

“If you have finished terrifying the young fellow, Pedder,” said Finn Teodoros, “perhaps I might essay a few truly important points?”

“It is an expensive costume!” said Estir Makewell, defending her brother.

“Yes, the rest of us, in our rags, have all noticed.”

“Whose name is on the troop, I ask you?” Pedder demanded. “Who do they come to see?”

“Oh, you, of course.” Finn made a droll face. “And you are right to warn the boy. Otherwise, tavern gossip all over Syan would whisper that in the play about the death of gods, Pedder Makewell, at the end of the particularly bloody slaughter of his archenemy, was seen to have blood on him! Who would pay to witness such a ludicrous farce?”

“You mock me. Very well. You may launder Perin’s fine armor, then.”

“Or better yet, Makewell,” called Nevin Hewney, “we could dress you in a butcher’s smock, which would suit both your swordplay and your acting!”

“Quiet!” shouted Teodoros over the bellows of outrage and amusement, “I would like to get on with our notices, please. Also, I have a few changes.

“Feival, in the first act, where Zosim comes to Perin to describe the fortifications of Khors’ castle, instead of ‘Covered in shining crystals of ice,’ could you say, ‘In shining ice crystals covered,’? It suits the foot better. Yes, and lordly Perin, the word is ‘plenilune,’ not ‘pantaloon,’—‘My foeman smite, and cleave the plenilune,’—it means full moon, and, needless to say, gives the speech quite a different import.”

Over laughter, Makewell said with returning good nature, “Plenilune, plenilune—I trow he has invented the word just to trouble me. The fat ink-dauber has choked many an actor in his day.”

“Yes, good, good,” said Teodoros, staring at the rag of paper on which he had scratched his reminders. “All three brothers must turn together toward the Moon Castle when we hear the trumpets, we spoke of that. Certes.” He turned the bit of paper over. “Ah, yes, in the second act, we must see Khors truly grab at Zoria when she flees him. Pilney, you have already seized her and dragged her to your castle. Now you must clutch at her as though you mean to keep her, not as though she has dropped something in the street and you have retrieved it.” As Pilney blushed and mumbled, Teodoros turned to Briony. “And you, young Tim. Do not shake him off when he grabs you, no matter how whey-faced his manhandling. You are a virgin goddess, not a street bravo.”

Now it was her turn to blush. Shaso had taught her too well: when a hand encircled her arm she threw it off without thinking. The first time they played the scene she had pinched Pilney’s wrist hard enough to make him gasp. She suspected it was one of the reasons he had kept his distance.

“And where is Master Birch? Dowan, I know your knees pain you, but when Volios is struck down by Zmeos, the earth shakes—that is what the stories tell. You cannot let yourself down so carefully.”

The giant frowned, but nodded. Briony felt sorry for him. Perhaps she could find some spare cloth and make him thicker pads for his large, bony knees.

Teodoros went on to change much of the blocking at the beginning of the siege to obscure the fact that Feival and Hewney had to scramble out of their Zuriyal and Zmeos costumes and into armor, then appear from the tiring-room to portray the gods and demigods Perin was leading against the moon god’s fortress. He changed a few of Feival’s lines in the fourth act when the youth portrayed Zuriyal, the goddess who was Zoria’s jailer while her brothers Zmeos and Khors fought against Perin and the besiegers.

Teodoros was also making a few changes to shift the balance in Khors’ death scene away from Pilney, who had a tendency to grow quietest when he should be loudest, and to give most of the speech to Hewney (who would “milk it as ’twere a Marrinswalk heifer,” as Teodoros put it) when the tavernkeeper Bedoyas stuck his head out into the alley and inquired whether they were actually going to perform their miserable play, or had they just concocted a complex but novel way to rob him?

“Zosim, Kupilas, and Devona of the Harp, gladden the hearts of those who will watch us,” said Teodoros as he always did, his hands on his chest. “And off we go!”

Things went smoothly enough in the first three acts. The tavern yard was very full but the day was gray and cold, and the torches burning brightly on either side of the stage made it hard for Briony to make out much more of the crowd than dim faces watching from under hoods and hats. From what she could see, they seemed to be a slightly more prosperous group than the company had drawn at other stops, but they were still mostly laboring folk, not lords and ladies. A few companies of youths (prentices of some sort enjoying a drunken afternoon’s roistering) had set themselves up in the front row, where they whistled loudly and shouted rude remarks at Feival, Briony, and anyone else dressed as a woman. The fact that these were holy goddesses they were eyeing so lasciviously did not seem to trouble them much.

Briony herself was doing better than she had feared she would. It was not as hard to remember the lines as she once had thought—simply speaking them over and over, day after day, made them as familiar as the names of people she saw often, and the lattice of other player’s parts helped to hold her together during the few times her memory slipped. And the story itself was exciting—you could see it in the crowd’s reaction, their groans of worry and cheers of pleasure as the action turned first this way, then that. When Perin led his forces against Khors’ great castle—the wagon serving not just as a dressing-room, but as the moon siege itself, with Pilney standing atop it shouting defiance—the audience whooped, and a few seemed as though they were considering climbing onto the stage and joining in the assault. When Perin’s son Volios was killed by Khors, and Dowan Birch toppled as heavily as the tree for which he was named, blood running down his belly from between his clasped hands, Briony thought she actually heard a few sobs.

It was in the fourth act, as the virgin goddess stole away from the distracted Zuriyal and escaped the castle, only to become lost in a whirling snowstorm (with fluttering rags on sticks and the moan of the wind-wheel standing in for Nature) that things suddenly went wrong. One moment Briony was speaking her lines, “The snow! It bites like Zmeos’ cruel bees, And shrinks to pebbled hide my uncloaked skin! I shall don these clothes the serving boy left. They shame my maidenhood, source of my woes, But will keep me quick when cold would kill me...”

The next instant she found herself staring into a diminishing tunnel of light, the torches and the overcast sky all swirling together as the blackness rushed in from the sides. She swayed, then managed to get her feet under her, and although the world still sparkled queerly, as though fireflies surrounded her, she managed to finish her speech.

“...But warmer though I be, still lost am I, And without food, then—cold or warm,—will die.”

A few moments later, when she should have gently sunk to her knees, she found herself instead doing what Finn had asked of Dowan Birch, crashing to the stage with a thump. Again the world darkened. She could hear nothing, not even the spinning, burlap-covered drum that made the noise of wind, could feel nothing but an overwhelming sensation of being close to Barrick—an awareness more alive than any mere scent or sound, a sense of actually being inside her brother’s frightened, confused thoughts.

Out of the darkness crept a terrible shape, a starvation-thin shadow with a gray, corpselike face. At first, in her frightened bafflement, she thought that it was death itself coming for her. Then she realized she must be seeing something through her twin brother’s eyes—an emotionless mask with glowing moonstone gaze, gliding nearer and nearer. It was not Death, but she knew it was something just as final and much less merciful.

She tried to scream her brother’s name, but as in a hundred nightmares she could not make any real sound. The ghastly gray face came closer, so terrifying that the blackness collapsed on her again.

“Zoria!” said a loud voice in her ear. “Here she lies, my virtuous cousin! Are you dead, sweet daughter of the Skyfather? Who has done this terrible thing to you?”

It was Feival, she realized, standing over her and improvising lines, trying to give her time to get up. She opened her eyes to see the young player’s concerned features. What had happened to her? That deathly, nightmare face...!

“Can you walk, Cousin?” Feival asked, trying to get an arm beneath her so he could lift her. “Shall I help you?” With his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, “What are you playing at, girl?”

She shook off his hand and clambered unsteadily to her feet. She could feel the tension that had fallen over the company and audience alike; the latter were not certain yet that something was wrong, but they were beginning to suspect. She couldn’t think about Barrick. Not right now. This was like her life back at home, something she knew: she must put on her mask.

“Well, noble...” She swayed, took an uneven breath. “Well, noble cousin, kind Zosim,” she began again. “I can walk now that...that you are here to guide me out from these unfriendly winds.”

She could hear Finn Teodoros sigh with relief at the back of the stage, half a dozen yards away.

The last few bystanders were milling about in the tavern yard, finishing their food and drink. A handful of drunken prentices talked in overloud voices about which goddess they would rather kiss. Estir and Pedder Makewell had gone inside with Bedoyas the tavern keeper to sort out the afternoon’s take, while Teodoros, Hewney, and the rest celebrated the success of the afternoon’s production with a few pitchers of ale. Briony still felt shaky. She sat by herself on the edge of the stage, holding a mug without drinking and staring at her shoes. What had happened to her? It had been like nothing she had ever felt before—not even like seeing Barrick in the mirror that time, but like being Barrick. And who or what was that ghastly gray...thing?

She felt bile climb into her throat. What could she do about it, in any case? Nothing! She didn’t even know where he was. It was like a curse—she could do nothing to help her own brother! Nothing, nothing, nothing... “Well, my lady, I see you took my advice after all.” For an instant she only stared—the voice was familiar, but although she knew the dark-skinned face, she could not at first recall... “Dawet!” She slid off the stage, almost spilling her ale. For a moment it was such a surprise to see someone she knew that she nearly threw her arms around him. Then she remembered that they had met because Dawet dan-Faar had come as an envoy from Ludis, to negotiate on behalf of her father’s kidnapper.

He smiled, perhaps at her visible confusion. “So you remember me. Then you may also remember that I suggested you see something of the world, my lady. I did not think you would take my advice quite so much to heart. You have become a stage-player now?”

She suddenly realized others were watching, not all of them from her troupe. “Quiet,” she whispered. “I am not supposed to be a girl, let alone a princess.”

“Passing as a boy?” he murmured. “Oh, I hardly think anyone would believe that. But what are you doing here in such unlikely guise and company?”

She stared at him, suddenly mistrustful. “I will ask the same of you. Why are you not in Hierosol? Have you left Ludis Drakava’s service?”

He shook his head. “No, my lady, although many wiser than me have already done so...” He looked up and past her, his eyes narrowing. “But what is this?”

The tavern keeper Bedoyas and both Makewells were coming across the tavern yard toward the company, but it was their escort—a dozen guardsmen wearing the crests of city reeves—that had caught Dawet’s eye. For a moment Briony only stared, then realized that she of all of them had the most to lose if captured or arrested for some reason. She eyed the nearest ways out of the yard but it was hopeless: the guards had already surrounded them.

A heavy-faced soldier wearing an officer’s sash across his tunic stepped forward. “You of the players’ company known as Makewell’s Men, you are remanded in arrest to His Majesty the king’s custody.” The captain saw Dawet and scowled. “Ah. You, too, fellow. I was told to look for a southern darkling, and here you are.”

“You would be wise to watch your tongue, sir,” said Dawet with smooth venom, but he made no move to resist.

“Arrested?” Finn Teodoros’ voice had an anxious squeak to it. “Under what charge?”

“Spying, as you well know,” said the captain. “Now you will be introduced to His Majesty’s hospitality, which I think will be a little less to your liking than that of Master Bedoyas. And entertain no thoughts of daring escape, you players— this is no play. I have half a pentecount more of soldiers waiting outside.”

“Spying?” Briony turned to Dawet. “What are they talking about?” she whispered.

“Say nothing,” he told her under his breath. “No matter what happens or what they tell you. They will try to trick you.”

She put her head down and let herself be herded with the others. Estir Makewell and young Pilney were both weeping. Others might have been, but it was hard to tell, because rain had started to fall.

“I’m afraid I cannot go with you,” Dawet said loudly.

Briony turned, thinking he spoke to her. He had drawn himself back against a wall of the courtyard, a knife suddenly twinkling in his gloved fingers. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but Dawet did not even look at her.

“Enough of your nonsense, black,” said the captain. “Were you Hiliometes himself you could not overcome so many.”

“I swear on the fiery head of Zosim Salamandros that you have the wrong man,” said Dawet. One of the guards stepped toward him, but the Tuani man had the blade up and cocked for throwing so quickly the soldier froze as if snake-addled.

The captain sighed. “Swear by the Salamander, do you?” He stared at Dawet dan-Faar like a householder trying to decide whether to buy a lump of expensive meat that was only going in the stew, anyway. “You two, you heard him,” he said, gesturing to a pair of guards standing nearby, short spears at the ready. “Deal with him. I have better things to do than waste any more time here.”

The two heavily-armored men lunged forward and Briony let out a muffled shriek of alarm. Dawet, handicapped by the much shorter reach of his dagger, feinted as if to throw it, then turned, leaped, and scrambled over the courtyard wall. The two guards hesitated only a moment, then hurried out through the yard’s back entrance. A few other soldiers moved as if to follow, but the captain waved them back.

“Those two are canny fellows,” he told his men. “Don’t worry, they will deal with that Xandy fool.”

“Unless the darkling can fly like Strivos himself, you’re right to call him foolish,” the tavernkeeper Bedoyas chuckled. “That alley’s a dead end.” Briony wanted to hit the man in his fat face.

But to her surprise, the guards appeared a moment later without Dawet. They were smiling nervously, as if pleased by their own failure. “He’s gone, sir. Got clean away.”

“He did, did he?” The commander nodded grimly. “We’ll talk about this later.”

The rest of the guards shoved Briony and the other players back into line again and led them out of the inn, marching them toward the stronghold in the great palace at the city’s center. Bad enough to have lost a throne, but now even her humble, counterfeit life as a player was in ruins. Briony’s eyes blurred with tears, though she tried hard to wipe them away. As they crossed the first bridge it seemed she walked through some place even stranger than the capital of a foreign land.

37. Silence

While Matt Tinwright paused for breath and mopped his brow, Puzzle played a refrain on the lute. The tune was a little more sprightly than Tinwright would have liked, considering the seriousness of the subject matter, but he had finished his poem so late that the two had found little time to practice.

He nodded to the old jester, ready to begin again. Most of the courtiers, although not all, politely lowered their voices once more.

“At last Surazem came to birthing bed,” Tinwright declaimed, halfsinging in the Syannese style now expected at court entertainments, “As the Four Winds hovered to cool her brow, Her sister, her semblance, stood at her head Dark Onyena, bound by a sacred vow Like oxen traced unwilling to the plow. On high Sarissa her own infant son Lay coldly dead ’neath the pine’s snowy bough Because Sveros cruelly had decreed that none Should midwife one twin but the other one...”

For long moments Tinwright could almost forget what was really happening—that almost no one was listening to the words he declaimed, that the rumble of talk and drunken laughter made it hard for even those few who wanted to hear, and that in any case there were darker, grimmer matters to think about than even the fall of gods—and could revel in the fact that for this moment, at least, he was presenting his verse before the entire royal court of Southmarch. His own verse!

“But now as Perin’s infant head appeared Surazem’s dark twin saw her time, and thieved From out her sister’s belly, blood-besmeared, That essence which the world has so long grieved For Onyena with it three more conceived, Repaying cruelly the death of her own, A fated tapestry which first she weaved As her sister in childbirth’s pain did groan And thus were the seeds of the gods’ war sown...”

One of the few people paying attention was the man who had commissioned the poem, Hendon Tolly himself, who frightened Tinwright in ways he had never even imagined possible. Another was the young woman Elan M’Cory, the object of Tinwright’s own painful affection, to whom he had promised to bring poison tonight.

A strange audience, at best, he admitted to himself.

One of those most obviously not paying attention was Hendon’s brother, the new Duke of Summerfield. Caradon Tolly was more like the dead brother Gailon than like Hendon, jut-jawed and big across the shoulders. His square face reflected little of what went on behind it— Tinwright thought he seemed more statue than man—but he was known to be heavy-handed and ruthless, though perhaps lacking his younger sibling’s flair for cruelty. Just now Duke Caradon was staring openly at the Southmarch nobles gathered in the banquet hall, as if making a list of who would serve the Tollys well and who would not. The objects of his gaze looked almost uniformly discomforted.

Looking at this cold, powerful man, Matt Tinwright felt sick at his stomach. What am I thinking, meddling in the Tollys’ affairs? I am far out of my depth—they could kill me in an instant! Remembering how certain he had been only a few days ago that he would be executed, he almost lost his place in the poem. He had to swallow down this sudden fright and force himself back into his words, spreading his arms as he declaimed, “...But those three treacherous siblings, theft-bred, Plotted long Perin’s heritage to steal When Sveros, fearsome sire of all, was dead. ’Til then, they’d follow meekly at the heel And by soft words and smiles their lies conceal While Zmeos, their chief, banked his envious fires...”

A few courtiers shifted restlessly. Matt Tinwright, sliding back and forth between terror of death and the nearly equal terror of having his work ridiculed, could not help wondering if he had made the beginning of the poem too long. After all, every child raised in the Trigonate faith heard the tale of the three brothers and their infamous step-siblings at almost every religious festival. But Hendon Tolly wanted legitimacy, and so he had wanted as much in the poem as possible about the selfless purity of Madi Surazem and the perfidy of old Sveros, Lord of Twilight—the better to prop his own family’s claim to virtue, Tinwright supposed.

He did feel a little ashamed to be trumpeting the selfserving nonsense of such a serpent as Hendon Tolly, but he consoled himself with the thought that no one in Southmarch would ever actually believe such things: Olin Eddon had been one of the best-loved kings in memory, a bold warrior in his youth, fair and wise in his age. He was no Sveros.

Also, Tinwright was a poet, and he told himself that poets could not fight the powers of the world, at least not with anything but words—and even with words, they had to be careful. We worshipers of the Harmonies are easy to kill, he thought. The hoi polloi might weep after we are gone, when they realize what they’ve lost, but that does us no good if we’re already dead.

In any case, only Hendon Tolly appeared to be following the words with anything more than perfunctory interest. Now that his brother Caradon was no longer surveying the crowd, and had turned to stare disinterestedly at the banquet hall hangings, the rest of the courtiers were free to watch the duke and whisper behind their hands. Almost all of them had been out in the cold wind that morning when Caradon Tolly and his entourage had disembarked from their ship and paraded into Southmarch at the head of four pentecounts of fully armed men wearing the Tolly’s boar and spears on their shields. Something in the soldiers’ grim faces had made it clear to even the most heedless castlefolk that the Tollys were not just making a show, but making a claim.

As Tinwright declaimed the verses in which the Trigon brothers finally defeated their ferocious father, Caradon continued to tap his fingers absently and stare at nothing, but his brother Hendon leaned forward, eyes unnaturally bright and a smile playing across his lips. By contrast, Elan M’Cory seemed to shrink deeper and deeper into herself, so that even though Tinwright could see her eyes, they seemed as cold and lifeless as one of the eerie pictures in the portrait hall, the dead nobility that watched upstart poets with disapproving gazes. Matt Tinwright’s longing and dread were too great to look at her for more than a moment.

As with all the stories of the immortals, he had discovered he could only make an ending happy by a careful choice of stopping point. This was a poem in honor of a childblessing, after all—he could not very well go on to describe the hatred that grew between the Onyenai and Perin’s Surazemai. Tinwright did not think even Hendon Tolly expected him to celebrate young Olin Alessandros’ naming day with a poem about one set of royal brothers destroying the children of another royal wife. If Olin or one of the twins ever regained the throne, that would be the kind of thing remembered at treason trials.

Treason. As he raised his voice to begin the last stanzas, Tinwright felt cold sweat prickle his forehead again. Let Zosim, god of poets, stand beside him now! Why was he worrying about something as far away as a treason trial? He was planning to do something tonight that could get him beheaded without any trial at all!

He faltered for a moment, just as Perin was about to throw down his cruel, drunken father. Ordinarily Tinwright didn’t think much about the actual gods except as almost inexhaustible subjects for poetry, but there were moments like this when his childhood terror of them came sweeping back, moments when he stood again in their long cold shadow and knew that someday he must face their judgment.

“Great Sveros, Twilight Lord, roared in his rage, ‘How, shall sons spit into their father’s face? My curse shall rain like blood on all this age And pursue each whelp of my cursed race Until Time doth all who now live erase.’ They bound him then in chains Kernios made And cast him into dusky vaults of space To drift unfleshed in sempiternal shade ’Til thought and feeling both should frameless fade...”

His legs shaky, as much from misgiving as from being so long on his feet, he spoke the final lines and Puzzle gave a last flourish on the lute. Tinwright bowed. As the courtiers lazily followed Hendon Tolly’s lead, applauding and calling a few words of praise, Elan M’Cory rose from her seat beside the guardian of Southmarch and made to go. For a moment Tinwright caught a flick of her eyes beneath the veil, then Hendon Tolly extended a hand and stopped her.

“But where are you off to, dear sister-in-law? The poet has labored hard to deliver this work to us. Surely you have a few words of praise for him.”

“Let her go,” growled Caradon Tolly. “Let them all go. You and I have things to talk about, brother.”

“But our poor poet, swooning for want of kind words from fair ladies...” prompted Hendon, grinning.

Elan swayed, and Tinwright had a sudden terror she would crumple, that she would faint and be surrounded by lady’s maids, the physician would be called, and all Tinwright’s careful plans to free her from her misery would be upset. “Of course, my dear brother-in-law,” she said wearily. “I extend my praise and gratitude to the poet. It is always instructive to hear of the lives of the gods, that we mortals can learn to comport ourselves properly.” She gave a half a courtesy, then reached out a trembling hand, letting one of her maids support her arm as she made her way slowly out of the room. The murmur of conversation, which had dropped almost to silence, now rose again.

“Thank all the gods my wife is not such a frail flower,” Caradon said with his lip curled. “Little Elan has always been the doleful one of that family.”

Hendon Tolly beckoned Tinwright forward. He produced a bag that clinked and put it in Tinwright’s hands.

“Thank you, Lord Tolly.” He tucked it away quickly, without testing the weight—to receive anything other than a blow from this man was a gift in itself. “You are too kind. I am glad my words...”

“Yes, yes. It amused me, and there is little that does so these days. Did you see old Brone squirming when you spoke the part about ‘Ever must the blood of tyrants water That free and sovereign soil of our fair honor’? It was very funny.”

“I...I didn’t notice, my lord.”

Tolly shrugged. “Still, it is like spearing fish in a soup bowl. I miss the Syannese court. They are sharp as daggers, there. A good jest is appreciated. Not like here, or in my family’s house, which is like dining with the local deacon in some Helmingsea village.”

“Enough, Hendon,” said Caradon sharply. “Send this warbling phebe away—we have men’s talk to talk and your childish festivities have wasted enough of my time.”

Tinwright thought the look Hendon gave his brother the duke was one of the strangest he had ever seen, a combination of amusement and deadly loathing. “By all means, elder brother. You may withdraw, poet.”

Tinwright, sickened, could tell that Hendon planned to murder his brother someday. He had also seen in that same moment that Caradon himself knew it very well, and that the duke probably planned the same for his younger brother. The two of them scarcely bothered to conceal their feelings, even in front of a stranger. How could one family breed such hatred? No wonder Elan wanted to escape them into death.

“Of course,” Tinwright said as he quickly backed away. “Going now. Thank you, my lords.”

He at least had the small satisfaction of seeing that Erlon Meaher, another court poet who thought much of himself, had been watching his conversation with the two Tollys. Meaher’s face was twisted in an unhidden grimace of envy and dislike.

“Get yourself some wine, Tinwright,” Hendon Tolly called after him. “I’m sure reciting poetry is almost as thirsty work as killing—if not quite as enjoyable.”

It was the hardest hour of waiting he had ever experienced. He knocked on her door while the bells were still chiming the end of evening prayers.

Elan M’Cory opened it herself, shrouded in a heavy black robe. She had sent away her servants to protect him, Tinwright realized, and he was surprised again by the intensity of feeling she aroused in him.

It was a touch of lover’s madness, surely—the very thing he had written about so many times. He had always felt secretly superior to the sort of lovesick people found in poems, almost contemptuous, but in these last days, as he had come to realize that he could not sleep, eat, drink, stand, sit, or talk without thinking about Elan M’Cory, matters had begun to seem very different. For one thing, although he had alluded in many a poem to the “happy pain” or even the “sweet agony” of love, he had not understood that the agony could be worse than any other sort of agony—worse than any actual pain of the limbs or organs, worse even than the way his head felt after a night out with Hewney and Teodoros, which he had previously thought could not be outdone for misery. And there was no way to separate a wounded heart from the body it tormented—no way except death.

He was terrified to realize he now understood Elan’s pain very well, although hers had quite a different cause.

He reached out to take her hand but she would not let him. “Let me beg you one last time, my lady—please do not do this.” He felt oddly flat. He knew what her response would be, and in fact, he could think of no other way forward at this point except to let the grim machinery turn, but he had to say it.

“You have been a loyal, kind friend, Matt, and I wish nothing more than it could be another way, but there is no escape for me. Hendon will never loose his claws. He savors my pain too much, and he would kill you in an instant if he thought I cared for you. I could not bear that.” She hung her head. “Soon Queen Anissa will be his, too, if she is not already—he pays court to her as though she were already widowed. Nobody knows the depths of that man’s evil.” Elan took a deep breath, then undid the tie of her robe and threw it off, revealing a brilliant blaze that startled him like lightning. She was dressed all in white, like a bride or a phantom.

“Do you have it?” she said. She was anxious, but happy, too, like a woman on her wedding day. “Do you have that which will save me, sweet Matty?”

He swallowed. “I do.” He reached into his pocket and found the swaddled flask. He had replaced the kelp leaf in which it had been wrapped with a square of velvet he had stolen from Puzzle, but it still smelled of the sea.

She wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”

“It does not matter. It is what you wished, my lady. My Elan.” He himself was as fretful as the most callow bridegroom. She looked so beautiful in her white nightgown, even though he could scarcely see her through his tears. “I will administer it for you. I will hold your head.”

She had been staring at the tiny flask with horrified fascination, but now she looked up, confused. “Why?”

He had not thought about this, and for a moment he was flustered. “So that it does not stain your gown, my lady. So your beauty is not...is not spoiled...” He gasped, a sob stuck in his gorge that was so big he feared he would not breathe again.

“Bless you, Matt, you are so sweet to me. I know I am...I know I am not fit for you or any other gods-fearing man... but...but you may love me, if you wish.” She saw that he did not understand. “Make love to me. It will make no difference where I’m bound, and it would be sweet to have such love from you before...before...” A single tear rolled down her cheek, but she smiled and wiped it away. She was the bravest thing Tinwright had ever seen.

His heart squeezed him. “I cannot, Lady. Oh, gods, my beloved Elan! I would like nothing...have thought of...I...” He paused and wiped his forehead, sweaty despite the evening chill. “I cannot. Not this way.” He swallowed. “I hope one day you will understand why and forgive me.”

She shook her head, her smile so sadly sweet it was like a knife in his chest. “You do not have to explain, dear Matthias. It was selfish of me. I had only hoped...”

“You will never know the depth of my feelings, Elan. Please. Let’s not speak of it anymore. It is too hard.” He squinted, wiped fiercely at his eyes. “Just...let me hold your head. Here, lie against me.” As she nestled against him, her back against his belly, her head against his shoulder, he could feel every place she touched him, through both her clothes and his, like a hot nail through a blacksmith’s glove. “Lean back,” he whispered, feeling as though he were a monster worse even than Hendon Tolly. “Lean back. Close your eyes and open your mouth.”

She shut her eyes. He marveled at her long lashes, which cast shadows on her cheeks in the candlelight. “Oh, but first I must pray!” she said in a small voice. “It is never too late for that, surely? Zoria will hear me, even if she decides to spurn my request. I must try.”

“Of course,” he said.

Her lips moved silently for a while. Tinwright stared. “I am done,” she said quietly, her eyes still tight shut.

He leaned forward then, letting her breath swirl gently against his face, then kissed her. She flinched, expecting something else, then her lips softened and for a moment that seemed like an hour he let himself vanish into the astonishing truth of what he had dreamed so often. At last he pulled back, but not before one of his tears splashed on her cheek. So sweet, so trusting, so sad!

“Oh, Elan,” he whispered, “forgive me for this—for all of this.”

She did not speak again, but lay with her mouth open like a child who waited, fearful but bravely patient, for some terrifying physic. He used his sleeve to pull the stopper from the flask, then used the needle ever so carefully to lift a single drop and let it fall into her mouth.

Elan M’Cory gave a little gasp of surprise, then swallowed. “It does not taste like so much,” she said. “Bitter, but not painfully so.”

Tinwright could not speak.

“I could have loved you well,” she said, and a smile played around her lips. “Ah, what a strange sensation! I cannot feel my tongue. I think...”

She fell silent. Her breath slowed until he could not perceive it any longer.

One moment Ferras Vansen was there and the next moment the guard captain was gone, tumbled into nothingness without even crying out, torn away so quickly that, like a man whose leg had been blasted off by a cannonball, Barrick Eddon had only perceived the shock but not the loss itself.

The demigod Jikuyin was bellowing with both his voice and his thoughts, making the air of the cavern shudder and Barrick’s bones throb inside his flesh. “OH! OH, THEY ARE FREE, THE CURSED LITTLE TRICKSTERS!” The giant swung his shaggy head toward Barrick, who crouched panting at the base of the massive doorway, dropped by his guards as they fought Vansen. The demigod’s great eye narrowed and he turned to his lieutenant, the gray man; even the Dreamless seemed to have been caught by surprise. “Ueni’ssoh!” Although he spoke less harshly, the demigod’s words still rattled Barrick’s skull. “Carry on, you bloodless fool!” For the first time, Barrick could hear the actual words Jikuyin spoke, a rumbling, spiky tongue that bore no relation to what he heard in his head. “The gate is still open! Finish the invocation!”

Ueni’ssoh glided toward him and Barrick stumbled to his feet, but three more guards had fallen in behind the Dreamless, two of them armed with jagged-bladed axes, and he knew it was only a matter of moments until they would have him bleeding like a hung pig all over the threshold of the god’s gate. But his shackles were gone, he realized in wonder: somehow Vansen had struck them off before the darkness took him.

Down! The warning in his head seemed so close, so powerful, that for an instant he thought it must be the voice of the demigod himself pounding in his skull. Get down! Now!

Barrick looked around in confusion. Gyir was free of his shackles, too. The fairy-warrior stood on the top of a small rise of stone with half a dozen dead guards sprawled at his feet and something burning brightly in his hand—a flaming skull...?

If you want to live another moment, boy, the fairy’s voice trumpeted through his thoughts, THEN LIE DOWN!

Barrick threw himself toward the ground even as Gyir’s arm swept forward and what seemed a tiny comet hurtled across the cavern. For a moment everything seemed to stop—the faces of guards and prisoners lifted and turned like sunflowers as they followed the path of the blazing thing —then a blast of heat and light crashed across the cavern and rolled Barrick violently before dropping him again. He lay in a vibrating silence, unable to get up, as if lightning had struck only a short distance away.

The rush of ideas into his head was so violent that at first Barrick could make no sense of the demigod’s angry burst of words and thoughts—he felt only a huge hammer of noise pounding at his ears and mind until he felt sure his head would collapse like an eggshell.

“...HOW DID THAT MONGREL CREATURE, THAT FACELESS SLUG, GET HIS HANDS ON MY PRECIOUS FIREPOWDER...?”

Stunned and limp, Barrick thought it might be easiest simply to lie here on his back and let the world end, but a small, nagging voice in the back of his mind kept suggesting that perhaps a prince should meet his death sitting up. He rolled over, trying to get his legs under him.

Another thunderous crack, farther away this time and followed not by ringing silence but by hoarse screams, proved that at least there was still sound and direction and distance. Barrick sat up and brushed something wet off his arm—a rag of bloody skin, but not his own. The rest of the shaggy guard and his two companions, victims of the first of the flaming things Gyir had thrown, were scattered across several yards of cavern floor. Even in such chaos, Barrick was glad the lights were dim: it was madly strange to see things that were so small and yet obviously part of a person who had been alive only moments before.

Gyir, who had been surrounded by guards and prisoners, now stood alone in a widening circle as creatures scrambled away from him in all directions. The fairy held a dirt-smeared death’s head in each hand, and Barrick wondered what strange magic the faceless warrior had summoned.

Get up and run, Barrick Eddon. Gyir’s words echoed in his head and he clambered to his feet almost without realizing.

I will keep them back as long as my fireballs last.

Barrick could not frame the words, but Gyir must have sensed his confusion.

Exploding devices. I had those I could command pack skulls with gun-flour, seal them with mud, and leave them here for me. This way Jikuyin’s victims will get at least a little revenge! Gyir’s thoughts billowed like windblown flame —he was laughing! For the first time Barrick could feel that the fairy had truly been raised in battle, that it was his element in a way it would never be Barrick’s. Now go, while I hold them at bay! Strike for the surface!

But Vansen...!

Is gone, likely dead. All that is certain is that he is lost to us now. You must go. Do you yet have the thing I gave you?

Barrick had forgotten the mirror. His hand crept to his shirt.

Yes.

Think of it no more. Flee! I will do what I can here. But you have to come with me...!

It is more important that at least one of us escapes, Barrick Eddon. Take it to the king in the House of the People. Now go. But...!

“ENOUGH!” The demigod Jikuyin rose up above a screeching herd of prisoners with flames running in their fur or their ragged clothes. The ogre seemed to grow like a ship’s bellying sail until his head threatened to bump the roof of the cavern. “YOU HAVE WASTED ENOUGH OF MY TIME, STORM LANTERN. THE DOOR TO THE EARTHLORD’S HOME IS OPEN. NO LAW, NOT EVEN THE BOOK OF THE FIRE OF THE VOID ITSELF, SAYS I CANNOT SEAL THE CHARM BY SQUEEZING THE BLOOD OUT OF THIS MORTAL CHILD LIKE WATER FROM A BAG OF WHEY!” Jikuyin took a stride toward Barrick, but Gyir bent and lit another muddied skull from the torch by his feet, then straightened and flung the fizzing, sparking ball toward the towering shape. It spat a great gout of fire and hot air as it flared at the giant’s feet and knocked him staggering, but it flung Barrick back onto his knees as well.

Run, said Gyir in a small, insistent voice, and then he lit two more skulls and flung them at Jikuyin. Before they had even struck, the fairy was running toward the roaring demigod with a spear he must have taken from one of the guards. Then the giant and Gyir both disappeared in the doublecrash of light and sound: Barrick could feel the skin on his cheeks blistering in the heat.

Barrick got up again, dizzy, with head throbbing and eyes blurred by stinging tears. He was almost blind, anyway—the cavern was full of billowing dust. He stumbled toward what he hoped was the way out, stepping over bodies that squirmed slowly, like dying insects. One of the hairy guards, its face nearly burned away, clutched weakly at his shin with charred fingers. Barrick crushed the creature’s skull with his booted foot, then pulled an ax out of its clawed grip, a weapon he could wield with his one good hand. He half climbed, half stumbled up the slope toward the doorway leading out of the great cavern. All the other prisoners and guards who could do so seemed to have fled through it already: nothing blocked his way but corpses and whimpering near-corpses.

When he reached the opening, Barrick turned back to see the demigod Jikuyin outlined by the flames in which he stood, grinning and roaring so that his cracked face seemed about to split open, with Gyir clutched in his great hand. The fairy, who should have been crushed by that awesome grip, instead stabbed and stabbed at the giant’s chest with his spear, each thrust followed by a spurt of black blood, each spurt only seeming to make Jikuyin laugh louder.

“YOU CANNOT HURT ME!” the giant shouted. “THE ICHOR OF SVEROS HIMSELF RUNS IN MY VEINS! I COULD DROWN YOUR ENTIRE RACE IN MY BLOOD AND STILL SURVIVE!”

Gyir jabbed silently, not just at Jikuyin’s chest and face, but at his massive hand, too, struggling to keep the giant from throttling out his life.

“I WILL FIND YOUR LITTLE SUNLANDER BOY LIKE A CAT FINDS A LIMPING MOUSE,” Jikuyin chortled. “THEN I WILL RIDE HIS BLOOD TO THE VERY SEAT OF THE GODS!”

Barrick knew he should run—should take advantage of Gyir’s sacrifice, however hopeless—but now something new distracted him. The light of a torch had bloomed in the cavern’s entrance. Several Drows, the twisted creatures that looked like Funderlings, had pushed a huge corpsewagon into the cavern doorway. This one was not loaded with the bodies of dead prisoners but with barrels, and the barrels were surrounded by dry straw.

A bearded Drow sat atop the barrels. He seemed oblivious to the bizarre, apocalyptic events in the cavern below him, his eyes fixed instead on something in the middle of the air. He might have been an old man beside a busy road, content to wait until his passage would be perfectly safe.

“AND WHEN I HAVE THE EARTHLORD’S POWER,”

Jikuyin was gloating, oblivious to the thick, shining blood that oozed down his front, heedless of the dozen new wounds on his face and neck, “I WILL PAINT YOUR PEOPLE’S EPITAPH WITH THE JUICES I WRING FROM YOUR CORPSES! AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT EPITAPH WILL BE?”

I know what yours will be. Gyir’s thought was so quiet that Barrick could barely understand it, although he stood only a few dozen yards away. It will be, “He was not good at thinking ahead.”

The fairy’s arm shot out. His spear jabbed so hard it pushed all the way through the demigod’s neck and out the nape. Jikuyin bellowed in anger, but did not seem any more crippled by this blow than by the others. Gyir leaped onto the giant’s neck and used the shaft of the protruding spear as an anchor so he could wrap his arms and legs tightly around Jikuyin’s head. The ogre’s cries of rage now as loud as the earlier explosions, he staggered out into the middle of the track that ran down from the doorway to the cleared space in front of the earth god’s black gateway.

The driver atop the wagon full of barrels raised the torch and waved it. The little men massed behind him shoved the cart out onto the downslope.

As the cart picked up speed, bouncing down the track faster than a horse could run, the driver made no attempt to dismount. Instead he dropped the torch into the straw piled around his feet. The flames flared high around the barrels, so that within a few more moments a great billowing blaze surrounded the little man and filled the back of the wagon. At the base of the track the unheeding giant still tore blindly at the small shape on his back, the faceless gnat who so annoyingly refused to die.

Jikuyin finally yanked Gyir free, pulling the fairy’s arm loose in its socket so that it dangled helplessly and the spear dropped from his nerveless fingers. As Jikuyin bellowed in triumph, ignoring the wagon, Barrick realized what was in the barrels.

“I WILL EAT YOU, INSECT!” the demigod roared.

You will choke on me. The skin of Gyir’s outer face had been torn away, and his strange small mouth twisted in what might have been a bloody smile. Look.

For the merest instant Barrick saw Jikuyin’s face and the way it changed, then the blazing cart crashed into the demigod and the entire cavern vanished in a howling, crackling storm of fire. Barrick felt the Storm Lantern’s last thought, a joyous curse on his defeated enemy, then the prince was flung away up the slope, skidding and rolling, and he felt the fairy’s presence in his thoughts wink out like a snuffed candle.

Barrick came to a stop in the doorway amid the shrieking Drows who had brought the wagon, awakened by Gyir’s death into this incomprehensible chaos. The stupefying concussion of the gun-flour, still echoing, was followed a moment later by the cracking, scraping sound of the cavern’s stone roof collapsing. Solid rock jumped and boomed like Heaven’s own drums. Several of the creatures who had unwittingly engineered this monstrous event scrambled over Barrick like rats in their haste to flee the doomed cavern. The prince could only cover his head and hold his breath as the impacts lifted and dropped him.

A millionweight of stone came tumbling down, burying demigod and mortals alike, sealing the open gateway to the gods’ realm for the next thousand years and more.

38. Beneath the Burning Eye

Pelaya had never seen anything like it. Even in her worst childhood nightmares, chased by some hungry monster like Brabinayos Boots-of-Stone out of her nurse’s stories, she had not felt a terror and hopelessness like this.

The sky above Hierosol was black as if with a terrible storm, but it was smoke, not clouds, that had hidden the sun for three days now. On either side of the citadel much of the Crab Bay and Fountain districts were in flame. Pelaya could see the flames in particularly bright relief from the window of the family house near Landsman’s Market, a horrible and fascinating sight, as if beautiful, glowing flowers were sprouting all across the city. In the districts along the seawalls the sickly smoke of the sulfur rafts had crept over the houses in a poisonous yellow fog. She had heard her father telling one of the servants that the autarch’s burning sulfur had emptied most of the Nektarian Harbor district, that even the seaport end of the Lantern Broad was as silent as a tomb but for hurrying files of soldiers moving from one endangered part of the wall to another. Surely this must be the end of the world—the sort of thing the ragged would-be prophets in the smaller church squares were always shrieking about. Who could have guessed that those dirty, smelly men would be right after all?

“Come away from there, Pelaya!” her sister Teloni cried. “You will let in the poison smoke and kill us all!”

Startled, she let the window shutter go, almost losing her fingers as it crashed down. She turned in fury but the angry reply never came out of her mouth. Teloni looked helpless and terrified, her face was as white as one of the family’s ancestor masks.

“The smoke is far away, down by the sea walls,” Pelaya told her, “and the wind is pushing the other direction. We are in no danger from the poison.”

“Then why are you looking? Why do you want to see...that?” Her sister pointed at the shutter as though what lay beyond were nothing but some unfortunate person—a deformed tramp, perhaps, or some other grotesque who could be ignored until he gave up and went away again.

“Because we are at war!” Pelaya could not understand her sister or her mother. They both skulked about the house as though this astonishing, dreadful thing was not happening. At least little Kiril was waving his wooden sword, pretending to slaughter Xixian soldiers. “Do you not care?”

“Of course we care.” Teloni’s eyes filled with tears. “But there is nothing we can do about it. What good does it do to...to stare at it?”

Pelaya got her shoulder against the shutter and lifted it again, pushing so hard that she almost fell out as it began to open. Teloni gasped and Pelaya felt her own heart speed—the cobbled courtyard was three floors below, quite far enough to break her bones.

Her sister grabbed Pelaya’s arm. “Be careful!” “I’m fine, Teli. Look, come here, I’ll show you what Babba’s doing.”

“You don’t know. You’re just a girl—you’re younger than me!”

“Yes, but I pay attention when he talks.” She got the shutter all the way open and propped it with the thick wooden rod so she’d have her hand free to point. “There, by the Gate of the Fountain, do you see? That’s the place where the autarch’s cannons are trying to knock down the wall, but Babba is too clever. As soon as he realized what they were doing, he sent men to build a new wall behind it.”

“A new wall? But they’ll just knock that down too, won’t they?”

“Perhaps. But by the time they do, he’ll have built another... and another...and so on. He will not let them break through.”

“Truly?” Teloni looked a little relieved. “But won’t they dig under the wall? I heard Kiril say the autarch’s men would dig tunnels under the walls here by Memnos or Salamander where there’s no ocean—that they could come up in our garden if they wanted to!”

Pelaya rolled her eyes. “You don’t listen to me, but you listen to Kiril? By all the gods, Teli, he’s only seven years old.”

“But isn’t what he says true?”

“Do you see those?” She pointed to the strange shape by the nearest section of the citadel wall. “That’s a sling engine —a kind of stone-throwing machine. It throws stones almost as heavy as the ones that come out of the autarch’s big cannon. Whenever Babba and his men see someone digging a tunnel, they throw big stones at them and crush it.”

“With the autarch’s soldiers still inside?”

Pelaya snorted. Was she going to weep about the enemy who was trying to kill them? “Of course.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Teloni stared, eyes wide. “How do you know these things, Pelaya?”

“I told you—I listen. And speaking of listening, that’s how they find the tunnels if they ever come close to the walls. Or they use the peas.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dried peas. Papa and his men dig special drums into the ground all along the walls and put dried peas on the drum heads. That way, if anyone is digging deep down in the ground under them, the peas jump and rattle and we know. Then we can drop stones and burning oil down on them.”

“But they have so many soldiers!”

“It does not matter. We have our walls. Hierosol has never been conquered by force—that’s what Babba says. Even Ludis Drakava could never have taken the citadel if the old emperor had an heir. Everyone knows that. The Council of Twenty-Seven was afraid of the autarch, so they opened the gates to Drakava instead.”

“What if they do that for the autarch now? What if he offers them some bargain to let him in?”

Pelaya shook her head. “The council may be cruel old men, but they aren’t fools. The autarch never keeps promises. He would execute them all and chew on their bones.” Her childhood dreams abruptly came back to her again—the giant Boots-of-Stone with blood spattered in his beard, his jaws grinding and grinding. It didn’t matter what she told her sister, the world was still going to end. She freed the wooden rod and let the window shutter down. “Let’s go help Mama. I don’t want to look anymore.”

“No! Don’t close it yet! I want to see some of the Xixians crushed or burned!” Teloni’s eyes were bright.

It was only when she was saying her midday prayers that Pelaya suddenly realized that although the plumes of foul smoke, missiles of burning pitch, and the incessant fall of hot cannonballs from the autarch’s ships might have driven the Lord Protector Ludis and his advisers out of the palace and into the safer lodgings of the great Treasury Hall in Magnate’s Square, nobody had said anything about evacuating the rest of the palace’s inhabitants. Which meant that King Olin of Southmarch might still be there, trapped in his cell.

None of the servants knew where her father had gone, and her mother was so worried about the count’s safety she practically burst into tears when Pelaya asked her, but she didn’t know either. Pelaya paced back and forth in the entry hall, trying to think of something, growing more certain by the moment that nobody else had even remembered Olin Eddon. She returned to her mother, but Ayona Akuanis had gone to comfort the baby, who had been fretful all night, and together they had fallen into exhausted sleep.

Pelaya looked at her mother’s face, so young and beautiful again now that sleep had for a moment soothed her fearful heart. She could not bear to wake her. She went to her mother’s desk instead and wrote a letter in such a careful hand that Sister Lyris would have been proud of the execution, if not the purpose. She closed it with wax and her mother’s seal.

She found Eril with three of the lower servants, trying to make order of the chaotic pantry. The Akuanis family never moved into the Landmarket house this early in the year and the household had not been prepared for their sudden arrival.

“I want you to take this letter up to the stronghold,” she told him. “I want you to bring someone back here.”

Eril looked at her with the full amount of hauteur he could afford to show to the daughter of his master. “To the stronghold, Kuraion? I don’t think so. It is not safe. What do you want so badly? We packed up everything.”

“I didn’t say something, I said someone. He is a king, an important man, and the lord protector has left him in the stronghold to die.”

“That is not a task for such as me—not unless your father himself asks me,” he said with the firmness of an aging servant who had been cajoled and tricked over the years in every way young girls could devise.

“But you must!”

“Really? Shall we go and see what Kura Ayona has to say about it, then?”

“She’s sleeping and can’t be disturbed.” Pelaya scowled. “Please, Eril! Babba knows this man and would want him saved.”

The servant draped his fingers across his forehead in the manner of one of the onirai ignoring his persecutors while communing with the gods. “You wish me to risk my life for some foreign prisoner? You are very cruel to me, Kuraion. Wait until your father returns and we will see what the master’s wishes are.”

She stared at him for long moments, hating him. She knew that even if she somehow forced Eril to go, there was no promise he would do what he was told, anyway—he was as stubborn as only a venerable family retainer could be. The citadel hill was in chaos and he could easily claim he had been prevented somehow.

Her heart was hammering—each crash of cannonfire might be the one that brought the stronghold roof down on poor Olin Eddon. She would have to go herself, but even in good times it would have been scandalous as well as dangerous to cross the city alone. She needed some kind of armed escort.

“Very well,” she said at last, then turned and stalked away. She had a plan, and in fact was rather shocked with herself for even thinking of it, let alone putting it into action, but if she hadn’t balked at forging a letter from her mother then she certainly wasn’t going to let herself be frustrated by one difficult servant.

At the bottom of the road she stopped at the front gate of their neighbors, a wealthy family named Palakastros. A group of beggars stood outside, as usual. Unlike Pelaya’s thrifty mother, the mistress of the Palakastrai was a rich old widow who worried about what would happen to her after she died, and so she made a practice of sending food out from her table nearly every day. This assured that there was almost always a crowd of the aged and infirm outside her gate, much to the annoyance of Ayona Akuanis and other householders on the long, wide street. Because of the siege there were two or three times as many as usual today and they quickly surrounded Pelaya.

Anxious at being hemmed in by so many strangers, especially dirty strangers, she picked one who looked extremely old and frail and thus less likely to try any tricks. She pulled him aside, leaving the others grumbling, and handed him a small copper coin with a crab on it. “Go to that household,” she pointed back up the road toward the broad eaves of her family’s house, “and ask for Eril the steward. Speak to him only. Tell him Pelaya says he is to meet her at the Sivedan Temple on Good Zakkas Road, and that he must bring his sword. If you do this properly, I will bring you two more of these tomorrow, right here. Understand?”

The old beggar gummed the coin reflectively, then nodded. “Temple of Siveda,” he said.

“Good. Oh, and tell Eril that if he brings my mother or anyone else I don’t want to see, I will hide and they will never find me, and it will all be his fault. Can you remember all that?”

“For three copper crabs? Half a seahorse?” The old man laughed and coughed, or it might have been the other way around—it was hard to tell the difference. “Kura, I’d sing the Trigoniad from stem to stern for three coppers. I’ve ate nothing but grass for days.”

She frowned, wondering if he was making fun of her. How could an old, toothless beggar know the Trigoniad? But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting King Olin to safety.

In fact, Pelaya thought, if this worked, Olin Eddon would almost certainly invite her to his own court someday out of gratitude. She could tell her family, “Oh, yes, the king of the Marchlands wishes me to come for a visit. You remember King Olin—he and I are old friends, you know.”

She set off for Good Zakkas Road, half a mile away in the Theogonian Forum district. She had thought of bringing a knife herself, but hadn’t known how to get one without risking her plan being discovered, so she had decided to do without. That was why she needed Eril and his sword. It had been years since he had fought in her father’s troop, but he was big enough and relatively young enough that no one would try to rob her in his company, at least not in daylight. Still, robbery might be the least of the dangers.

Am I mad? The streets were full of soldiers, but most of the rest of the citizens had returned from their scuttling morning errands and were locked in now, terrified of the cannons, of the foul smoke and fire that fell from the sky. What am I doing?

Doing good, Pelaya told herself, and then remembered the Zorian injunction against self-importance. Trying to do good.

The rag had slipped from his mouth down to his chin and the dust was getting in again. Count Perivos spit out a mouthful of grit and then pulled the cloth back into place, but he had to lay down his shovel to tie it. He cursed through ash and dirt. When you had forty pentecounts of men at your disposal, you didn’t expect to be wielding a tool yourself.

“Smoke!” the lookout shouted.

“Down, down!” Perivos Akuanis bellowed as he threw himself to the ground, but there was little need: most of the men were down before him, bellies and faces pressed against the earth. The terrible moment was on them, the long instant of whistling near-silence. Then the massive cannonball hit the citadel wall with a bone-rattling crunch that shook the ground and smashed more stone loose from the wall’s inner side.

After waiting a few moments to be certain the debris had stopped flying, Count Perivos opened his eyes. A new cloud of stone dust hung in the air and had coated everything on the ground; as the count and his workmen began to clamber to their feet he could not help thinking they looked like some sort of ghastly mass rising of the recent dead.

One of his master masons was already on his way back from examining the wall, which had been pounded over these last days by a hundred mighty stone cannonballs or more.

“She’ll take a few more, Kurs, but not many,” the man reported. “We’ll be lucky if it’s still standing tomorrow.”

“Then we must finish this wall today.” The count turned and shouted for the foreman, Irinnis. “What do we have left to do?” he demanded when the man staggered up. “The outwall can only take a few more shots from those monstrous bombards of theirs.” Count Perivos had learned to trust Irinnis, a small, sweaty man from Krace with an excellent head for organization, who had fought—or at least built—for generals on both continents.

Scratching his sagging chin, Irinnis looked around the courtyard—one of the citadel’s finest parks only a tennight ago, now a wreckage of gouged soil and broken stone. The replacement wall being built in a bowl-shaped curve behind the battered outwall was all but finished. “I’d like the time to paint it, Kurs,” he said, squinting.

“Paint it?” Akuanis leaned toward him, uncertain he had heard correctly: his ears were still ringing from the impact of the last thousandweight of stone cannonball. “You didn’t say ‘paint it,’ did you? While the whole citadel is coming down around our ears?”

Irinnis frowned—not the frown of someone taking offense, but more the face of an engineer astonished to discover that civilians, even those gifted and experienced in warfare like Count Perivos, could not understand plain Hierosoline speech. “Of course, Lord, paint it with ashes or black mud. So the Xixies will not see it.”

“So that...” Perivos Akuanis shook his head. All across the park the men who had not been injured in the last blast, and even those whose injuries were only minor, were scrambling back to work. “I confess, you have lost me.”

“What good are our arrow slits, Kurs,” said Irinnis, pointing to the shooting positions built into the curving sides of the new wall, “if the autarch’s landing force does not try to come through the breach their cannon has made? And if they see the new wall too quickly, they will not come through the breach and die like proper Xixian dogs.”

“Ah. So we paint...”

“Just splash on a little mud if that’s all we can find— something dark. Throw a little dirt onto it at the bottom. Then they will not see the trap until we’ve feathered half of the dog-eating bastards...”

The foreman’s cheerful recitation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Count Perivos’ factor, who had been overseeing the evacuation of the palace, but now came running across the yard as if pursued by sawtooth cats. “Kurs!” he shouted. “The lord protector has given the foreign king to the Xixians!”

It took Perivos Akuanis a moment to make sense of that. “King Olin, do you mean? Are you saying that Ludis has given Olin of Southmarch to the autarch? How can that be?”

His factor had to pause for a moment, hands on knees, to catch his breath. “As to how, my lord, I couldn’t say, but Drakava’s Rams came for him before I could finish moving him and the other prisoners, Kurs. I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.”

“No, the fault is not yours.” Akuanis shook his head. “But why are you sure they meant to take Olin to the autarch and not just to Ludis?”

“Because the chief of the Rams had a warrant, with the lord protector’s seal on it. It said precisely what they were to do with him—take him from his cell and take him to the Nektarian harbor seagate where he would be given to the Xixians in return for ‘such considerations as have been agreed upon,’ or something like.”

Count Perivos smelled something distinctly unsavory. Why would Ludis trade such a valuable pawn as Olin, unless it were to end the siege? But Sulepis would surely never give up the siege for the single lowly prize of a foreign king, especially the master of a small kingdom like Olin’s, which hadn’t even managed to ransom him from Ludis after nearly a year. None of it made sense.

Still, there was no good to be gained wasting time trying to understand it. Count Perivos handed his sheaf of plans to the factor, then turned to the foreman. “Irinnis, keep the men working hard—that outwall won’t last the night. And don’t forget that the wall near the Fountain Gate needs shoring up, too—half of it came down.”

The count hurried away across the wreckage of what had once been Empress Thallo’s Garden, a haven for quiet thought and sweet birdsong for hundreds of years. Now with every other step he had to dodge around outcrops of shattered stone knocked loose from the gate or smoking gorges clawed into the earth by cannonballs: the place looked like something that the death-god Kernios had ground beneath his heel.

With twenty full pentecounts of the city’s fiercest fighters surrounding his temporary headquarters in the pillared marble Treasury Hall, it would have been reasonable to suspect that Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol, feared an uprising from his own people more than he feared the massive army of the autarch outside his city walls.

Perivos Akuanis looked bitterly at the huge encampment as he walked swiftly between the rows of soldiers. We have nearly had two breakthroughs along the northern wall since the last sunrise. Neither of them would have happened if these men hadn’t been held back—a thousand out of the seven or eight thousand trained soldiers in the entire city, all they had to counter the autarch’s quarter of a million. The Council of the TwentySeven Families had surrendered the throne to Ludis so that a strong man would stand against the Autarch of Xis, whatever the loss of their own power, but it was beginning to look as though they would have neither.

If the outside looked like a fortress, the inside of the treasury looked more like the great temple of the Three Brothers: half a dozen black-robed, long-bearded Trigonate priests surrounded the transplanted Jade Chair like roosting crows, and like crows they seemed more interested in hopping and squawking than doing anything useful. Count Perivos, who had never liked or trusted Ludis, had lately come to loathe Hierosol’s lord protector with a fierce, hot anger unlike any he had ever felt. He hated Ludis even more than he hated the Autarch of Xis, because Sulepis was only a name, but he had to stare into Ludis Drakava’s square, heavy-browed face every single day and swallow bile.

The lord protector stood, flapping his arms at the priests as though they truly were crows. “Get out, you screeching old women! And tell your hierarch that if he wants to talk to me he can come himself, but I will use the temples as I see fit. We are at war!”

The Trigonate minions seemed unwilling to depart even after so clear an order, but none of them was above the rank of deacon. Grumbling and pulling at their whiskers, they migrated toward the door. Scowling, Ludis dropped back onto the throne. He caught sight of Count Perivos. “I suppose I should count my blessings the Trigonarch was kidnapped by the Syannese all those years ago,” Ludis growled, “or I’d have him whining at me, too.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what kind of stinking news do you bring, Akuanis?”

“I think you know about what brings me, although it was fresh to me only a half-hour gone. What is this I hear about Olin Eddon?”

Ludis put on the innocent look of a child—particularly bizarre on a brawny, bearded man covered with scars. “What do you hear?”

“Please, Lord Protector, do not treat me as a fool. Are you telling me that nothing unusual has happened to King Olin? That he has not been hustled out of his cell? I am told he is being traded to the autarch for...something. I do not know what.”

“No, you don’t know. And I won’t tell you.” The lord protector crossed his heavy arms on his chest and glowered.

There was something wrong with the way Ludis was behaving. Drakava was a surprisingly complex man, but Akuanis had never seen him show the least remorse for anything he’d done, let alone act like this—childishly petulant, as though expecting to be scolded and punished. This from the man who had declared an innocent priest (who also happened to have the only legitimate claim to the Hierosoline throne) a warlock and had him dragged from his temple and pulled apart by horses? Why should Ludis Drakava have become squeamish now?

“So it’s true, then. Is there time to stop it? Where is King Olin now?”

Ludis looked up, actually surprised. “By Hiliometes’ beard, why should we stop it? What can a milk-skinned northerner like that mean to you?”

“He is a king! Not to mention that he is an honorable man. Pity I cannot say the same of Hierosol’s ruler.”

Ludis stared at him malevolently. Count Perivos was suddenly aware of the fact that he was surrounded by troops who owed him no personal loyalty, but who received their pay in the lord protector’s name each month. “You climb far out on a thin branch,” Ludis said at last.

“But what do you gain by this? Why give an innocent man over to the cruelties of that...that monster, Sulepis?”

Ludis laughed harshly but turned away, as though still not entirely comfortable meeting the count’s eyes. “Who wears the crown here, Akuanis? Your reputation as a siege engineer gives you no right to question me. I protect what I must protect...”

He broke off at the sound of shouting. A soldier wearing the crest of the Esterian Home Guard shoved his way through Drakava’s Golden Enomote and threw himself down on the mosaic in front of the throne. “Lord Protector,” he cried, “the Xixies have come over the wall below Fountain Gate! We’re holding them in the temple yard at the foot of Citadel Hill, but we have only a small troop and won’t be able to hold them long. Lord Kelofas begs you to send help.”

Akuanis strode forward, all thoughts of Olin Eddon blasted from his mind. The temple yard was only a couple of miles from the townhouse where his wife and children waited in what they thought was safety—they and thousands more innocents would be overrun in a matter of hours if the Fountain Gate defenses collapsed. “Give me some of these men,” he demanded. “Let me go and hit Sulepis in the teeth now—this moment! You have a thousand around this building, but they will be like straws in a gale if we don’t keep the autarch out.”

For a moment Drakava hesitated, but then an odd look stole across his face. “Yes, take them,” he said. “Leave me two pentecounts to defend the treasury and the throne.”

After all the harsh words, Count Perivos was astonished that the lord protector would give up his troops so easily, but he had no time to wonder. He dropped to his knee and touched his head to the floor—bowing not to Ludis, he told himself, but to all the Hierosoline kings and queens, emperors and empresses, who had sat on the great green throne before him—then rose and hurried off to the taksiarch of the men encamped around the treasury. He could only pray that the engineers and workers he had left behind in the Empress Gardens had almost finished the wall, or holding the wall at Fountain Gate would mean nothing.

“Make us proud, Count Perivos,” shouted Ludis as Akuanis and the taksiarch got the men into fast-march formation. The lord protector almost sounded as though he were enjoying some theatrical spectacle. “All of Hierosol will be watching you!”

Eril was so furious with his young mistress that at first he wouldn’t even speak to her, but only followed with his sword nearly dragging in the dust as they set out from the Sivedan temple toward the Citadel Hill. As they climbed upward on the spiraling road, breasting a great tide of folk hurrying the opposite way, he finally found his tongue.

“You have no right to do this, Kuraion! We will be killed. Just because I am a servant doesn’t mean I should die for nothing.”

She was surprised by his vehemence and his selfishness. “I couldn’t do it unless someone came with me.” That seemed obvious to her and it should have to him as well, now that he’d been given time to digest it. What did he want, an apology? “The poor king needs our help—he’s a king, Eril.” The servant gave her a look that in different circumstances she would have reported to her mother. Pelaya was shocked—old Eril, silly old Eril, acting as though he hated her!

“Anyway,” she said, a little flustered. “It won’t take long. We’ll be back before supper. And you’ll be able to tell the gods you did a good deed when you say your prayers tonight.”

Judging by the noise he made in reply, Eril did not seem to find much consolation in the thought.

Although there were still many people on the grounds of the palace and in the stronghold, mostly servants and soldiers, it quickly became clear to Pelaya that Olin Eddon wasn’t one of them. His cell was empty, the door standing open.

“But where is he?” she asked. She had come so far and taken so many risks for nothing!

“Gone, Mistress,” said one of the soldiers who had gathered to watch this unusual performance. “The lord protector had him moved somewhere.”

“Where? Tell me, please!” She brandished her forged letter. “My father is Count Perivos!”

“We know, Mistress,” said the soldier. “But we still can’t tell you because we don’t know. The lord protector’s Rams took him somewhere. You’ll have to find out from him.”

“You talk too much,” another soldier told him. “She shouldn’t be here—it’s dangerous. Can you imagine anything happens? It’ll be our heads on the block, won’t it?”

She led Eril out of the stronghold and across Echoing Mall toward Kossope House, ignoring his complaints. If the servants were still in their dormitories, especially the darkhaired laundry girl, perhaps they’d know where Olin was. Servants, Pelaya had discovered, usually knew everything important that happened in a great house.

As the echoes of distant cannon echoed along the colonnade, Pelaya saw that whether the laundry women were here or not, many other servants had remained, although they did not look very happy. In fact, many of them seemed to glare at her as though it were somehow her fault they’d been left behind. She was glad Eril had his sword. Pelaya could almost imagine these abandoned servants, if left here long enough, turning entirely wild, like the dogs that roamed the city midden heaps and cemeteries after dark.

“The one I want to talk to is in here,” Pelaya said, pointing toward the large building on the far side of the palace complex. “Poor thing, she has such a long way to walk each day.”

Eril muttered something but Pelaya could not make it out.

When they reached the dormitory they found that the residents were guarding it themselves: three strong-looking young women with laundry-poles stood before the door, and they gave Eril a very stern look before letting him accompany Pelaya inside.

To her delight and relief they found the laundry girl almost immediately, sitting morosely on her bed as though waiting for a cannonball to crash through the roof and kill her. To Pelaya’s shock, the dark-haired girl not only wasn’t pleased to have a highborn visitor, she seemed frightened of Eril. “Follows me!” she said, pointing. “He follows!”

Eril scowled. “She never saw me, Kuraion. I’m sure she didn’t. Someone told her.”

“He followed you because I needed to know where you lived,” Pelaya said gently. “He’s my servant. I had to find you quietly, when King Olin wanted to speak to you. Now, where is Olin? Do you know? He’s been taken out of the stronghold.”

The girl looked at her in blank misery, as if Olin’s whereabouts were of no particular interest compared to her own problems, whatever those might be. Pelaya scowled. How could she converse usefully with a laundry maid who could barely speak her language? “I need to find him. Find him. I’m looking for him.”

The girl’s face changed—something like hope flowered. “Help find?”

“Yes!” Finally, sense had been made. “Yes, help find.”

The girl jumped up and took Pelaya’s hand, shocking the count’s daughter more than a little, but before she could protest she was being dragged across the dormitory. It was not Olin that the brown-haired girl led Pelaya to, but another laundrywoman, a friendly, round-featured girl named Yazi who seemed meant to translate. The new girl’s command of Hierosoline was not much better, but after many stops and starts it finally became clear that the brown-haired girl hadn’t agreed to help find Olin, she herself wanted help finding her mute brother, who had been missing since the middle of the night.

“He not go,” she said over and over, but clearly he had.

“No, we have to find Olin, King Olin,” Pelaya told her. “I’ll ask my father to send someone to help you find your brother.”

The Xandian girl looked shocked, as though she could not have imagined anyone would say no to her request.

“Haven’t we had enough of this, Kuraion?” said Eril. “You have dragged me across the city for nothing, risking both our lives. Are we now going to have to search for a runaway child as well?”

“No, of course not, but...” Before Pelaya could finish, someone else joined the small crowd of women that had gathered around the brown-haired girl and her round friend. This new arrival was considerably older than the others, her face disfigured by what looked like a bad burn.

“Oh, thank the Great Mother!” this old woman said when she saw them all, then leaned against the wall, gasping hoarsely for breath. “I...I...was frightened I wouldn’t...find you.” She looked at Pelaya, surprised. “Your Ladyship. Forgive me.”

Pelaya just barely nodded a greeting, irritated by yet another interruption. Eril was right—they needed to get back to Landsman’s Market.

“What is it, Losa?” asked the round-faced girl, Yazi.

“The boy who can’t talk, the little brother! He is up in the counting house tower and very...” She waved her hands, trying to find the words. “Angry, sad, I don’t know. He won’t come down.”

“Pigeon?” Qinnitan sat forward. “He not...hurt?”

“I don’t think hurt, no,” said Losa. “He is just hiding in that tower, the old broken one near the seawall. I think the... cannons? I think the cannons scare him. He wants his sister.”

“We’ll come, too,” said Yazi. “He likes me.”

“No!” said Losa. “He is very scared, the boy. He almost falls when I come. Up very high. If he sees people he doesn’t know so well...” She shook her head, unable or unwilling to come up with the words for such a dire prospect. “Just his sister.”

The dark-haired laundry girl did not appear to grasp everything said, but she smiled—it did little to hide the anxiousness in her face—and said something in her own tongue to the girl Yazi. For a moment Pelaya wondered if she should go with them to help—Olin had taken an interest in this girl, after all—but she could think of too many reasons why she should not let herself get further involved.

After the old, scarred woman had led the brown-haired girl out, Pelaya began to move toward the front of Kossope House. “It’s good she’s found her brother,” she said, smiling at the other laundry women. “Family is so important. Now I must go back to mine. May the gods protect you all.”

The faces of the servants turned toward her as she reached the door. They watched her, silent as cats.

“I’m sure everything will be well,” Pelaya called to them, then had to hurry to catch up with Eril, who was already striding off in a determined way in the general direction of Landsman’s Market.

Old Losa led Qinnitan across the courtyard into a section of the palace deserted days earlier by the clerks who had worked there. It was strange to move freely through rooms she had only tiptoed through before, terrified she might break someone’s concentration and earn a whipping.

“Why would he run away like this?” Qinnitan asked, falling back into Xixian now that the young noblewoman and her servant had been left behind. “And how did you happen to find him?”

The old woman spread her palms. “I think the cannons frightened him, poor little lad. I heard him calling and found him where he was hiding, but he wouldn’t come with me.”

“Calling?” Qinnitan said, suddenly fearful again. “But he can’t speak. Are you sure it was him? My Pigeon?”

Losa shook her head in disgust. “There you go. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, all this has me in such a muddle. I heard him crying—moaning, that’s the word I meant. Here, go down this passage.”

“But you said he was in the old countinghouse tower—isn’t it that way?”

“You see? I can’t think straight at all.” Losa pointed a dirty finger at the low bulk of the almshouse where it hugged the inside of the seawall, the arched doorway of its single squat tower showing dark among the vines like a missing tooth in a bearded mouth. “Not the countinghouse tower but the almshouse tower, the old almshouse. There. He’s there, I promise you.”

Losa guided her into the shadowed antechamber of the building, which had been abandoned and all its poor relocated a few years before the siege. The mosaics on the floor were chipped and scratched so that other than the hammer-shaped object in one’s hands, it was impossible to tell which of the Trigon brothers was which. Qinnitan suddenly had the awful feeling that the old woman had tricked her for some reason, but then she saw Pigeon staring back at her from the shadows of the stairwell with his eyes wide. Her heart seemed to swell and grow light again. She rushed toward him but he did not move, although she saw his jaw pumping as though he would have much to say if given his tongue back.

“Pigeon?” Something was wrong, or at least odd: she couldn’t see his arms. As she moved closer she saw that they were behind him, as though he had something hidden for her there. A few more steps and she could see that they were tied at the wrists, and the cord looped through the latch of the heavy stairwell door. She reached him, felt him trembling with terror beneath her hands, and turned toward Losa. “What...?”

The old woman was pulling off her face.

As Qinnitan stared in terror, Losa scraped the skin off her cheeks, peeling it away in long, knubbled strips. She had straightened up, and now seemed a head taller and a great deal more solid. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t even a woman.

Qinnitan was so shocked that she lost control of her bladder; a trickle of urine ran down her legs. “Who... what...?”

“Who doesn’t matter,” the man said in perfect Xixian. Underneath the waxy remnants of false flesh his skin was nearly as pale as King Olin’s had been, but unlike Olin, this man had not a flicker of kindness in his eyes, nor a flicker of anything else: for all the expression he wore, his face might have been carved on a statue. “The autarch sent me.” He straightened up, shredding the shapeless dress he had worn to reveal man’s clothing beneath. “Don’t scream or I’ll slit the child’s throat. By the way, if you decide to sacrifice the boy and make a run for it, you should know that I can hit a rabbit with this,”—he lifted his hand and a long, sharp dagger appeared in it like a conjuror’s trick—“from a hundred paces away. I can put it in the back of your knee and you’ll never walk without a crutch, or I can put it between two of your chines and you’ll never walk again at all. But I would prefer not to carry you all the way to the Golden One, so if you do as I ask, you’ll keep your health.” He kicked away the remnants of the dress, then used the knife blade to cut away a sack he had tied to his waist with rags to give him an old woman’s sagging belly.

Qinnitan wrapped her arms around Pigeon, tried to stop him shivering. “But...” Faced with this empty, emotionless man, she could think of nothing to say. Somehow she had known this day would come—she had only hoped it would take longer than this brief couple of months. “You won’t hurt the boy?”

“I won’t hurt him if he does nothing stupid. But he is the autarch’s property, so he goes back, too.”

“He’s not property, he’s a child! He did nothing wrong.”

The merest hint of a smile stole across the stranger’s cold face, as if he had finally heard something worth his getting out of bed that morning. “Sit down and put your legs out.”

She started to argue, but he had closed the distance between them in an astonishingly swift step or two, and now stood over her, the knife only inches from her eye. She sat back on the stairs and extended her feet. He put the end of the knife gently against her throat and held it there with his thumb on the other side of her windpipe, then looped a piece of cord around one ankle. When he had tied the other end, a length of the cord about the distance from her wrist to elbow stretched between her two legs, leaving her neatly hobbled. He took a long dress out of the sack—it was something she had seen some of the chambermaids wearing—and dropped it over her head, then yanked her to her feet. When she stood, the hem of the dress almost touched the dusty tiles, hiding the cord completely. “Does the boy understand speech?”

Qinnitan nodded, dully, hopelessly. Even if the others went looking for her, she had just realized, it would be to the countinghouse tower on the other side of the palace grounds.

The pale man turned to the boy. “If you try to run away, I will cut off her nose, do you understand? The autarch won’t care.”

Pigeon looked at the man with narrowed eyes. If he was a dog, he would have growled, or more likely, simply bit without making a noise. At last he nodded.

“Well, come along then.” The man landed a single kick that made the boy whimper wordlessly and scramble awkwardly onto his feet so his bonds could be cut. Pigeon rubbed his wrists, unable to look at Qinnitan for the shame of having been part of her capture. “No tricks,” the man said. “It would waste time if I have to kill or cripple either of you, but it wouldn’t change anything important. Move along now.” He pointed to the doorway. “We don’t want to keep your master waiting. He’s much less patient than I am, and much less kind.”

Qinnitan stepped out into the light of the deserted courtyard, the cord chafing her ankles at each constrained step. She was too shocked and empty even to cry. The space of a few heartbeats had changed everything. Only a few dozen yards away in Kossope House she had friends, a life, all the things she had wanted so badly, but they were all lost now. Instead, she belonged to that madman again— the terrifying, utterly heartless Living God on Earth.

39. City of the Red Sun

For a long time the man wandered without a name through a forest of black poplar trees and tall cypresses that swayed in an unfelt, unheard wind. A dark stream wandered near the path, but its course veered away and vanished into the mists again as he went forward. Willows curtained it, drooping and shivering like crying women, their branches dangling just above the silent waters.

The man had no strength to wonder where he was, or how he had come to this land of mist and shadow. For a long time he could think of nothing to do but walk. The sun was utterly absent, the sky a gleaming emptiness that was neither dark nor light. He thought that he had been in such a place before, a country of perpetual evening, but he also felt certain he had never been in this gloomy country. The only other thing he knew was a quiet fear that if he did not keep moving he would become as still and hopeless as the black poplars that surrounded him—might even sink into the muddy, squelching soil and become one of the trees himself.

The man wished someone were with him, a voice to sing, or speak, or even weep, anything that would pierce the unending stillness. He tried to do it himself but he had lost the knack of making words and noises just as he had lost his name. It was very quiet in this country. A few black birds walked on the branches above his head, or fluttered from tree to tree, but they were as silent as the trees and the wind and the water.

He walked on.

He had been seeing moving shadows on the far side of the stream for some time, misty figures with the shapes of men and women. Now he saw something else on that far shore which made him pause in wonderment, but he was still uncertain. He wished again he had a voice so he could ask for help from those shadow-folk, for he could see no way to cross the water, and although it seemed to move slowly he did not trust its opaque quiet.

But what do I have to lose even if the water swallows me?

He had no immediate answer, but he felt that somehow he did possess something, a truth of some kind he did not wish to surrender, but which the waters of the stream might wash away.

How can I cross, then?

You cannot. Or if you do, you will never return from that other shore.

A small, naked child of three or four years old stood beside him, her pale hair fluttering slowly. His first thought was to feel sorry for her, so tiny and so unprotected from the wind. Then he looked into those eyes like molten gold flecked with particles of amber and knew she was no child, or at least no mortal child.

Who are you? he asked.

Her voice was not that of a child either, or at least not of one as small as she appeared. Each word was as measured and golden as her gaze. One who remains after the others have gone. One of the elder guardians of this place—no, “guardians” is not correct. “Guides” would be better. And clearly you need guidance, little lost one.

But I want to cross the river. I need to. I...I think I see someone there that I know.

All the more reason to fear it. That is the way most of your kind lose their way in our land, by following someone they know, or think they know. You are not ready. Your time comes soon—all your kind are only a blink away at most —but it has not come yet.

He did not know what any of this meant. How could he, when he did not even know his own name? But that did not change the things he felt, the pull of the farther side.

Please. He reached out then, tried to take the child’s hand, but it was as though she stood at the bottom of a stream that bent the light deceptively. Wherever he reached, she was not there. Please. I never told him...I did not... Her face at first was tranquil as a marble mask, but it changed as something like pity stole across it. Then you take it upon yourself, she said at last. It is only because you have come here by mischance that it is even possible. You may cross—you may see both how things are and how things were—but you will have to be lucky as well as strong to cross the dark water a second time and come out again.

He lowered his head, humbled by his greed for something he could not even name, could not quite understand. You are kind.

Kindness is not part of these laws, especially once you are beyond my hand. The child-face was solemn. There, rules are like the paths of the stars through the great vault, fixed and remorseless. You must not eat any food or accept any gift. And you must not forget your name.

But...but I can’t remember it. He looked around at the endless grove of poplars, the trunks marching away in all directions. It seemed his name was almost within reach but he still could not summon it no matter how he tried.

The child shook her head. Already? Then you are all the more a fool for taking such a risk. Only the strongest hearts can enter the city and yet live. She lifted her tiny, pale arm and a boat slid up to the bank, a thing of rusty nails and gray, weathered boards. Very well, this is the last thing I can do. I do it in memory of one like you, long ago, who also put his life in my hands. Your name is Ferras Vansen. You are a living man. Now go.

And in the next moment he was upon the river. Both banks had disappeared and there was nothing but mist everywhere.

He was a long time on the black water. Vast shapes moved just below the surface, and sometimes the boat rocked as they passed beneath it; once or twice the things even broke water and he could see their wet hides, black and shiny as polished metal. They did not touch him or threaten him in any way, but he was very glad he was in a boat and not floundering in the dark, cold current with those huge shapes swimming beneath him, drawn to his warmth and movement.

Ferras Vansen. That is my name, he reminded himself— here on the river he could almost feel it slipping away again as the mists streamed past. It had seemed so clear when the child said it, so true, and yet he knew he could lose it again as easily he had forgotten it in the forest of black trees.

How did I come to these lands? But that memory was even more lost than his name had been. He knew only that the child had said he did not come the way most men came —mischance, she had named it—and that was enough, somehow, to comfort him.

Something felt strange beneath his hands, under his feet. He looked down and saw that the boat was no longer made of gray wood, but of snakes—hundreds of dully shining shapes woven together like the twig mats old women made so their husbands and sons and grandsons could wipe the mud of the fields off their boots. But these were not twigs, they were serpents, alive and writhing. He lifted his feet and hands but it was no good: the entire boat was made of snakes and there was nowhere to go to escape them.

Even as he stared in horrified surprise, the snake-boat began to unravel, those at the top and along the rails slithering free of their weave and dropping like heavy ropes into the dark, quiet water. They kept peeling away, first in ones and twos and then more swiftly, until the water was coming in on all sides and he rode on nothing more solid than a blanket of cold, thrashing shapes.

He looked up, staring helplessly into the mists ahead in search of the far bank, a stone in the river, anything that might save him. The snakes fell away. The boat fell away. He tried to remember the names of the gods so he could pray but even those had been taken from him.

Vansen. I am Ferras Vansen. I am a soldier. I love a woman who does not love me, and could not if she would. I am Ferras Vansen!

And then he tumbled into the cold swells and swallowed all the blackness.

He was not in the river or on the shore, but in a twilight street. The lamps had been lit above the cobbles. They burned as fitfully as witchfire, glowing without much illuminating the ramshackle houses. It was not yet full dark but the streets seemed utterly empty.

What place is this? He thought he wondered silently, but someone heard him.

It is the City of the Sleepers. The voice of the girl-child who had given him back his name was faint, as if she stood on the far side of the river he could no longer see. There is only one way through, Ferras Vansen, and that is always forward. Remember...!

And that was the last he heard of her. After that he could scarcely even recall how she looked, how she sounded. He stepped forward and his footsteps made no sound, though he could hear the noise of water dripping and a quiet wind rustling and whispering along the rooftops.

Most of the windows were dark, but a few were lit. When he looked inside he saw people. They were all asleep, even those who stood or moved about, their eyes closed, their movements slow and aimless. Some merely sat on stools or chairs or leaned against the walls of their drab, dusty chambers, motionless as stones or swaying like blind beggars. Some tried to stir pots under which no flame burned. Others tended children who lay like cloth dolls, limbs a-flop as their sleeping parents dressed or undressed them, small heads lolling, mouths gaping while their parents fed them with empty spoons.

After a while he stopped looking into the houses.

As he came to the center of town the streets began to fill with people, although these too moved like weary swimmers, staring into the bruised gray sky with unseeing eyes. Blind sleepers drove carts piled with shrouded bundles, and even the horses that drew the wagons slept, long jaws grinding as they chewed at nothing. The crowds slowly drifted to and fro like fish at the bottom of a winter lake, standing rapt before spectacles they could not see, buying things they could not taste or use. Slumbering musicians played dust-caked instruments, making unheard melodies, while sleeping clowns danced slow as snowmelt and did halting somersaults in the dirt, coming up smeared and draggled.

As he stared around him in fearful wonder, a young woman wandered toward him out of the crowd. She was pretty, or should have been. Her face was bloodlessly pale, with only the barest sliver of her eyes visible under her long lashes, but her mouth sagged like an idiot’s, though she tried to curl her lips in a fetching smile. She lifted her hand to him, offering him a withered flower, a reddish streak running the length of the white petals like a vein of blood. Asphodel, he remembered, the god’s flower, although he did not know what god he meant.

Am I fair? she asked. Her lips did not seem to move enough for him to hear her voice so clearly.

Yes, he said, trying to be kind. He could see that she had been fair once, and might be again, in some other place, under some bolder light.

You are sweet. Here, have my flower. She squeezed her lips together as if to keep them from trembling. It is very long since I have spoken to someone like you. It is lonely here.

Pitying her, he reached out his hand, but just before his fingers closed on the waxy stem he remembered another young woman, high and fair, to whom he owed something. His hand paused, and then he remembered what someone had told him so long ago: Accept no gift!

I cannot, he said. I am sorry.

Her face changed then, from that of a mortal woman into something older and much more hungry. Her body twisted and lengthened into a feral shape with achingly scrawny limbs and reaching claws. It snapped and fluttered before him like a scorched insect, writhed until his eyes blurred watching it, then smeared away into the twilight, leaving nothing behind but a thin shriek of misery and rage.

Shaken and sad, he walked on.

On the outskirts of the city, among the midden heaps and boneyards, where a few ragged sleepers huddled around flickering, smoky fires, he at last found the one he had glimpsed across the river, although that now seemed an entire lifetime ago. This sleeper was an old man, with hands that had been large and powerful now knotted with age, and shoulders that had been wide and a back that had been straight now coarsely bent, so that he had the shape of a bird huddling in its own feathers against the cold. Ferras Vansen could see the pale, slow shimmer of the fires through the man’s substance, as if the old fellow were no more tangible than mist.

Father, he said, but he was suddenly unsure. Tati, he asked like a child, is it really you? Do you know me?

The old man looked at him, or at least turned blind eyes in the direction of the questions. His face was not merely translucent, it shifted like oil on rippling water.

I am no one. How could I know you?

No. You are Pedar Vansen. I am your son, Ferras.

The old man shook his head. No. I am Perinos Eio, the great planet. I died and lay four days in a stone casket surrounded by darkness and distant stars. Then I awoke again into the light of what is true. He sighed and a tear escaped his tight-shut eye. But I have forgotten it all again, and now I am lost... You died in your own bed, Tati. I didn’t have the chance to say farewell. For a moment Ferras Vansen could feel tears stinging painfully in his own eyes, as if in this place to cry was to pierce the flesh and let out blood, not water. There was no stone coffin. We were poor people, and I did not come back in time to pay for even a wooden box, although I would have done so gladly. You were buried in a winding sheet. He hung his head. I am sorry, Tati. I was far away... Help me. The old man reached out a hand, but where it touched him it was no more substantial than a tongue of fog, cool and slightly damp. Help me to find my way back, to learn the answers again so that I can pass on.

Anything. And in that moment, he meant it. This was a man whose impossible needs had pressed down on Ferras Vansen’s childhood like the lid of the stone coffin he was prattling about, but the love was still stronger than any fear, any comfort. To do what his Tati asked he would break even those fading commandments, Eat no food, Accept no gifts, Remember your name! He would flaunt the gods themselves before their thrones.

But the gods are asleep, too, he remembered, or thought he did. Who told me that?

Come, he told the faded ghost of his father. Come. I’ll take you where you need to go.

Beyond the city they passed into a shadowy wood and then walked down a hillside covered with black ivy and gray birches into a silent valley. They crossed a blood-colored river at the bottom of the valley on rocks that stood up through the flood like teeth. They walked on, the sky as bleak as stone, the light never brighter than a faint reddish glow in the far west, like a bloodstain that would not wash out of an old shirt.

Time passed, or would have in a different place. Vansen’s father sang as he walked, senseless ritual ditties about dividing his body in pieces, endless loving verses that described the divestiture of flesh and memory, but otherwise the old man said little and seemed to recall nothing of his former life. There were moments Vansen thought he had been terribly wrong, that he had seized some old man who was not his father, but then an angle of his companion’s insubstantial face, an expression flitting across the thin mouth like a fish in a shallow pool, would convince him he had been right after all.

They crossed four more streams, one of moving ice, one of water that boiled and bubbled with heat, one so full of green growing things that it seemed motionless, although the streambed squirmed between the roots with tiny, chittering, splashing shapes, and last a torrent of which they could see nothing but moving fog in a deep crevasse, although they heard sounds coming up from it that no fog ever made, and across which they had to leap, Vansen clutching at the misty shape that marked where the old man’s hand should have been.

Eventually all distinctions became one, each step the same step, each song the old man sang the same song. Shadows approached them, some of them fearful to look at, but Vansen told them his name and the old man’s name and they retreated into the twilight once more. Other times the shadows came in fairer shapes with offers of hospitality —sumptuous meals, soft beds, or even more intimate comforts—but Vansen learned to refuse these just as firmly, and those shapes retreated, too.

Finally they came to a wide, empty land where the dust blew always and the wind was fierce, a place where they could walk no faster than a dying man could crawl. At times in that place his father faltered and Vansen had to pull him along through the stinging, smothering dust. Once, when even the twilight was blotted out by thick clouds and they trudged forward in complete darkness, the old man fell and could not get up. As he lay, croaking a song about white bracelets and hearts of smoke, Ferras Vansen crouched beside him in despair. He knew that he could rise and walk away and the old man would not see him go, would never even realize he was gone. Instead he staggered to his feet, then bent and lifted the old man onto his back. Pedar Vansen’s body had no more substance than a woman’s veil, but somehow he was also heavier than a great stone, and Vansen could walk only a few steps each time before he had to stop to catch his breath.

At last the dust storms subsided. They were still in the empty land, the gray expanses, but for the first time he saw something on the horizon other than more nothingness. It was a house—a hut, really, a crude thing made of sticks and unworked stones, its crevices mortared with what looked like centuries of dust, so it seemed the mound of some tremendous and slovenly insect. A man stood in front of it, leaning on his long staff like one of the Kertish herders who had sometimes come to live in Ferras Vansen’s dales when driven out by a tribal feud back home.

There! It was a triumphant moment, overshadowing even the sight of another being in this endless, dust-choked void. He had remembered something new: I am Ferras Vansen —a man of the dales.

The stranger wore the kind of ragged cloth around his belly that the ancients had worn, but was otherwise without ornament. His long beard was gray as cobweb beside his mouth, but dust had turned the rest of it yellow. He did not move but only watched them approach, and Vansen and his father’s ghost had almost reached him before Ferras Vansen realized this bearded apparition was the first being he had seen in these lands for as long as he could remember whose eyes were open—the first who was not asleep.

Who are you? Vansen said to him. Or is it forbidden to ask?

The man’s eyes seemed bright as stars beneath his bristling brows. He smiled, but there was no kindness in it, or malice either. You stand before the last river, but the place you wish to go does not exist in this Age of Sleep. You must cross instead to another side, one in which those great ones you wish to see are still in their houses to be seen.

I don’t understand, Vansen told the bearded man. As they spoke, his father sat down in the dust and began singing to himself.

You do not need to understand. You need only do what you must. Whether you come through again afterward is in the hands of greater powers than mine. The dusty old man shifted his bare feet, the spread, leathery toes of someone who had never worn shoes. Unlike Vansen’s father, he was as real as could be—Ferras Vansen could see every inch of his coppery skin with great clarity, every scar, every hair.

You will not tell me who you are, Master?

The bearded man shook his head. Not a master—certainly not yours. A shape, an idea, perhaps even a word. That is all. Now step through the door. You will find water there. Both of you must wash yourselves.

And without knowing how it happened, Ferras Vansen found himself on the inside of the small wooden hut, but here for the first time they had left the twilight behind: what he could see through the cracks in the walls was velvet black sky and the gleam of stars. He stepped closer to the walls and peered through one of the openings. The entire hut was surrounded by stars, innumerable white sparks flickering like the candles of all the gods in heaven—stars above, beside, and even below them, as though the hut floated untethered through the night sky. Dizzied by the enthralling, terrifying view, he turned to see his father already washing himself with the water from a simple wooden tub as crude as the hut itself.

Vansen joined him, and for long moments lost himself in the glory of water running down his skin. He had forgotten he even had a body, and this was a wonderful way to be reminded. Even his father’s phantom, no more substantial than if he were made of spiderwebs, seemed to have come close to something like happiness.

I should have come home, Vansen said. I feared you, Tati. I feared your suffering. And I hated you, at least a little. Because you did not make it easy for me, when you could have.

His father broke off his singing and for a long time did not say anything. He stood up straight and let the water slide off him like rain dripping down a window.

I was a prisoner of my own understanding, Pedar Vansen said at last. At least that is what I imagine. In truth, I cannot remember—it is all gone, drifted away like smoke... And then, before Vansen could hear any more of these words that came to him like food to a starving man, they were out of the hut again, returned to the twilight and dust. The bearded man stood leaning on his long staff, a length of wood as gnarled and knobbed as the ancient man himself. There, the bearded man said, pointing at a pile of dull, red-orange stones lying in the dust. Crumble them and rub yourself with it so you may cross into the last sunset light and still retain something of yourself. Both of you. There is no difference now between living and dead in this house—all are subject to the same laws.

Vansen rubbed the red rocks together, scraping them into blood-colored powder, rubbing that powder onto his clean skin. Instead of rubbing dirt onto himself, it seemed instead as though he rubbed himself with light. When he finished, he gleamed, and even his father’s phantom shimmered beneath its layer of dust and seemed more substantial.

This ocher gives life to the unloving, said the old, bearded man. And it protects the living from the dead in the place you go to now, who would otherwise cover you like flies on honey. Go.

What waits for us? Vansen called back to the ancient as he and his father walked forward.

What has always waited for you. What always will wait for you and for me, and for everything. The end of all.

And then the bearded man was gone, lost in the dust which had begun to swirl around them once more, billowing, choking. Vansen held in his breath, then a time came when he could not hold it any longer. He breathed and the river of dust entered him. He became the dust. He passed through.

And now they entered the true city, the metropolis beside which the City of Sleepers was no more than a village. The oracles say that this greatest and most awful of habitations fills the earth from pole to pole, so that everywhere living men walk, beneath their feet lie the streets of the City of the Red Sun. Nobody laughs in that city, the oracles also claim, and nobody cries except in thin, almost silent sobs, or sings above a whisper.

As Ferras Vansen and his father entered, a hush lay upon the place like dust lay in the streets. The sleepers all had open eyes, and every face stared hopelessly into eternity. Each step forward felt as though he lifted a hundredweight of stone. Each street seemed as bleak and empty and comfortless as the one before.

Always, though, he and his father’s shade moved toward the great, dark lodestone at the heart of the city, the palace of the Earthlord himself. Thousands of other phantoms moved with them toward the mighty black gate, shadowpeople of every kind and every shape. Few wore more than rags, and many were naked, but even in their nakedness some were clothed in feathers or dully gleaming scales, so that they did not look quite like people. Vansen and his father were swept along in this silent crowd like bits of bark on a slow-moving river, the gate and the wall and the palace growing always larger before them.

Ferras Vansen looked at his father, who of all the dead throng still had closed eyes, and saw that although the old man’s features were still indistinct as smoke, his father had retained something of the glow of the ocher, a red gleam like fire reflected on silver. Then he saw that the other spirits had it too, and that the glow did not come from the dead themselves but from the great palace, whose every window spilled sunset-red light.

The House of the Ultimate West, his father whispered, but as though he recited a prayer instead of explaining something. Raven’s Nest. The Castle of Everything-FallsApart. The Great Pine Tree... But first, someone whispered, we must pass the Gate of the Pig. These words traveled through the crowd like a fire through dry grass, the whisper becoming a hissing murmur. The Gate. The Gate. They were groaning the words, some of them, although one laughed uproariously as he said it over and over, as though it were the first jest ever to be told in the grim, blood-colored city. After a while his laugh turned to a choked sob. The Pig’s snout will sniff out every lie, every cheat, and then we will be swallowed down... As the voices rose around him the darkness rose too, like a pall of smoke, until Ferras Vansen could see nothing. Even his father’s shade was gone. He was lost in black emptiness, and the voices of the crowding dead had become animal noises, braying, snorting, barking, as if the ghosts of men had become the ghosts of beasts. It was a terrible din, harsh, desperate, and full of terror. He could not help thinking of the farm creatures he had driven to the slaughterer. The darkness seemed infinite, empty but for himself and a choir of horrifying echoes.

But that is truly me, he thought suddenly. Herding the animals with a switch. Walking down the road to Little Stell. That is a memory of me, of my life.

I am Ferras Vansen, he told the void. I have a name. I am a living man.

Something came nearer to him then—he could feel its approach, slow and ominous as a thundercloud. It seemed bigger than the darkness itself, and it stank. It also seemed...amused?

Living man.

They were not words, not even thoughts, really, but something larger, like shifts in the weather, but somehow he could understand them. He was in the grip of something so much larger than himself that he could scarcely think. He was beyond fear—he was not significant enough to be fearful.

At last it spoke, or the weather changed, or the stars revolved in their black firmanent around Ferras Vansen.

Pass. I will speak for you and He will decide. You will die, or you will live...at least for a little longer.

And then he was in the midst of the strangest place yet—a festive hall that was also a monstrous pit, a solemnly beautiful throne room whose ceiling was the vault of black and endless night. It was the crumbling root-raddled ground, a silver fantasy of towers, the slow-beating heart of all sad music, it was all those things and none of those things. He was alone, his father’s phantom gone, but a million shadows swirled around the great throne at the center, on which sat the greatest shadow of all.

The voice he had heard before spoke to him.

The master of this place says you do not belong in his dream.

I am Ferras Vansen, he said humbly. Of course he did not belong, here at the end of all things. I am a living man. I only wanted to help my father.

The voice of the Gatekeeper spoke again, slow as the slide of glaciers and just as deadeningly chill.

You cannot. It is impertinence to try. His fate is between him and the gods—which is to say, between him and his own heart. And that is why you must go. You are a hindrance, however small, to What Should Be.

Vansen quailed at the anger in that titan voice. I meant no harm! But he felt ashamed of himself for his fear. Even if it meant he must live here forever, eating clay and drinking dust with these sad shadows, he still did not need to crawl. I tried to help. Surely even the gods themselves cannot condemn that?

There was a pause before the Gatekeeper spoke again. He did not seem to have heard what Vansen had said.

Be grateful you did not hear the Earthfather’s voice. Even the murmur of his sleeping thought would send you mad. Instead, he permits you to leave—if you can cross the rivers and come safe out of this land once more. If not, then you will become one of his subjects earlier than you might have otherwise—but it is only a short time to lose, after all, the butterfly-life of your kind.

But why can you speak to me? Why aren’t you asleep, like the Earthfather?

Make no mistake. I also sleep, said the Gatekeeper. In fact, it could be that you and all these dead, and even the Earthfather himself, are part of my dream.

The voice laughed then, and the world shook.

Go now—return to the land of the living, if you can. You will not receive such a gift a second time.

And then the great hall of madness, of sleep and earth and the deep song of the globe itself, was gone. The Gatekeeper was gone. Nothing remained in all the cosmos but Ferras Vansen, it seemed, standing in sudden alarm on an achingly narrow arc that stretched above a massive nothingness, a white stripe over an abyss. He could not see an end to the slender bridge in either direction, and the span was scarcely as wide as his own shoulders. There was nowhere to go but forward into the unknown or backward into quiet, undemanding death. His father’s shade was gone, left behind in the sunset city to face its own fate, and the living could mean nothing to Pedar Vansen anymore. His son had not been able either to save the old man or forgive him, but something had changed and his heart was lighter than it had been.

“I am Ferras Vansen,” he called as loudly as he could. There was no reply, not even an echo, but that did not matter: he was not speaking to anyone except himself. “I am a soldier. I love Briony Eddon, although she can never love me. I’m tired of being lost and I’m tired of dying, so I’m going to try something different this time.”

He began to walk.

40. Offered to Nushash

The stranger who had captured her was working very hard to open the rusted lock, his bland face intent as he probed the slot in the gate with the strip of metal he had produced from the sleeve of his shirt. A little sweat had beaded on his lip. Qinnitan turned away as casually as she could, trying not to look directly at the troop of guards moving rubble at the base of the wall a hundred yards away. She and Pigeon and the stranger were crouched in the shadows of an aqueduct near the base of Citadel Hill.

“You’re wondering whether you could call to those guards and get help,” said the stranger in his weirdly perfect Xixian, although he had not looked up from the lock. “Where I grew up in Sailmaker’s Row, near the docks, the fishermen could take an oyster out of its shell with their knives, flick it up in the air, then catch it on the blade, all with just one hand.” He opened the fingers of his free hand to slow her a small, curved blade nestled there. “If you move, I will show you the trick—but I will use the boy’s eye.”

Pigeon clutched Qinnitan’s hand even more tightly.

“You grew up in Xis?” If she could get the man talking some good might come of it. “How could that be? You look like a northerner.”

He still did not look up, and this time his only answer was the rasp and click of the metal strip as he at last defeated the lock. The gate swung open and they passed under the stone arch, then the stranger dragged them to their feet and hurried them down a ramshackle stone staircase which hugged the side of the steep Citadel Hill. Qinnitan was tripped several times by the cord around her ankles. The air on the seaward side of them was dark with what she thought at first was fog, but then realized was smoke. In the distance cannons rumbled, but it seemed like thunder from far away, the bad weather of another country.

The Harbor of Nektarios was in ruins, the water choked with floating wreckage from burned and shattered ships. Half the warehouse district was on fire and blazing uncontrollably, but just enough soldiers had been spared to fight the blaze to keep it from spreading upslope on either side to the temple complex atop Demian Grove or the wealthy houses on Sparrow Hill. Overwhelmed by their struggle with the flames, none of them paid much attention to the stranger and what doubtless seemed to be his two children. One smoke-stained guardsman hurrying past, the golden sea urchin on his tunic marking him part of the naval guard, shouted something to them Qinnitan couldn’t understand, but when their captor calmly waved his hand in acknowledgement the guard seemed satisfied and trotted on.

Cannonfire crashed out from the seawall and was returned from the ocean beyond. Qinnitan could actually see one of the autarch’s massive dromons sliding past the mouth of the harbor, kept out only by a hundred yards of massive chain thicker than Qinnitan’s body, sagging across the mouth of the harbor that Magnate Nektarios had so famously and expensively built.

They passed the entrance to Oniri Daneya Street, a wide thoroughfare lined with shops and markets and warehouses that led out from the harbor and ran east across the center of the old city. The famous street had been blocked off here at its harbor end with deserted wagons and the rubble of the bombardment, and seeing the usually thriving place so ruined and empty washed Qinnitan with a new wave of despair. No one would help them, she was increasingly certain—not with the city on fire and the autarch’s troops almost inside the walls. She reached down and took the boy’s hand. She had survived before, but this time she had Pigeon to care for, too.

“We will go fast now,” the man said. “No talking. Follow me.”

“Do you really have to bring the boy, too...?” Qinnitan began. A moment later she was on her knees, eyes full of tears, her face stinging. He had hit her so swiftly she had not even seen it.

“I said no talking. Next time, there will be blood—that is, more blood than this.” The man’s hand shot out like a serpent’s strike. Pigeon shrieked in a way Qinnitan had never heard, a rasping yelp that made her want to vomit. The child grabbed at his face and his hands came away covered in blood. His ear had been sliced halfway through; part of it hung down like a rotting tapestry.

“Bandage him.” The man threw her a rag from his pocket— the remnants of the old woman’s scarf he had worn as part of his disguise. “And don’t think either of you are safe just because I have to deliver you to the autarch. There are ways I can hurt you that even the Golden One’s surgeons won’t discover. Play another trick on me and I will show you some of my own—tricks that you’ll remember even when the best torturers of the Orchard Palace are hard at work on you.” He gestured for them to move forward along the length of the harbor front.

Qinnitan held the bandage tight against Pigeon’s ear until he could hold it for himself. She walked when the man indicated, stopped when he stopped. Her heart, which had been beating so swiftly only a moment ago, now seemed as sluggish as a frog sitting in summer mud. There would be no escape for either of them.

Near to the end of the long row of boats lay a set of narrow slips where smaller craft were tied next to each other like leaves on a tree branch. Here their captor found what he was seeking, a small rowboat with a tiny awning just big enough to keep the sun off one large person or two small ones. He had her lie down next to Pigeon under the awning, then rowed them out between bits of charred wreckage, ignoring the cries of the harbor guards as they headed for the open sea, where cannons rumbled like thunder and smoke drifted like evening fog. She watched the man as he rowed, the only strain to be seen the tense and release of the muscles in his pale neck.

“What is the autarch giving you to do this?” she asked at last, risking another blow. “To kidnap two children who have never done you any harm?”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “My life.” The corner of his mouth twitched, as though he had almost smiled. “It’s not much, but I’ve some use for it still.”

The man would not be lured into speaking anymore. Qinnitan lay back and put her arm around Pigeon to comfort him, but she could not help thinking what it would feel like to roll over the water into the cool embrace of the ocean and a comparatively simple and swift death by drowning. If it had not been for the shivering child beside her she would have gone without hesitation. Anything would be better than looking into the autarch’s mad gaze again, feeling his gold-netted fingers scrape her flesh. Anything except the knowledge that she had left poor, mute Pigeon behind. But what if she wrapped the boy in her arms so they could go down into the peaceful green depths together? She could hold him while he struggled, then take a gulp to fill her own lungs. No, Pigeon wouldn’t struggle. He would understand... The man released the oars, letting them dangle in the oarlocks while he looped a length of cord around the bench on which they sat and tied one end to each of their ankles.

“You shouldn’t think with your eyes, girl.” In the distance behind him she could see the stony strip of hills called the Finger and its occupied forts jutting from the water, silhouetted against the reddened evening sky, surrounded by ships bearing the autarch’s Flaming Eye of Nushash— an all too vivid reminder of what it was to face Sulepis’ own burning stare. “But it’s a bit late to learn now.”

Vash did not want to go on another voyage. He had barely recovered from the last. What good was it to reach a venerable age and be one of the most powerful men in the world if you still could not stay choose to stay on dry land?

He swallowed his irritation, since it would do no good, and steadied himself against the rocking of the anchored ship before stepping out of the passage into the autarch’s great cabin, a hall of wooden beams a hundred paces long that ran half the length of the ship and most of its width, and was hung with fine carpets to keep in the warmth even during the coldest sea storm. At its center, seated upon a smaller version of the Falcon Throne (tethered to the deck to protect the Golden One’s dignity during times of unsettled seas) was the man who could make Pinimmon Vash do such uncomfortable things.

“Ah, Vash, there you are.” The autarch extended a lazy hand, gold glinting on his fingertips. Other than jewelry, Sulepis wore nothing but a linen kilt and a massive belt of woven gold. “You are just in time. That fat Favored whose name I never remember...” He waited so long that it was plain he wished the name supplied.

“Bazilis, Golden One?” Outside, on the cliffs above them, one of the great crocodile-cannons boomed and the ship’s timbers creaked. Vash tried not to flinch.

“Yes, Bazilis. He is bringing me my gift from Ludis. The god-on-earth is a happy god today, old man.” But Sulepis did not look happy: in fact, he appeared even more feverish and intent than usual, the muscles in his jaw twitching like those of a hound anticipating a meal. “We have waited and worked a long time for this.”

“Yes, Golden One, we have. A very long time.” The autarch frowned. “Have you, too? Have you really, Vash? And have you gone without sleep for weeks on end to read the ancient texts? Have you wrestled with...things that live in darkness? Have you wagered your godhead against your success, knowing that simply hearing of the torments that await you if you fail would kill an ordinary man? Have you truly worked and waited as I have, Vash?”

“N-no, no, of course not, my astonishing master! I did not mean ‘we’ in that way, not truly...” He could feel sweat budding on his old skin. “I meant that the rest of us, your servants, have waited anxiously for your success, but that success, that...mastery...will of course be all yours.” He cursed himself for a fool. An entire year serving this poisonous youth and he still had not learned to ponder every word before it left his mouth! “Please, Golden One, I meant nothing disrespectful...!”

“Of course you didn’t, Vash. You are my trusted servant.” The autarch smiled suddenly, a flash of white as bereft of kindness as the bite-grimace of a canal shark. “You worry too much, old fellow. My gaze is everywhere. I am aware of how loyal my subjects are, and especially of what my closest servants do and think.”

Vash swayed a little—too little to notice, he prayed—and wished he could sit down. The autarch was hinting at something again, surely. Was it the remark the new Leopard captain Marukh had made? But Vash had not agreed with him—in fact, surely he had upbraided the man! But it was also true that he had not gone straight to the autarch to report the man’s treasonous impertinence.

If I denounced every man who chafes under our new autarch’s rule, he thought desperately, the autarch’s strangler would die of overwork and the Orchard Palace would be empty of anything except ghosts by year’s end.

He bowed his head, waiting to find out if he would live another hour.

The autarch lifted his hands before his eyes, frowned again as he examined his finger-stalls. “I am wondering if I should wear the ones made in the shape of a falcon’s talons,” he said. “In honor of the upcoming fall of Hierosol. What do you think, Vash?”

The paramount minister let out a silent sigh of relief. Another hour, at least. “I think it would be a suitable honor to your ancestors, especially...” He paused, determined not to say anything troublesome, but could see no problem. “... Especially your great ancestor Xarpedon, who carried the Falcon all across Xand.”

“Ah, Xarpedon. The greatest of us all—until now.” He looked up as a servant stepped silently through the curtained doorway and stood, head lowered, waiting to be recognized. “Yes?”

“Favored Bazilis is here, Golden One.” “Good! You may step aside, Vash.”

The paramount minister moved through the ring of attendants toward the cabin wall, and wound up standing next to the golden litter of the scotarch, a gilded conveyance only slightly smaller than the autarch’s own. Crippled Prusus peered out of the litter’s window like an anxious hermit crab. Vash nodded to him—a formality only, since everyone knew the scotarch was simpleminded and did not notice such things.

Leaning back against his throne, Sulepis waved for the eunuch to be sent in. Bazilis entered a moment later, grave and immense in his robes; it took him some time and a great deal of rustling of fabric to abase himself at the autarch’s feet.

“O Master of the Great Tent, blessed of Nushash...” he began, but was silenced by the stamp of Sulepis’ sandaled foot.

“Shut your mouth. Where is he? Where is the prisoner?”

“Out...outside, Golden One. I thought you would wish to hear of my...”

The autarch kicked out. The eunuch whimpered and fell back. He crouched and looked up at his master in fear, his hand rising to his face where blood already welled from his lip. “Get him,” the autarch said. “I am waiting for him, you fool, not you.”

“Y-yes, Golden One, of course.” Bazilis backed out of the massive cabin, still on his hands and knees, his brightlyrobed bottom waving in the air.

Sulepis turned to Vash with the slightly prim expression of a tutor. “Out of courtesy to our guest, we will speak Hierosoline in his presence. How is yours, Vash?”

“Good, good, Golden One, although I have not used it much of late...”

“Then this will be an excellent chance for you to practice.” The autarch smiled like a kindly old uncle, although the man he was smiling at was more than three times his age. “After all, you never know when you might be called on to administer a continent where Hierosoline is the chief tongue!”

While Vash pondered what sounded like a bizarre promise of advancement to viceroy of all Eion, the prisoner appeared.

Vash could not help noticing that the man the eunuch and the guards marched into the cabin seemed like another kind of animal entirely in comparison to their master the autarch. Where Sulepis was young and tall and handsome, with golden, close-shaved skin and a high-boned, hawklike face, the northern king was startlingly ordinary, his brownish beard thick and not very well tended, his dark-ringed eyes emphasizing the pallor of his confinement. Only the way he stared back at the autarch betrayed that he was anything other than some petty merchant or craftsman: it was a calm, thoughtful gaze, measured and measuring. The only person Vash had ever seen look so unmoved in the autarch’s presence had been the murderous soldier, Daikonas Vo, but a smile that would never have been on Vo’s face flickered around the northern king’s eyes and lips. The more he thought about it, the more astonished Vash became that Olin’s expression of contemptuous amusement, subtle as it was, hadn’t driven the autarch into one of his sudden rages. Instead, Sulepis laughed.

“There you are! My fellow monarch!” He raised an imperious finger. “Bring a seat for His Majesty.” Two servants scuttled across the great cabin, then hurried back, carrying a chair between them. “I have waited so long to meet you, King Olin. I have heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you already.”

Olin sat down. “How interesting you should say so. I feel very much the same.”

“Oh ho!” The autarch laughed again; he sounded as though he were genuinely enjoying himself. “And what you think you know you do not like, do you? A good joke. We will be friends. In fact, we must be friends! If we insist on formal protocol, our conversations will be so long and so dreary— and we will be having so many conversations in the days ahead. I look forward to it!”

Olin folded his hands carefully on his lap. “So you will not kill me yet?”

“Kill you? Why would I do such a thing? You are a prize, Olin Eddon—worth more than gold or ambergris—worth more than the famed rubies of Sirkot! I have been doing my best to lay hands on you for the longest time!”

“What are you talking about?”

Vash could not help cringing at the northerner’s tone of voice—one simply did not talk to the Golden One that way, not if one wished to keep one’s skin stretched over one’s meat. But instead of calling for Mokori, his favorite strangler, the autarch only chuckled again. “But of course,” he said gleefully. “You could not know. In fact, I wonder if, with all your learning, you will understand even when I explain to you.”

Olin regarded the monarch of all Xand with a combination of interest and growing discomfort. Vash was oddly reassured—he had begun to wonder if his master was truly as mad as he seemed, or if he, Pinimmon Vash, were simply losing perspective, so he was glad to see he was not the only one who found Sulepis puzzling. “It does sound as though you do not intend to kill me today.”

“But I already told you that!” Sulepis feigned astonishment. “You and I have much to do, see, and speak about. First, though, we really must get you cleaned up. Ludis has taken shocking care of you.”

The northern king inclined his head. “May I ask what price you paid for me? Or was I a gift to you from Ludis—a sort of welcome present?”

“Ah, Olin—you do not mind if I call you Olin, do you? You may call me Golden One, or even...yes, you may call me Great Falcon.”

“You are too kind.”

“Ah, we will get along splendidly. You have a sense of humor!” The autarch leaned back in his throne, flicked his hand at the servants. “Take King Olin and let him bathe, then feed him. Give him one of my tasters so that he can dine with a peaceful heart. We will speak again later, Olin— we have much to discuss. Together we will remake the world!”

“You seem very certain that I will agree to help you with this...grand project.” Olin tilted his head, examining his captor; Vash could not help admiring the poor, doomed savage.

“Oh, your agreement is not necessary for my success,” the autarch told him with a sympathetic little frown. “And, sadly, you will not live to see its fruits. But you may rejoice in knowing that you were indispensable—that without you, the world would have remained lost in shadow instead of gaining the salvation of the great light of Nushash—or of Nushasha Sulepis, to be precise, for that is who it will be this time.” Now he favored the foreign king with the lazy smile of a predator too full to eat but not too stuffed to terrify a few lesser animals. “As I said, we will speak later, Olin Eddon—oh, we will speak of many things! We will be something like friends, don’t you think? For a little while, anyway. Now, go enjoy your bath and your supper.”

The man who had kidnapped Qinnitan had only to produce a few parchments from an oilskin envelope—documents with the seal of the autarch himself prominently displayed— and the sailors and soldiers on the great flagship Flame of Nushash scuttled to do his bidding. Just when she wanted life to slow down to the slowest crawl the immense Xixian bureaucracy could provide, everybody around her seemed to be swarming as busily and industriously as ants. The three of them were escorted up the gangplank by soldiers —some, she could not help noticing, in the same Leopard helmet that Jeddin had worn, the architect of her current misery. Why had she not denounced him the moment he had begun his mad talk of loving her? Because she had been flattered? Or because she had pitied him, glimpsing the fretful child she had once known inside the hardmuscled body of the soldier? Whatever the case, he had doomed her with his love as certainly as if he had drawn his dagger across her throat: this trip up the gangplank was only the ending of something that had been inevitable from the first moment of his foolish treachery and her equally foolish silence.

At a murmured aside from their captor Pigeon was taken in hand by one of the Favored. She was about to protest, then realized that although the boy was desperate to stay with her, being separated from her was his best hope.

“Ssshhh,” she said, and then told him an awful lie. “I’ll be back. Everything will be fine. Just go with them and do what they say.”

He was not fooled. As he was led away he wore the shocked, disappointed look of a dog tied to a tree and left behind by its master.

The Leopard officer who had now taken charge of Qinnitan and her captor asked if he wished to make either himself or his “gift” ready to be received.

“I was told to bring her to the Golden One with all speed,” the hunter said. “I am sure he will forgive me if I take him at his word.”

The officer and one of the more important of the Favored looked at each other apprehensively, but the courtier bowed. “Of course, sir. As you say.”

Qinnitan took a shaky breath as they were led down the long, surprisingly wide hallway of the rocking ship. She felt nothing, or at least nothing she could recognize. If she had fallen into the water this moment, as she had imagined doing earlier, she knew she would sink straight down. She felt cold and hard and dead as stone.

They paused outside the doorway of the ship’s central cabin while the Leopard officer discreetly and almost apologetically searched the man who had caught her. The chief of the Favored did the same for Qinnitan. The eunuch’s breath smelled of mint and something sharper and fouler, the stench of a rotting tooth, perhaps; at any other time she would have been revolted by his touch, but now she just stood and let herself be handled like a corpse readied for burial. There was no point in feeling anything. No use caring.

The Favored led them through the door and across the broad cabin toward the tall man seated on a plain chair at the center, legs spread, booted feet planted firmly on the ground, examining the documents Qinnitan’s captor had given to the courtiers.

It was not the autarch.

“All hail High Polemarch Ikelis Johar, Overseer of the Armies!” said the Favored, striking his staff three times on the cabin’s wooden floor.

The general looked up, his heavy-browed face turning from Qinnitan to her captor. “Vo, is it? Daikonas Vo. I think I have heard the name before—your father was a White Hound, too, am I right?”

So the empty-faced man who had taken her had a name, Qinnitan realized—not that it mattered. Soon she would be beyond remembering any name, even her own.

“Yes, Polemarch.” The man seemed a little taken aback, although his face was still stony and indifferent. “Forgive me, Lord, but can you tell me when I may see the autarch? I was given very specific orders...”

“Yes, yes.” The general waved his calloused hand. “And you have done well to come here swiftly and without waiting. But as it happens, you have missed the Golden One by a matter of half a day.”

“What?” Vo seemed, for the first time, quite mortal. “I don’t understand...”

“He has gone in one of his swiftest ships, The Bright Falcon, leaving me behind to watch over the rest of the siege.” The polemarch grinned. “And leaving me as governor over Hierosol when it falls, as well. I shall have my hands full trying to keep the men—especially your comrades in the Hounds—from burning the place to the ground. They are fierce and hungry, and have waited a long time for this.”

Qinnitan was stunned. She done her best to prepare herself to see the autarch’s terrifying smile and she felt as though she had stepped off a cliff where she had expected to set her foot on hot coals. She didn’t know what to think, except that her torment would go on a little longer, her death would be a little delayed, and she had no idea what she felt about that.

The Overseer of the Armies slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. He was tall, and looked half again as heavy as Daikonas Vo. “Well, then, if you just pass the girl over to my servants we will keep her most safe until the autarch returns.”

“No.”

The polemarch, who had begun to turn away, pivoted slowly on his heel, surprised. “No? Did I hear you say no to me, soldier?”

“You did, Lord. Because the Golden One himself commanded me to bring him the girl with all dispatch—me and no one else. I will need your fastest ship.”

The high overseer looked from Vo to the rest of the courtiers and soldiers standing in the room. His mouth curled, but the smile did not hide his annoyance. “My fastest ship, eh? You are insolent, even for one of the Hounds.”

Vo had recovered his equilibrium. He stared back. “There is nothing insolent in serving the Golden One just as he commands—in every word. Our master was most insistent.”

The older man looked at Vo, and Qinnitan could almost believe they were staring at each other over a game board, a fierce bout of Shanat, perhaps, like the old men played in the marketplace, everyone talking except the two competing. At last Ikelis Johar shook his head.

“Very well,” he said. “We will find you a ship. You will tell the autarch, when you find him, that this was your own idea.”

“I will certainly do that, High Polemarch.” Vo turned. “I would like some food and drink while I wait for the new ship to be readied.”

The polemarch frowned heavily, but at last sat down in his chair again. “The servants will see to it. Now you will excuse me, Vo—I have some little work to do, after all.”

“Yes. One last question, Polemarch.” Vo almost seemed to be doing it on purpose now, poking Johar to see if he could make one of the world’s most powerful men lose his temper. “How long ago did the autarch leave for Xis?”

“Xis?” Now the polemarch regained his good humor. “Who said anything about Xis? Your journey will not be so easy. The Golden One is bound north on our fastest ship, following the coast.”

“North?” Daikonas Vo, Qinnitan saw, was not feigning surprise: he was genuinely astonished. “But where is he going?”

“To a small, backwater country few have ever heard about, let alone cared to visit,” the polemarch said, signaling for one of the servants to bring him something to drink. “It is so small he is only taking a few hundred soldiers, although they are all fine, fierce troops—your Hounds among them. And we are sending three more ships full of soldiers after him, too, as well as one of the Royal Crocodiles on a barge— one of the big cannon.”

“Taking them where?” said Vo, confused. “What country? Why?”

“Why? Who knows?” Johar took his goblet and downed a long swallow. “The autarch wills it and so it happens. As to where, it is some insignificant place called Southmarch. Now take your runaway whore and let me get back to the business of destroying a real city.”

41. Kinswoman to Death

A gullboat just in from Jael, which had received its news from other ships newly arrived from Devonis, had brought word to Southmarch that the Autarch of Xis had sent a huge war fleet to Hierosol. The gullboat had left southern waters before collecting any further news, but no one in Southmarch Castle doubted that holy, ancient Hierosol was even now surrounded and besieged.

The doings of those aboveground only seldom stirred the inhabitants of Funderling Town, but they had already heard a great deal of bad news this year—the king imprisoned, the older prince murdered, the royal twins gone and perhaps dead. Many of the small folk wondered whether the final days had truly come, whether the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone had lost his patience with mortals entirely and would soon lay waste to all they had built. There was little work, anyway, nor much to eat or enjoy, so the most pious Funderlings spent their days praying and insisting that the rest of their people join them.

Today, two of the Metamorphic Brothers were standing just inside the gates of Funderling Town, scolding all who passed for trafficking with the sinful upgrounders. Chert turned his head away from them, ashamed but also angry.

As if I had any choice.

“We see you, Brother Blue Quartz!” one of them called as he hurried past. “And the Earth Elders see you too! You of all men must immediately foreswear and repent your wicked deed and evil companions.”

He choked back a bitter reply, seized by a sudden, superstitious pang. Perhaps they were right. These were ominous times, no doubt, and it seemed he was squarely in the middle of every bad omen.

Protect me, O Lord of the Hot Wet Stone, he prayed. Protect your straying servant. I have done only what seemed best for my friends and family!

His god did not send any reply that would make him feel better, only the echo of the Metamorphic Brothers shouting after him, ordering him to repent and come back to the faithful.

The castle above was in chaos. Soldiers were everywhere, and the narrow streets were so crowded that he needed twice as long as he’d expected to make his way through the Outer Keep. Chert began sincerely to repent one thing, at least—agreeing to return to Brother Okros.

Those few big folk who even noticed him stared as though he were some unclean animal that had slipped into a house when the door had been left open. Several bumped hard against him in the most crowded passages and almost knocked him over, and the men driving ox-wagons did not even bother to slow when they saw him, forcing him to dodge for his life in the muddy street among wheels taller than he was.

What madness is this? Why such hatred? Are we Funderlings to blame for the fairy folk across the bay? Or for the autarch trying to conquer Hierosol? But anger, he knew, would do him no good; better simply to keep his eyes open and avoid confrontation wherever possible.

To add to Chert’s miseries, the soldiers at the Raven’s Gate also seemed inclined to give him a difficult time. He had to wait, furious but silent, as they mocked his size and made doubting remarks about his errand to Brother Okros. He heard the bells of the great temple begin to toll the noon hour and his heart sank: he was now late to a summons from the Royal Physician. His fortunes improved a moment later with the arrival of a wagon driver looking to enter the Inner Keep with his huge, overloaded cart of wine barrels and no proper authorization. While the soldiers gleefully began to confiscate the shrieking driver’s cargo, Chert slipped past them into the heart of the castle.

Why could Okros not have met me in the Observatory as he did last time? Chert thought bitterly to himself. That is only a few hundred steps from the gate to Funderling Town. I would have been there already and not had to stand and be mocked by the gate guards. But the summons had said Chert must come to the castellan’s chambers, where Chert supposed Okros must be involved in other business. Does that mean he has carried the mirror all the way across the castle?

Chaven Makaros had been delighted to see the summons from his treacherous onetime friend. “Praise all the gods,” he had cried, “that means Okros still has not solved it yet!” The physician had actually trembled with relief as he read.

“Of course you must go to him again, Chert. I will give you various paths to offer him that will lead him astray for weeks!”

Remembering, Chert made a noise of disgust. So he must tramp all the way across Southmarch and bear several kinds of indignity because two half-mad physicians were determined to play tug-of-war over a mirror! Of course, he reminded himself, it was not a good idea to turn down a summons bearing the royal crest of Southmarch, either.

Chert Blue Quartz had not entered the exalted premises of the royal residence since he had worked on a large crew under the older Hornblende some ten years earlier, excavating a cellar to make a new buttery under the great kitchens. It had been a hard job, and now that he thought of it, a queer one: the king had set out very precise limitations on where they could dig, and as a result the new buttery had been a thing of strange angles, crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Still, he remembered the job fondly—it had been one of his first as a foreman in his own right—and still remembered the pride he had felt to be working in the king’s residence.

Today, though, he was cursedly late, and Chert’s heart sank even further when he saw a group of soldiers lounging in front of the residence gatehouse. Chert knew as well as he knew how to spot a shear in a basalt facing that dealing with this number of guards would hold him up even longer. His experiences going in and out of Southmarch in the old days so he could explore the hills near the Shadowline had taught him that one guard had little to prove, and two would have generally made accommodation between themselves not to work too hard, but soldiers in larger groups often decided to prove themselves to their fellows, or to show off —either way, disastrous for a man Chert’s size who was also in a hurry.

He ducked behind a hedge as tall as he was and hurried out into the garden on the residence’s western side, bypassing the front gate in search of an easier entrance. He found it along the wall behind a row of tangled, skeletal bushes, a window leading into one of the ground floor rooms. It was too small for an ordinary man, and a tight fit even for Chert, which might have explained why it had been left unlatched. He wriggled through it and hung wincing from the frame until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could see how far it was to the floor. The room seemed to be an annex to the pantry, full of barrels and jars but blessedly empty of people. He dropped down, then hurried across it and out into the passage.

Now came the difficult part, trying to find his way across the residence to the castellan’s chambers without anyone noticing him (or at least without anyone realizing he had bypassed the gatehouse). He sighed as he reached the end of the first long hall. Half the hour must be gone now. Okros would be very angry.

After several false turnings, one of which led him into a parlor where a surprised group of young women sat sewing —he bowed repeatedly as he backed out—Chert found the inner gardens and made his way across the nearest one to the center of the residence, then back down the main corridor to the offices and official chambers near the front entrance. I would have been better off to let the guards abuse me, he thought in disgust. I have wasted twice as much time this way. Still, he had finally reached the section of the residence to which he had been summoned, so he no longer needed to hide himself whenever he heard footsteps. With the help of a slightly suspicious page he discovered the hallway to the castellan’s chambers, and was about to rap on the beautifully carved and polished oak door when something stung his hand.

Chert cursed and swatted, but his attacker was no hornet or horsefly: instead, something like a long, slender thorn hung from the flesh of his hand. He brushed at it in irritation but it did not come out, and when he at last plucked it painfully from his skin, he discovered to his astonishment that it was a tiny arrow only half the length of his finger, fletched with tiny strips of butterfly wing.

For a moment he could only stare at it, completely befuddled, but when he looked up and saw a little manlike shape clinging to a tapestry just across the hall, Chert finally realized what had happened. But why should the Rooftoppers want to hurt him? Wasn’t he their ally—hadn’t he and Beetledown been something like friends?

The minuscule assassin did not try to escape, but waited as Chert strode toward him. For a moment he was tempted to reach up and, like some terrible giant, simply pluck the little creature from the hanging and throw him down on the floor, perhaps even step on him. But even at the end of a bad morning, late to an appointment and with his hand throbbing, Chert was not the kind of man to hurt another without good cause, and he did not understand yet what had happened.

He leaned his face close. It was a young Rooftopper male, but not one he recognized. At least his attacker looked suitably frightened. “What are you after?” Chert growled.

The little man was hanging from a thread like a mountaineer on a rope. He waved one of his hands and piped, “Quiet, now! Be tha Chert, Beetledown’s companion?”

“Yes, I be bloody Chert. Why did you arrow me?”

“Beetledown—un sent me to say tha beest in danger! Go not inside!” The little man looked terrified now, and Chert considered how he must look to the fellow, a mountain with a frowning face. He leaned a little ways back. “What do you mean?”

“No time—hide ’ee!” The Rooftopper, as though seeing something Chert could not see, scuttled up the thread to the top of the tapestry and disappeared behind it.

Before Chert could do more than blink, the door of the castellan’s chamber across the hall rattled as the bolt was pulled back. Hide? Why? He had been summoned, hadn’t he? He had every right to be here!

But why would Beetledown send someone to shoot an arrow at me just to get my attention if I wasn’t truly in danger?

Suddenly his hackles were up and his skin was tingling. It must be some misunderstanding—but if it wasn’t...?

There was no room to slip behind the tapestry, but a marble statue of Erivor stood in a little alcove shrine only a few steps down the passage on the same side as the door. Chert bolted for it. The statue rocked as he pushed his way behind it, and he barely had time to steady it before the door creaked open.

“He knows, curse him,” said a voice that he recognized— Okros. “I should have simply had your men take him, Havemore.”

“It would have been better not to alarm the little diggers, and if he had come of his own accord they would have been none the wiser,” said the other man. “But now the soldiers will have to search for him.”

“Yes, send them at once and search his house. The more I think, the more I believe he knows where Chaven is. That question I told you of, what he asked about the mirror—that was too close to the mark.” Okros’ voice seemed hard and hot at the same time, like iron being shaped. Chert, with growing horror, could no longer pretend they were talking about someone else. They were sending soldiers to his house!

“Come with me, Brother,” said the milder voice of the man called Havemore. “You will have to accompany the soldiers yourself because they may not recognize what is important.”

“I will go, and gladly,” Okros said. “And if we do find Chaven Makaros, I ask you only for a few hours alone with him before we inform our lord Hendon. It might...benefit us both.”

The two men walked quickly down the corridor, followed by several soldiers. They had been waiting for him! If Beetledown hadn’t sent the little man with the arrow, Chert would have been arrested and dragged off to the Earth Elders only knew what end—imprisonment at the least, more likely torture.

And they’re on their way to Funderling Town! To my house! Opal and the boy were in terrible danger—Chaven too if he was not hidden. Chert knew he had to get them all into hiding, but how? Cursed Okros and the man Havemore were already on their way down with armed soldiers!

He looked to make sure the hall was empty, then quickly extricated himself from the alcove shrine. He tugged gently on the tapestry and hissed for the little man.

“Help me, please! Can you get a message to Funderling Town quickly?”

After a moment the little man appeared again at the top of the tapestry and shimmied down on his thread. “No, can’t, sir. Take too very long. P’raps if someone by bird went, but cote’s all the way t’other side o’ the Great Peak. Couldn’t get to Fundertown fast enough ourselves, which be why Master Scout Beetledown sent me here to find ’ee.” His tiny chest puffed up a little. “Travel faster, me, than nigh any other.”

Chert sank to the floor in despair. It was hopeless. Even if he could somehow sneak out of the residence and through the Raven Gate, running as fast as he could, Okros and the soldiers would still get there before him. All this because of Chaven and his damned, blasted mirror! Ruined by his cursed secrets...!

Then he remembered the passage underneath Chaven’s observatory. That would get him to the outskirts of Funderling Town in only moments, perhaps while Okros and the soldiers were still trying to find their way through the confusing stone warren of dark streets to locate his house —he doubted any Funderling would give the big folk much help. Nothing made Chert’s neighbors more resentful than people from aboveground throwing their weight around, especially in the little folk’s own domain.

It’s barely a chance, but it’s better than naught, he told himself. He jumped to his feet and put his head close to the Rooftopper.

“Thank you, and tell Beetledown I thank him, too,” Chert whispered. “I will ask the Earth Elders to lead him to great blessings—but now I must go save my family.”

Chert ran off down the passage, leaving his tiny savior spinning on his thread like a startled spider.

The last two days had brought Matt Tinwright attention that at any other time would have delighted him, but just now was wretchedly inconvenient. Because he had been invited to read a poem by Hendon Tolly himself, and in front of Hendon’s brother Duke Caradon, many of those at court had decided Tinwright was becoming a pet of the Tollys and therefore someone whose acquaintance was worth cultivating. People who had never bothered to speak to him before now seemed to sidle up to him wherever he went, desiring a love poem written for them or a good word spoken about them to the new masters of Southmarch.

Today he had finally found a chance to slip off on his own. Most of the castle’s inhabitants and refugees were in Market Square at the festival celebrating the third day of Kerneia, so the corridors, courtyards, and wintry gardens of the inner keep were largely empty as Tinwright made his way out of the residence and into the warren of cramped streets that lay in the shadow of the old walls behind the residence.

When he reached the two-story cottage at the end of a row of flimsy, weatherbeaten houses not far from the massive base of the Summer Tower, he went up the stairs quietly— not because he thought anyone would hear him (the street’s inhabitants were no doubt all drinking free ale in Market Square) but more because the magnitude of his crime seemed to demand a certain respect best shown by silence and slow movements. Brigid opened the door. The barmaid was dressed for the tavern, her bodice pushing up her breasts like biscuits overflowing a pan, but that was the only thing welcoming about her.

“Tinwright, you miserable lizard, you were supposed to be here an hour gone! I’ll lose my position—or worse, I’ll have to turn my tail to Conary again to keep it. I should go right to your Hendon Tolly and tell him all about you.”

His guts turned to water. “Don’t even joke, Brigid.” “Who’s joking?” She scowled, then turned to look back at the pale figure lying on the bed. “I’ll say this for you, she’s pretty enough...for a dead girl, that is.”

Tinwright swayed a little and had to grab the doorframe. “I told you, don’t joke! Please, let me in—I don’t want anyone to see me.” He edged past her and stopped. “Brigid, love, really truly, I’m grateful. I treated you badly and you’ve been more kind than I had any right to hope.”

“If you think that you can honey-talk me instead of paying me...”

“No, no! Here it is.” He pulled out the coin and put it in her hand. “I’ll never be able to thank you properly...” “No, you won’t. Ah, well, the wee thing is all yours now, right and proper.” Brigid smirked. “I always knew you were a bit of an idiot, Matty, but this goes beyond anything I’d guessed.”

“Has she showed any signs of waking?”

“Some. A bit of moaning and tossing, like having a bad dream.” She threw her shawl over her shoulders. “Must go now. Conary will be furious, but maybe I can sweeten him up by working late. I’m never swiving with that old mackerel again if I can help it.”

“You are a true friend,” he said.

“And you’re an idiot, but I think I said that already.” She stepped out into the misty afternoon and pulled the door closed behind her.

The noise of Elan’s quiet breath did not change much, but somehow he knew that she was awake. He put down the book of sonnets and hurried to the side of the bed. Her eyes were moving, her face slackly puzzled.

“Where...where am I?” It was scarcely more than a whisper. “Is this some...some waiting-place?” She saw him moving and her eyes turned toward him, but for long moments they could not fix on him. “Who are you?”

He could only pray that the tanglewife’s potion had not injured her mind. “Matt Tinwright, my lady.”

For a moment she did not understand, perhaps did not even recognize the name, then her face twisted into anguish. “Oh, Matt. Did you take the poison, too? You sweet boy. You were meant to live.”

He took a breath, then another. “I...I did not take poison. You did not either, or at least not enough to die. You are alive.”

She shook her head and her eyes sagged closed again.

He had told her. She hadn’t heard him. Did that mean he was allowed to run away into the night and never look back? Not that he dared desert her, but the gods knew that almost anything would be preferable to standing before this woman and telling her he’d betrayed her trust... “What?” Her eyes opened again, far more alert this time, but wide and frightened like those of a trapped animal. “What did you say?”

The moment to escape, if there had ever truly been such a moment, was gone. Tinwright wondered if a real man should offer to take real poison to make up for his crime. Perhaps, he reminded himself, but he wasn’t a real man— not that kind, anyway. “I said you’re not dead, my lady. Elan. You’re alive.”

She tried to lift her head, but could not. Her gaze jumped fearfully from side to side. “What...? Where am I? Oh, no, surely you are lying. You are some demon of the lands before the gate, and this is a test.”

He was surprised to discover that he felt even lower than he had thought he would. “No, Lady Elan, no. You are alive. I could not bear to see you die.” He dropped to his knees and took her hand, still cold as death. “You are in a safe place. I had confederates.” He shook his head. “I make it too grand. A woman I know, one who has been kind enough to tend you, and to help especially with...with your privacies...” He felt himself blushing and was disgusted. Matt Tinwright, man of the world! But something about this woman reduced him to childish embarrassments. “She and I stole you out of the residence.” He could not quite bear to tell her yet that they had dragged her to this place in a laundry basket.

Her eyes were now shut again. “Hendon...”

“He thinks you have run away. He seemed amused, to be honest. He is a bad man, Lady Elan...”

“Oh, the gods have mercy, he will find me. Matt Tinwright, you are a fool!”

“So everyone tells me.”

She tried to rise again, but was far too weak. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

“No! I...I love you. I couldn’t bear to...to...”

“Then you are twice a fool. You loved a dead woman. If I could not let myself love you then, how could I now, when you’ve denied me the one release I could hope for?” Tears ran down her cheeks but she did not, or perhaps could not, lift her hands to dry them. Tinwright moved forward with his own kerchief, but as he began dabbing at her face she turned away. “Leave me alone.”

“But, my lady...!”

“I hate you, Tinwright. You are a boy, a foolish boy, and in your childishness you have doomed me to horror and misery. Now get out of my sight. Is there no chance the poison might yet kill me?”

He hung his head. “You have been asleep almost three days. You will regain your strength soon.”

“Good.” She opened her eyes as if to fix his face one last time in her memory, then squeezed them shut again. “At least then I’ll be able to take my own life and do it properly. All gods curse me for a coward, seeking to do the deed with womanish, weak poisons!”

“But...”

“Go! If you do not leave me alone, you craven, I shall scream until someone comes. I think I have the strength for that.”

He stood on the stairs for a long time, uncertain of where to go, let alone what to do. The rains had begun again, turning the muddy alley into a swamp and the Summer Tower into an unlit beacon on a storm-battered coast.

Can’t go back, can’t go forward. He hung his head, felt the cold rain dribble down the back of his neck. Zosim, you nasty godling, you have put me in another trap and I’m sure you’re laughing. Why did I ever think you and your heavenly kind might have changed their minds about me?

“Opal!” Chert shouted, then a fit of coughing snatched what little remained of his breath. He bent over in the doorway, gasping as if he had cut into a bed of dry gypsum. “Opal, get the boy,” he called when he had recovered a little. “We have to hide.” But it was strange she had not come to him already.

He staggered into the back room. It was empty, with no sign of his wife or Flint. His heart, already put to a cruel test with his dash across the Inner Keep and just beginning to slow, instead started to race once more. Where could she be? There were at least a dozen possible places, but Brother Okros and those soldiers could only be a short way behind him and he did not have time to rush around searching blindly.

He went out into Wedge Road and began beating on doors, but succeeded only in frightening their neighbor Agate Celadon half to death. She didn’t know where Opal had gone, nor did anyone else. Chert sent a desperate prayer to the Earth Elders as he sprinted toward the guildhall as fast as his weary legs could take him.

There seemed to be more people around the venerable building than usual, he saw as he hobbled up the front steps, important and unimportant folk milling about on the landing before the front door. The inner chamber was equally crowded. Several of the men called to him, but when he only demanded to know whether they’d seen Opal or the boy, they shrugged and shook their heads, surprised that he did not want to hear what they had to say.

Chert almost ran into Chaven in the anteroom of the Council Chamber. The physician caught him, then waited patiently while the exhausted Funderling slowly filled his lungs back up with air.

“I am longing to hear your news,” Chaven said, “but I have been called with some urgency by some of your friends on the Guild Council. It seems a stranger—one of the big folk as you call us, one of my kind—has stumbled into the Council room. Everyone is quite upset about it.”

“By the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone, don’t go in there!” Chert reached up and grabbed Chaven’s sleeve as tightly as he could. “That’s what I’ve come...come to tell you about. It must be one of Brother Okros’ soldiers—maybe even Okros himself!”

“Okros? What are you talking about?” Now Chert had the physician’s full attention.

“I’ll tell you, but...but if they are already in the guildhall, I fear my news is too late.” Chert slumped to the floor, panting. “I’ll just c-catch my breath, then I ha-have to find Opal.”

“Tell me first,” Chaven said. “The keepers of this hall told me it is only one man. Perhaps we can take him prisoner before his fellows realize where he has gone.” He stood and waved some of the other Funderlings over, then squatted by Chert once more. “Tell me all.”

“It does not matter,” Chert moaned. “I have lost my family and I can’t find them. Soon the soldiers will be everywhere. There’s nothing we can do, Chaven.”

“Perhaps.” For the first time in a while, the physician seemed his old, confident self. “But that does not mean I will give in to that traitorous thief Okros without a fight.” Chaven turned to the other Funderlings who were beginning to gather around them. “Some of you men must have weapons, or at least picks and stone-axes. Go get them. We’ll capture the one lurking in the Council Chamber first, then make him tell us where his fellows are.”

So now the Funderlings were to follow a paunchy scholar into battle against Hendon Tolly and all the giant soldiers of Southmarch? If Chert had not been so close to weeping, he might even have enjoyed the bleak joke of it, but all he could think was that his people’s world was ending and it was mostly his fault.

“By all the oracles, it is bitter out here!” Merolanna said for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. “I should have brought more furs. Is there nothing in this boat to keep an old woman from freezing to death?”

The young Skimmer Rafe didn’t even look up from his oars. “It’s not a pleasure barge, is it? Fishing boat, that’s what it is. Might be a sealskin in that bag, still.”

The duchess waited for Sister Utta to volunteer her services; then, when Utta did no such thing, she began with evident reluctance to poke among the articles wedged under the bench, sighing loudly. Utta, who was determined not be moved, looked away.

She returned to her inspection of Rafe, their boatman and (at least as long as they were on the water) their guide in unfamiliar territory. It was not just the long Skimmer arms that marked him out, although those were very much in evidence as he plied the oars against the choppy swells of Brenn’s Bay. Some of the other differences were hidden now that he had put on a thin shirt, seemingly more as a sop to convention than as actual protection against the chill bay winds: like his arms, his neck seemed longer than with most folk, and it made a bit of a hump where it joined his back between the shoulder blades.

His head seemed canted forward, too, as if the point of connection was higher on the back of the skull, but most interesting and disturbing of all was the confirmation of what Utta had thought only a rumor, but now knew as truth: Rafe’s fingers and toes were webbed, although most of the time it did not show.

Could all the childhood stories be true, then? Were the Skimmers a different race entirely, like the Rooftoppers surely must be?

“What do your people say?” Utta asked him suddenly, then realized she was speaking thoughts aloud that he couldn’t possibly understand. “About where they came from, I mean?”

He looked up at her, wrinkling the skin of his brow in distrust. “Why do you ask?”

“I am curious, I suppose. I grew up in the Vuttish Isles, and none of your folk still live there, although there are stories that they did...”

“Stories?” he said bitterly. “I’ll trow there were.” “What do you mean?”

“That were all ours once, your Vuttland.” “It was?”

He snorted. “Wasn’t it? Didn’t our kings rule there, with the Great Moot? Didn’t the Golden Shoal come to rest there, at the rock of Egye-Var?”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “Then why did they leave?”

“Should ask T’chayan Redhand, shouldn’t you?” “Who is that?”

His eyes widened. He was not pretending—he was truly astonished. “Don’t know T’chayan the Killer? The man who murdered most all my kind in the islands, women and spawn, too, drove our people out of our home and hunted us wherever we went with his dogs and his arrows?”

She blinked, surprised. “Do you mean King Tane the White?” Utta was better read than most of her fellow Vuttlanders, especially because she had gone away, first to the women’s remove at Connord, then to the Eastmarch convent to complete her Zorian novitiate. In fact, she knew more of history than most men, but what the Skimmer youth said was new to her. “Tane is not so well known to us now. I may have heard his name once or twice when I was a girl. When Connord conquered the isles and converted the Vuttish Isles to the Trigonate faith, much of our old history was lost.”

“Your people do not remember T’chayan Redhand?” The Skimmer youth shook his head in stunned horror. “Sure, you’re lying to tease me, then. Your people don’t repent his bloody deeds, or at least celebrate them?”

“What are the two of you going on about?” demanded Merolanna, poking her head out from the hood she had made of the sealskin.

Sister Utta shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she told Rafe. “Truly, I am. My people have forgotten, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean we should have.”

He shut his mouth with an almost audible snap and refused to talk anymore, or even look at Utta, as though she herself had just returned from the long task of eradicating all memory of the wrongs done to his forebears.

The day was cold and cloudy, with intermittent rain. The fog that lingered in the mainland city seemed weirdly heavy to Utta, like clouds that lay on the ocean instead of hanging in the sky. She could make out a few landmarks jutting through the murk, the market flagpoles and all the temple spires, but the mists made them seem something else, perhaps the skeletal ribs of ancient monsters.

Rafe moved the boat ably through the high waves as they got closer to land; Merolanna alternately clutched the side of the boat and Utta. At times they actually lifted off the benches, then slammed down hard in the next trough. For the first time, Utta wished she had changed back into women’s clothes, since they would have offered more protection for her rapidly bruising fundament.

At last they were through and into the shallows. Rafe grounded the boat on a sandbar. “If you walk up that way, won’t get your feet too wet,” he said.

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

“For one silver urchin? You’ll want a bodyguard or a troop of soldiers, and you won’t get them for one merely urchin, will you? I said I’d bring you here and take you back. Means I’ll sit and wait, not go in ’mongst the Old Ones. Their kind don’t like my kind.”

Utta helped Merolanna out, but despite the duchess’ best efforts, the hems of her long skirts still dragged in the water. “Why don’t they like you?”

“Us?” Rafe laughed. His face changed when he did it, looked both more and less like an ordinary man’s. “Because we stayed behind, didn’t we?”

Utta did not get to ask any more questions because just at that moment Merolanna slipped and fell. As the older woman floundered in the shallow water, Utta struggled to lift her until Rafe jumped lightly out of the boat to help. Together the two of them managed to get the dowager duchess upright again.

“Merciful Zoria, look at me!” Merolanna groaned. “I am soaking wet! I’ll catch my death of something, that’s sure.”

“Here, wait,” said the young Skimmer, then splashed back to the boat. He returned with the sealskin. “Wrap this around you.”

“Thank you,” said Merolanna with a certain amount of ceremony—certainly more than this isolated cove had seen in some time, Utta could not help thinking. “You are very kind.”

“Still not going with you, though.” Rafe waded back to the boat.

“Your Grace, I suspected this was not a good idea before. Now I am certain of it.” Sister Utta was trying her best not to peer at the empty houses on either side of the Port Road because they didn’t really seem empty: the black holes of their windows seemed something more sinister, the eye sockets of skulls or the mouths of dragon caves. Even here on the outskirts of town, where the houses were low and the winds brisk, the fog still hung in cobwebby tendrils and it was hard to see more than a few dozen paces ahead. “I think we should go back to the castle.”

“Do not try to change my mind, Sister. I have come all the way here and I will speak to the fairy folk. They can kill me if they want, but I will at least ask them what became of my son.”

But if they kill you, why would they let me go? Utta did not speak this thought aloud, not out of any desire to spare Merolanna’s feelings, but because in her growing hopelessness, suspended in this foggy dreamworld as if they were ghosts roaming aimlessly in the realms of Kernios, she did not think it would make any difference. Utta knew she had cast her sticks, as the old gambler’s saying went, and now she must shake out her coppers.

They walked slowly up a steep road, Merolanna dripping with every step, into the open, rain-sprinkled cobbles of Blossom Market Square—not a place to buy flowers, but the venerable home of the mainland fish market, whose famous stink had been jestingly memorialized in its name. Other than the still-pungent memories of market days past, the square seemed empty now, the awnings and tents gone, the people all fled to the castle or to cities further south, but Utta could not rid herself of the sense of being watched. If anything, it grew stronger as she walked with the duchess across the open space, so that each step seemed slower and more difficult, as though the mist was getting into her very bones, making them sodden and heavy. It was almost a relief when a figure stepped out of a shadowed arch at the edge of the market and stood waiting for them.

Utta had prepared herself for virtually anything, her imagination fueled by the books in the castle library and the tales of her Vuttish grandmother. She was ready for giants, or monsters, or even beautiful, godlike creatures. She was not as well prepared for an ordinary mortal man in a simple, homespun robe.

“Good afternoon to you,” he said. Utta thought he must be one of the few who had stayed behind, although it seemed impossible he should have come unhurt and unchanged through the Twilight folk’s conquest of the city. She could see now that there was something strange about him, something not quite right, and as he approached she found herself shying back.

“No need to fear me.” He turned and bowed to Merolanna. “You are the duchess, are you not? I have seen you once or twice in the castle after I was released.”

“Released?” said Merolanna. Utta stared—there was something familiar about him, although by most standards he had one of the least noteworthy faces she had ever seen. “Who are you, sir?”

“I was known for many years by the name of Gil, and had no other. Now I am called Kayyin...again. My story might interest you—in fact, it might interest me, too, if I could remember it all—but for now I am only to be your escort. Please, let me take you to her.”

“To whom?” Merolanna asked. Utta was suddenly too fearful to speak. The sun was sinking behind the great seawall and the city was all shadows. “What are you talking about, man?”

“To the mistress of this city. You are commanded to come to her.”

“Commanded?” Merolanna bristled a little.

“Oh, yes, Your Grace. She can command anyone—she is greater than any mere queen.” He stepped nimbly between them and took each woman by an elbow. “Even the gods must fear her. You see, she is kinswoman to death itself.”

“You certainly are an impertinent man,” Merolanna said. “Why do you speak so strangely? How did you come to be here?”

“I speak strangely because I am no man,” he told her. “Nor am I one of the Qar—not anymore, not after I lived so long as one of your kind, forgetting I was anything else. I am unique, I think—no longer one or the other.”

Utta was uncomfortably aware of shapes appearing from the shadows and falling silently into place behind them like an army of cats. She looked back. There were at least three dozen of the tall, slender warriors, eyes gleaming in the depths of their hoods and helmets. Chilled, heart speeding, she said nothing. If Merolanna did not know, let her enjoy her last moments of security.

The duchess certainly seemed to be doing her best to remain ignorant. “Are you not shamed to speak so?” she asked their odd guide. “I must say I do not think very highly of someone who is such thin milk as to say, ‘I am not one or the other’—especially when our two peoples are at war!”

“If you cut out the gills of a fish, Duchess, would you then blame him when he said he did not belong in the water? And yet, he still would not be a man, either.” As they reached the far end of the foggy square their guide stopped and raised his hand. “We are here.”

Before them lay the bulky stone towers of the Council House where the city’s leaders had met, a second seat of power in Southmarch that had on occasion, during times of weak rulers and strong councils, set itself on a nearly equal footing with the throne itself. Its square central tower still loomed above the surrounding buildings, a blocky shape like the chimney of some immense, underground mansion, but the rest of the ancient Council House looked different. It took Utta a moment to realize that what had softened its contours and shadowed its façade was a lattice of woody, dark vines that shrouded most of the building. The vines had not been there the last time she had been in Blossom Market Square, she was certain, but they looked like the product of centuries.

The three dozen or so Qar walking silently behind them had now grown to hundreds, a true army, which filled the square on either side of them, a forest of dimly glittering eyes and pale, hostile faces. Some did not even come close to resembling mortal men. Utta made the sign of the Three and fought against an urge to pull away from their guide and run. She turned to whisper something to the duchess, but she could see by Merolanna’s face that the older woman already knew what was happening and had only been pretending she didn’t. It was not obliviousness, but a sort of bravery.

More Qar stepped out in front of them, leaving only a narrow aisle between their ranks, leading to the steps of the Council House.

Zoria, forgive me for my selfish thoughts and my pride.

Utta put her head down, then lifted it as proudly as she could, like a prisoner going to the gallows. They climbed the wide stairs behind the man who did not know what he was.

It took a moment for her eyes to make sense of the gloom inside the main hall, and when she did she was surprised to see how many of the Twilight folk were here, too: they truly were quiet as cats, these Qar, as they seemed to call themselves. In fact, it was almost exactly like disturbing some congregation of alley-lurkers: the faces swung up, oddly shining eyes fixed on the newcomers, but the faces showed nothing. Some of them were so disturbing to look at that she could not bear to see them for more than an instant. When one of them curled a lip and snarled at her, showing teeth sharp as needles, Utta had to stop, unable to walk for fear she would stumble and fall.

“Just a little farther,” said Kayyin kindly, taking her arm again. “She waits right there—can you see her? She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

Utta let herself be led forward to the empty center of the room, which contained only one unprepossessing chair and two figures, one sitting, one standing. The one standing behind the chair was female, dressed in plain robes, but her eyes gleamed like fogged mirrors.

The woman in the chair was less obviously unusual, except for her size. She appeared to be as tall as a good-sized man, although achingly thin, but the spikiness of her dark, unreflecting armor made it hard to gauge anything to a certainty. She had the single most unfeeling face Utta had ever seen, one that made the famously stern statue of Kernios in Market Square seem like a child’s favorite uncle. Her high, slitted eyes and her wide, pale-lipped mouth might have been carved from stone. Utta felt her legs begin to tremble again. What had the odd man called her— Death’s kinswoman? Merciful Zoria and all the gods of heaven, she looks like Death iself!

Merolanna too seemed to have lost her courage: they both had to be urged forward by Kayyin, each step heavier than the last, until at last they both slumped to their knees a few paces from the foot of the throne.

“This is Duchess Merolanna Eddon, a member of the royal family of Southmarch,” Kayyin said as if he were the herald at a court ball. If he truly had lived in the castle once, Utta decided, it was not surprising that he knew Merolanna’s name. But then he added, “And this is Utta Fornsdodir, a Zorian sister. They wish an audience with you, Lady Yasammez.”

The woman in black armor looked slowly from Merolanna to Utta, her stare like the touch of an icy finger. A moment later she turned away as if the women were no more substantial than air. “Your japes bring me no pleasure, Kayyin.” Her voice was as chill as her gaze; she spoke with a strange, archaic lilt. “Take them away.” She spread her long white fingers, said something in a low mutter, then spoke aloud again in a language Utta and Merolanna could understand. “Kill them.”

“Hold a moment!” Merolanna’s voice trembled, but the duchess clambered up onto her feet even as Utta began to pray, certain that her last moments were upon her. “I have come to you not as an enemy, but as a mother—a mother wronged. I come to you seeking a boon and you would kill me?”

Yasammez stared at her, a black, unreadable stare. “But I am no mother,” the fairy woman said. “Not anymore. What seek you?”

“My child. My son. I am told he was taken by the Twilight... by the Qar. Your people. I wish to know what happened to him.” She gained strength as she spoke. Utta could not help admiring her: whatever her other foibles, Merolanna was no coward.

“Do you hear?” said Kayyin suddenly. “She is appealing to you as one woman to another. As one parent to another.” There was something oddly barbed in his tone. “Surely you will not harden your heart to her—will you, Mother?”

Yasammez shot him a look of venom unlike anything Utta had ever seen. If it had been directed at her, she felt sure she would have shriveled and burned like a dry leaf fallen into a fire. A stream of the sharp-edged yet strangely fluid speech rushed out of the woman in the black armor. Kayyin smiled, but it was the miserable smile of someone who had, with great effort, cut off his own nose to spite his face.

Death’s kinswoman swiveled around to stare at Utta and Merolanna—this time, Utta could not meet her fierce gaze. “You come to me on a day when I have learned of the death of my treasured Gyir, when I have felt him die—the one who should have been my son instead of this changeling traitor. And with Gyir the Storm Lantern dead, the Pact of the Glass must be ended, because the Glass itself will never reach the House of the People.” The armored woman slammed her hand down on the arm of the rough chair and the wood snapped into flinders, but she did not seem to notice. “I will now wage war again on your people until the place you call Southmarch is mine, and if I must kill every sunlander man, woman, and child within its walls, I will do so without a qualm.” She stared again. Her anger faded and her expression hardened as though ice covered it. “It could be, though, that you will be more use to me as messengers, so I will not kill you yet. But speak no more to me of your child, sunlander bitch. I could not care if my people stole an entire litter of human whelps from you.” She waved. Several guards stepped forward and took possession of Utta and Merolanna, although the duchess seemed to have fainted. Utta could make no sense out of what was happening, only that they had stumbled into something more dreadful than her worst fears.

“It will be a joy to hear again the screams of your kind,” the monstrous woman said to Utta, then waved the prisoners away.

42. The Raven’s Friend

Briony’s male disguise, which had already been compromised by her stage costume representing the goddess Zoria, had not survived a search for weapons by the Syannese soldiers who had arrested her and the other players.

(Feival Ulian, who had left the stage as Zuriyal, wife of the rebel god black Zmeos, had also been led off to the palace in a gown. It was an open question as to which of them, he or Briony, felt more comfortably dressed.) Briony and Estir Makewell had been shoved into a room that wasn’t quite a dungeon cell, but was no chamber for honored guests, either: dank and windowless, it smelled of mold and sweat and urine, and contained no furniture but a single crude bench; the sound of the outside bar being lowered had a distressing thump of finality.

“Should have known there was more to you than a chance meeting,” Estir sneered. “That old mare Teodoros, up to his same old tricks. Did he bring you along to get into someone’s bed, then, winkle out secrets that way? Now we’re all for the headsman’s block, thanks to you two.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not a spy—I had nothing to do with any of this!”

“Oh, that’s likely.” Estir Makewell sat back with her arms folded across her dirty dress, but Briony could see that the woman was shaking with fear, and her own anger turned to something like pity.

“Truly, I knew nothing about this. I was running away from... from my home when I fell in with you.” Estir sniffed in an unconvinced manner. “What do you mean, same old tricks?” Briony asked. “Has he done something like this before?”

The woman glared at her. “Don’t pretend with me, girl. I saw you talking to that black fellow like he was an old friend— that Xixian. How would you know someone like that if you weren’t one of Finn’s coneys?”

Briony shook her head. At least Dawet had escaped, not that it would do Briony any good. “I know him a little, but it’s nothing to do with Finn. I had met him before, in Southmarch. But I swear on...on the honor of Zoria herself,” she thumped her fist against her chest, bleakly amused to be swearing on herself, or at least her costumed self, “that I knew nothing about any spying.” She suddenly looked at the closed door. “Do you think they’re listening?” she asked in a quieter voice. “Did we say anything we shouldn’t have?”

“What do you care if you’ve nothing to hide?” sniffed Estir, but she seemed a little less angry. “You’re right, though. We should keep our mouths closed. If that fat know-it-all’s got himself in trouble, it won’t be the first time. That’s all I’ll say, except to curse him for dragging us all into it this time.”

Briony looked at the walls, so damp they seemed to be sweating. They had trudged for the better part of an hour to reach this place, which she assumed must be in the royal palace, but they were several floors below the main body of the castle. I could disappear here very easily, she thought. Executed as a spy, and that would be the last of me. King Enander would be doing Hendon Tolly’s work for him without even knowing it. Unless they’re already in league...? It was hard to believe—Southmarch had never been a threat or even a real rival to Syan. What could Tolly offer to the more powerful Syannese monarchy except the uncomfortable possibility of dynastic upheavals? What king would would want to encourage that unless it benefited him personally?

But what had Finn Teodoros been up to? Was it a coincidence Dawet had come to the innyard?

Briony fell into a frowning, miserable silence, trying to understand what had happened and decide what she could do about it. Me, she thought, it’s down to me. Keep drifting or stand up. At last she went to the door of the room in which they were prisoned and rapped on it hard, with both hands.

“Tell your captain or whoever is in charge that I want to talk to him. I want to make a deal.”

“What are you doing, girl?” Estir demanded, but Briony ignored her.

After a moment the door swung open. Two guards stood in the doorway, only a little less bored than when they had thrown the two women into the room. “What do you want? Make it fast,” said one.

“I want to make a bargain. Tell your commanding officer that if you’ll bring me the man called Finn Teodoros and let me speak to him, I swear on the gods themselves that afterward I’ll tell you something that will make even the king of Syan sit up and take notice.”

Estir was watching her with her mouth open. “You traitorous bitch,” she said at last. “Trying to buy yourself out? You will get us all killed!”

“And take this woman out,” Briony said. “She knows nothing. Let her go or put her somewhere else, it makes no difference to me.”

The soldiers, actually interested now, exchanged a brief glance with each other, then closed the door and tramped away up the corridor.

“How dare you!” Estir Makewell said, striding forward to stand over her. Wearily, Briony stared up at her, hoping she wouldn’t have to fight the woman. “How dare you tell them what to do with me?”

Briony rolled her eyes, then grabbed the woman’s arm roughly, silencing her. “Stop—I’m trying to help you.” Estir stared at her, frightened. She had her mask on now, Briony realized, the Eddon mask that none of the players had seen. She made her voice hard. “If you keep your mouth shut, you and the others may walk away from this happy and healthy. If you cause a fuss, I can’t promise anything.”

Estir Makewell’s eyes grew wide at the change in Briony’s tone. She retreated to the other side of the room and stayed there until the guards came and led her out.

Finn Teodoros had some bruises around his eyes and a bleeding weal on his bald head. He gave Briony a shamefaced look as the guards led him in and sat him down on the bench beside her.

“Well, Tim, my young darling,” he said, “it seems as if your disguise has been penetrated by these crude folk from outside the theatrical fraternity.” He touched his swollen cheek and winced. “I swear I didn’t tell them.”

“They found out when they searched me. It doesn’t matter anyway.” Briony took a breath. The very fact that the guards had left the two of them alone in the room meant they were almost certainly listening to everything that was being said. “I need your help,” she told Teodoros. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

He gave her a look that contained a mixture of caution and amusement. “And who in this wretched old world can actually say what that is, dear girl?”

She nodded, conceding the point. “As much truth as you know,” she said, then looked significantly around the room. “As much as you can tell.”

He sighed. “I am truly sorry you were caught up in this. I have tried to tell them that you had nothing to do with it.”

“Don’t worry about me. I am less innocent than you think, Finn. Just tell me one thing—were you working for Hendon Tolly?”

He stared at her, clearly calculating. “Tolly?”

“I may be able to protect you, but you must tell me the truth about that. I must know.”

“You, protect me? Girl, you are not Zoria in truth, you merely aped her on the boards!” He smiled, but it was little more than a fearful twitch. He swallowed, leaned close to her. “I... I do not know,” he said in a voice that was scarcely even a whisper. “I was given a...a task...by someone else. Someone high in the government of Southmarch.” She hazarded a guess. “Was it Lord Brone? Avin Brone?” His eyebrows rose. “How would you know of such things?”

“If I can save us, I will, and then you will learn more. Were you to meet with Dawet dan-Faar on Brone’s behalf? Drakava’s man?”

This time Finn Teodoros could say nothing, but in his surprise could only nod.

Briony stood up, walked to the door. “I wish to talk to the guard captain, please,” she called, “or anyone in authority. I have something to say that the king himself will want to know.”

This time there was a much longer wait before the door opened. Several guards came through, followed a moment later by a well-dressed man in the high collar of a court grandee. He had gray in his pointed beard, but did not otherwise seem very old, and he moved with the grace of a young man. He reminded her a little bit of Hendon Tolly, an unpleasant association. “Do not rise,” the noble said with perfectly pitched courtesy. “I am the Marquis of Athnia, the king’s secretary. I understand you believe you have something to say that is worth my listening. I’m sure it goes without saying that there is a very unpleasant penalty for wasting my time.”

Briony sat up straighter. She had heard of Athnia—he was a member of the old and wealthy Jino family and one of the most important men in Syan. Apparently the guards had taken what she said seriously. On the bench Finn Teodoros swayed, almost fainting with apprehension at the appearance of such a powerful figure.

“I do.” She stood up. “I can do no good to anyone by proceeding with this counterfeit. I am not an actor. I am not a spy. I do not believe this man here or any of the other actors are spies, either—at least they meant no harm to Syan or King Enander.”

“And why should we believe anything you say?” the marquis asked her. “Why should we not take you down to the brandy cellars and let the men there extract the truth from all of you?”

She took a breath. Now that the moment had come, it was surprisingly difficult to put off the cloak of anonymity. “Because you would be torturing the daughter of one of your best and oldest allies, Lord Jino,” she said, straightening her spine, trying to will herself taller and more imposing. “My name is Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M’Connord Eddon, daughter of King Olin of Southmarch, and I am the rightful princess regent of all the March Kingdoms.”

It’s my dream, he thought. I’m trapped in my own nightmare!

Shouts and screams surrounded him like strange music. The corridors were full of fire and smoke and some of the running, horribly charred shapes were as black and faceless as the men in his dream.

Is that what it meant, then? He staggered to a stop in a wide place at the junction of several tunnels and crouched beside an overturned ore cart. Every bone and sinew in his body had been battered until he could hardly walk, and his crippled arm felt like the bones were grinding together each time it moved. Was my dream telling me that this is where I die?

A small, clumsy shape staggered past him, keening in a shrill, mad voice. Barrick tried to rise, but couldn’t. His heart was shuddering and tripping like a bird’s, and his legs felt as though they would not support a sparrow, let alone his own weight. He let his head sag and tried to breathe.

I don’t want to die here. I won’t die here! But what was the sense of such foolish statements? Gyir hadn’t wanted to die here either but that hadn’t saved him—Barrick had felt the fairy’s dying moment. Ferras Vansen hadn’t wanted to die here either, yet he had still fallen down to certain destruction in the stony black depths. What made Barrick think he would be any different? He was lost in the deeps of an old, bad place, trapped in the dark, surrounded by enemies... But I have to try. Must. I promised...!

He wasn’t even sure any more what he had promised or to whom: three faces hovered before his eyes, shifting and merging, dissolving and reforming—his sister with her fair hair and loving looks, the fairy-woman with her stony, ageless face, and the dark-haired girl from his dreams. The last was an utter stranger, perhaps not even real, and yet in some ways, at this moment, she seemed more real and familiar than the others.

Push against it, she had told him on that bridge between two nowheres. Escape it. Change it.

He had not understood—had not wanted to understand— but she had insisted he not give up, not surrender to pain.

This is what you have, she had told him, eyes wide and serious. All of it. You have to fight.

Fight. If he was going to fight, he supposed he’d have to get up. Didn’t any of them understand he had a right to be bitter—to be more than bitter? He hadn’t asked for any of this—not the terrible injury to his arm or the curse of his father’s blood, not the war with the fairies or the attentions of an insane demigod. Didn’t all the women who were demanding he do this or that—go on a mission, come home safe, fight against despair—didn’t they know he had a right to all that misery?

But they just wouldn’t leave him alone.

Barrick sighed, coughed until he doubled over and spat out blood and ash, then climbed back onto his feet.

Many of the tunnels started out with an upward slant, but soon tilted back down again. The only certain way to know that he was climbing was to find stairs. But Barrick Eddon was not the only one with that idea: half the lost, shrieking creatures in the smoky depths of Greatdeeps seemed to be looking for a way to the surface. The others, for reasons he could not imagine, seemed equally determined on rushing down toward the place where Gyir and the oneeyed demigod had died, a cavern that had already collapsed in fire and black fumes when Barrick had crawled away from it perhaps an hour ago. Sometimes he actually had to wade through a tide of maddered shapes, some of them as big as himself, all hurrying as fast as they could down toward what must be certain death. He had lost the ax when the ceiling fell; now he found a spadelike digging tool that someone had dropped, and used it the next time the tunnel became frighteningly cramped, clearing his way with it, hitting out when he needed to against the claws or teeth of frightened refugees.

As he climbed higher through the mine the stairwells opened onto rooms and scenes of which he could make no sense whatsoever. In one broad cavern which he had to traverse to reach the bottom of the next stairwell, dozens of slender, winged creatures were savaging a single squat one, their voices a shrill buzz of angry joy—their victim might have been one of the small Followers like those that had attacked Gyir in the forest, but it was hard to tell: the silent creature was too covered with blood and earth to be certain. Barrick hurried past with his head down. It reminded him of his own vulnerability, and when he saw the dull glow of a blade lying on the stairs where its owner had dropped it, presumably in panicked flight, he dropped the digging tool and picked this up instead. It was a strange thing, half ax, half poniard, but much sharper than the spade.

A couple of floors up the stairwell suddenly filled with small, pale skittering things which seemed to care little whether they were upside down or right side up; just as many of them raced across the ceiling and walls as along the floor. Their bodies were bone-hard, round and featureless as dinner bowls, but they had little splay-toed feet like mice. The scrabbling, clinging touch of those tiny claws disturbed Barrick so much that after the first one landed on him he hurriedly brushed off all others.

Barrick Eddon was staggeringly weary. He had climbed several staircases, some taller than anything back home in Southmarch, and also two high, terrifyingly rickety ladders, yet he still seemed no closer to the surface: the air was still as dank, hot, and choking as before, the other slaves and workers just as confused as they had been a half dozen levels lower. He was lost, and now even the strength that terror had brought him was beginning to fade. Things fluttered past in the dark tunnels and shadowy figures slid across his path before vanishing down side passages, but more and more he seemed to be alone. That was bad: to be alone was to be obvious. The monstrous demigod might be dead but that didn’t mean Jikuyin’s surviving minions would just let Barrick go.

He grabbed at the first creature he found that was smaller than himself, a strange, hairless thing with goggling eyes like a two-legged salamander, the last of a pack that slithered past him in a stairwell. It let out a thin shriek, then before he could even find out if it spoke his language it fell into pieces. Arms, legs—everything he tried to grab dropped off the torso and the whole slippery, strange mess tumbled from his grasp and then hopped and slithered away down the stairs after its fellows. Barrick was so startled that he stood staring as the hairless creatures (trailed by the one he had captured, still in its constituent parts) hurried down and out of his sight, then was almost crushed by a large, hairy shape chasing after them.

The hairy thing was on him and then past him so quickly that he only knew it was one of the apelike guards by its foul smell and by the scratch of its fur as it forced its way past him down the narrow stairwell. He stood for a moment after it was gone, gasping, grateful that it seemed more interested in the hairless things than in him.

Maybe they’re good to eat, he thought miserably. Barrick wasn’t only aching and tired, he was famished—the guards hadn’t bothered to feed them before dragging them off to the gate. I’ll be killing and eating the horrid things myself before long, and glad to have them... Just as he reached a landing, lit fitfully by a pair of guttering torches, a small shape dashed out of one of the side passages. The little, manlike creature took one look at Barrick and turned to run back the way he’d come, but Barrick lunged forward—surprising himself almost as much as the newcomer—and gripped the creature’s knotted, oily hair with the fingers of his good hand.

“Stop or I’ll kill you,” he said. “Do you speak my tongue?”

It was a Drow like the one which had ridden the burning wagon, tiny and gnarled, with bristling brows, a wide, onionshaped nose and a ragged beard that covered much of its face. It was strong for its size, but the more it struggled the tighter Barrick held. He drew it toward him and laid his found blade against its face so it could not fail to notice. He struggled not to show the creature how much it hurt him just to hold the blade with his bad arm.

“Nae hort,” it cried, the voice both gruff and high-pitched. “Nae hort!”

It took a moment. “Don’t...don’t hurt you?” He leaned closer, glaring. “Don’t think to trick me, creature. I want to go out, but I can’t find the surface—the light. Where is the light?”

The little man stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Yow beyst in Rootsman’s Nayste—ouren Drowhame. High in mountain, beyst, wuth caves and caves, ken? Wrong way to dayburn.”

If he listened carefully, he could make sense of it. So he was climbing inside the mountain itself—no wonder he couldn’t find the surface! He was relieved, but if the creature considered the weak light of the shadowlands worthy of being called “dayburn,” he hoped it never found itself in the true light of day on the other side of the Shadowline.

“How do I get out. Out to...to dayburn?”

“Thic way.” The Drow squirmed gently until Barrick loosened his grip. It turned and pointed with a stubby, crack-nailed finger. “Yon.”

Barrick gratefully transferred his blade to his good hand. “Very well. Lead me.”

“Willae set a free?”

“If you lead me to the dayburn, yes, I’ll free you. But if you try to run away from me before we get there, I’ll stick you with this!” He was sick of blood and killing, but he didn’t want to spend the rest of a short, miserable life in these caverns, either.

Barrick didn’t know if it was a good or bad sign that the farther the creature led him, the more deserted the corridors became. They moved mostly horizontally at first, through rooms that clearly had some kind of function, mostly as storehouses stacked with bent and broken digging tools, battered, empty ore buckets, broken wagons awaiting repair, ropes and other supplies, or with less comprehensible things—piles of what looked like fired clay chips covered with incised marks, leaking bags and barrels of different colored powders, even one chamber so misty and chill that at first he thought they had stepped out of the mines at last and into the midst of a terrible winter storm. He was several paces into this last cavern before he realized they were still deep under the earth, and that the tooth-chattering cold was because the room was piled high with blocks of snow or ice. But why? And where could such things come from?

The answer to the second came a few moments later, as he began to see what was stacked along the walls, largely hidden by the mist. Corpses, although of what it was hard to tell, because they had been quartered as if by expert butchers. His already cringing spirits plummeted even farther. What was the reason for such madness? In a trembling voice, he asked the Drow, but the creature only shrugged its ignorance.

Was it meat? But certainly none of the prisoners had been fed any, and there hadn’t seemed enough guards to need such a monstrous supply: the frost-blanketed carcasses were stacked like kindling all around the huge room. And where did the ice itself come from? It had been cold outside, rainy and often miserable, but there had been nothing like snow, let alone such vast quantities of ice. Unless all this was meant just to feed Jikuyin, he thought, and his stomach lurched with horror. He shoved the little Drow to make him trot faster. Barrick could not get out of the icy cavern fast enough.

They passed through another large storehouse cavern, this one lit only by a single small torch, and Barrick was grateful that the Drow could move more easily in the dark than he could, since he could barely see anything. As to what the piles of cloth-covered bundles in the room might be, he couldn’t tell and did not particularly want to investigate, but a stream ran through the middle of the room—he could hear its whispering progress more clearly than he could see it, since it was set in a deep crevice in the floor—and dozens of tiny, pale creatures fluttered about the room. It was only when one of them landed on his shoulder, startling him so badly he almost cut himself with his own blade trying to knock it off, that he saw the little flyers were winged white salamanders, blind gliders that came up out of the crevice in the floor like bats heeding the call of sunset. Now he could see that the pale creatures were clinging everywhere on the roof and walls of the chamber, as placid as if they basked on a hot rock in the summer sun instead of in a dark chamber deep in a mountain.

As they came out of the salamander cavern and onto a downward sloping path, he caught at the Drow and demanded to know why they were heading back down into the depths. The bearded, pop-eyed creature looked understandably frightened of the blade at his throat, but not, as far as Barrick could tell, guilty of any wrongdoing.

“Canna go out lest go down from Rootsman’s Nayste,” his guide explained. “Nayste is riddlin’, full o’ holes, all different roads up, down—f’Rootsman, see?”

After wearily puzzling over this for a little while, Barrick finally decided that the little man was telling him they had to descend from something called Rootsman’s Nayste—or maybe Nest?—because he had climbed up in it too high to go straight to the gate that led out of the mines. If it was true, the little bearded man was playing him fair and he might actually soon be out in the air again.

Even as hope surged, he could not help thinking of his lost companions. There were many times he had felt sure he would die in these tunnels, and he was still far from certain he would survive, but he had never once imagined the possibility of getting away without the other two. Now, even if he managed to escape the mines, he would still be alone in a murderous, bizarrely unfamiliar place.

He pushed the thought away, knowing that if he didn’t the last bit of his strength would leak away and he would tumble to the ground and never get up.

As they crossed a wide chamber lit with a thousand small tapers, which burned on the walls and ceiling like the light of the stars themselves, the little bearded man slowed and stopped. “Here beyst,” he said breathlessly, his voice hoarse with fear. “See. Fore yow beyst the dayburn.”

Barrick stared. At the far end of the chamber there was a glimmer of light—a crack at the bottom of a door leading to freedom, perhaps—or might it be merely an illusion? “That?”

“Ayah.” The creature stirred nervously in Barrick’s grip, but it was quite possible the Drow’s fretfulness signified only that he did not know whether or not Barrick would prove trustworthy and release him as promised.

“Let’s go ahead, then, and see if it opens.” Barrick laughed, although he did not know why. He was light-headed at the thought of getting out, but half-certain the little man was trying to trick him. “We’ll do it together.”

Joy washed over him as he drew closer and could see that it truly was the great front doors of wood and metal, the light spilling in where they had been left a little way open, perhaps by deserting guards. With the surprisingly strong arms of the Drow helping him he managed to tug them wider, until he thought the space was big enough for him to slip through. At another time he might have been interested in the figures and runes that had been cast in the black metal and carved into the dark wood, but now he was overwhelmed by the light of day spread before him, sumptuous as a meal.

It was day only in the most basic sense, of course—the gray, sunless day of the shadowlands—but after his imprisonment in the depths it felt like the brassy blaze of a Heptamene afternoon.

So much light was also far too much for the Drow, who stepped back from the doorway waving his hands before his face and hissing like a serpent. Easing himself sideways into the gap, Barrick ignored the creature—the Drow had fulfilled his bargain, after all—but a moment later the little man staggered back into view and tumbled at Barrick’s feet, three feathered arrowshafts quivering in his back and the wounds already soaking his ragged, dirty shirt. The little creature was not dead yet, but judging by his harsh, whistling breath, he had only moments.

“You are perfectly framed in the doorway,” a stony voice declared, stirring up echoes. “If you do anything but move slowly back toward me, my guards will shoot you. You will not die as fast as your small friend, however.”

Barrick knew that even if he could force himself through in one try, the invisible archers would have plenty of time for an unimpeded shot. Even if he got out, he had no strength left to outrun anyone, let alone evade the arrows of trained bowmen. Barrick slowly eased himself out of the doorway and stepped back into the cavern. Standing before him, at the front of a mixed pack of apish guards and bony, quietly gabbling Longskulls, several of whom held longbows, stood the cadaverous figure of Ueni’ssoh, his eyes gleaming like blue fires.

“You were Jikuyin’s,” the gray man said in his cold, uninflected voice. “But now you are mine. We will dig out the gateway chamber once more. Nothing has changed except who will own the god’s treasures.”

“I’d rather die,” Barrick said, then turned and leaped toward the doorway, but something hit him in the leg like a club and he tumbled to the floor, half in and half out of the room with an arrow through his boot and a searing pain across his calf. Despite the queer, breathless ache of the wound he could feel the cool, gray light of the outside world on him like a balm, smell the sweetness of the air. Only now did he realize how foul were the stenches he had been living in so long, the smoke and blood and filth.

So this was the ending. After all that he had done, after all the people he had tried to please...well, he had told them he wasn’t up to it, hadn’t he? He had told them he would fail —or if he hadn’t actually told them, they should have known.

The gray man stood over him now, the bright eyes watching Barrick intently. Ueni’ssoh’s tongue flicked out, lizardlike, to touch his dry lips. “There is something...Yes, you have something. I feel it now. Something...powerful. Things begin to make more sense.”

Barrick snarled at him, but it was hard to make words, at least any words that mattered. Then he remembered.

The mirror. Gyir’s mirror, the sacred trust of Lady Yasammez! Barrick could feel it against his breast in the pocket of his shirt. He could not let this hairless, corpselike thing take it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

“Silence.” The gray man reached out a bony hand that paused just above Barrick’s chest. The Longskulls and hairy-pelted guards crowded around their master, staring down like the demons in a temple fresco. “Give it to me.”

Barrick tried to deny him again, but although the gray man was not touching him, he could feel a force tugging at the mirror under his shirt. An intense agony blossomed in his chest, as though the mirror had sunk roots into his skin and bones, as though it would not be pulled away without tearing the greater part of Barrick away as well. He shrieked, but the gray man did not even flinch; except for those moonstone eyes, Ueni’ssoh might have been carved stone.

Barrick gripped the mirror through his shirt, but a curious weakness was already starting to spread through him. What use resisting? This creature, this gray demon, was stronger than he could ever hope to be—so much stronger... “No!” He knew that voice in his head. It was not his own but the gray man’s. “I won’t...!”

A smile curved the stony lips. The pull on the mirror seemed as though it would yank Barrick’s entire body inside out. Ueni’ssoh was kneeling above him, hand held a foot above Barrick’s breast. “But you will, sunlander—of course you will. And when I have this secret thing in my hand, I will know why One-Eye was so interested in you...”

“You can’t...!” But they were nothing but gasped words. He could not resist the gray man’s power. He would lose the mirror and lose everything.

“Stop fighting,” said the Dreamless. His teeth were clenched, and Barrick suddenly realized that beads of sweat had formed on Ueni’ssoh’s ashy forehead.

But I’m not fighting, Barrick thought. I wouldn’t know how, not against something like him. Still, something was resisting the gray man’s power—something was holding the Dreamless at bay.

A great heat suddenly filled Barrick. It was the mirror itself, blossoming with power even as Ueni’ssoh tried to make it his. A light flared around them, warm and almost as brilliant as the sun itself, so strong that Barrick himself screamed out, though it caused him no pain. As the light burst forth all the guards screeched and fell back, waving their clawed hands before their eyes. A moment later the light fell back on itself, but Barrick could still feel it even so, a tingling like sparks all over his skin. Someone else was howling now, too. Like a spider that had caught a huge, murderous wasp in its fragile web, it was now Ueni’ssoh who was trying to break contact—Barrick could feel the gray man’s mounting terror, could almost smell it, or hear it like a shrill noise—but the mirror or whatever empowered it would not let the Dreamless go.

“No!” the gray man shrieked and tried to stand up, but something invisible had clutched him and he contorted and thrashed like a living fish dropped on a hot stone. His eyes bulged, and his muscles writhed beneath the parchment skin, knotting and coiling. A moment later great black flowers of blood appeared on his face and neck and hands. The bestial guards, still howling in pain at the light that had blinded them, began stumbling away in all directions, tearing at each other in their haste to escape the growing incandescence that pulsated between Barrick’s breast and Ueni’ssoh’s still outstretched hand.

Then the gray man caught fire.

Ueni’ssoh jerked upright, shrieking and jigging, as the glow spread up his arm and into his chest. His eyes began to burn out of their sockets. His gaping mouth vomited flame. The guards fled barking out of the wide anteroom, back into the darkened corridors of the mine.

When Barrick looked again the gray man was nothing but a hissing, twitching, blackening shape. The boy turned away in horror and disgust, crawling over the arrow-riddled corpse of his Drow guide in his desperation to get out into the daylight.

Outside, he looked down the narrow valley beyond the base of the steps, bewildered. Was he really free? What had happened? Had he destroyed the gray man somehow? He didn’t think so—it had been the mirror, defending itself. But it had done nothing until the gray man had tried to take it. Would it have let Barrick be killed if the gray man had left the mirror itself alone? He didn’t know, and he certainly didn’t want to do anything to find out.

He broke off the protruding arrowhead and pulled the arrow out of his boot, which was slippery from the blood of his slashed ankle, then he limped down the steps and onto the open ground—the end of the long road they had traveled as prisoners to come to this terrible place, however many days or even months ago that had been. Only a little more walking, however painful, and he would be out of reach of the mine’s guardians, if any were minded to follow him.

Feeble as it was, the half-light still seemed strong to him after his days in underground darkness, and so at first Barrick did not notice the trembling of some of the huge statues in front of him until one of them swayed and then fell over, landing with a shuddering crash that almost knocked him off his feet. Two more statues toppled as the soil erupted before him in great crumbling chunks. A massive shape thrust itself up out of the earth and into the daylight.

At first Barrick thought in weary horror that it was some unimaginably large spider from the depths, all hair and malformed, corpse-colored limbs and gleaming, dripping fluids. But its appendages stuck out in unexpected directions, some shattered and peeling, all smoking and oozing like melted candlewax, as though the thing were some terrible combination of sea urchin or jellyfish and butchered animal. Then he finally saw the raw face hanging between two of the limbs, oozing with the glowing golden ichor that ran through it instead of blood. The horror that had cut off his escape still had a few tendrils of singed beard around the broken-toothed maw, and that single huge, mad eye.

“You wretched little ball of shit.” The demigod’s lower jaw was shattered, drooling a liquid that looked like molten metal, and so Jikuyin’s physical voice was an unrecognizable gurgle. The words were only in his head, but so powerful despite the demigod’s countless injuries that Barrick stumbled and almost sank to his knees.

“Thought I was dead, didn’t you? But we immortals aren’t so easy to kill...!”

Barrick staggered to one side, praying he could dodge around the huge, crippled thing, but despite all his terrible wounds the demigod moved with devastating speed, scuttling crablike on his broken limbs to block the boy’s escape.

“Not so fast, man-child. Your blood will open the god’s house and I will be made whole again. This is only an inconvenience.”

Barrick’s head seemed too heavy to hold up any longer. He could not get past the thing and he certainly couldn’t outfight it. He could not go back, either. He was done.

Unless... Barrick Eddon reached into his shirt and pulled out the mirror. For a moment he felt it warm in his hand, felt its power begin to bloom again as it had when the gray man had tried to take it, but Jikuyin held up a splayed, shattered hand—Barrick thought it must be a hand—and the burgeoning flare of light suddenly died.

“Whatever it is,” Jikuyin told him, “it is a lesser power than mine, mortal boy.” His single, bloodshot eye no longer had the means to show expression—the meat of his face was too ravaged for that—but Barrick could tell the demigod was pleased and even amused. Barrick knew also that what Jikuyin said was true—the mirror was now cold and inert. “After all, the blood of the great gods runs in my veins...!”

Something dropped down out of the sky, covering the demigod’s face for a moment like a living black shadow. Jikuyin let out a screech of startled pain that ripped through Barrick’s brain and knocked him to his knees. When he managed to climb back onto his feet, Barrick saw that the black shape was gone and that the spidery demigod was moaning and rubbing at his face. When he took his limbs away, the place where Jikuyin’s single remaining eye had been was now a welling crater of radiant gold.

Blind...! He’s blind! Barrick knew he had only one chance: while the monster shrieked and thrashed his tattered arms in fury, Barrick put his head down and ran at stumbling speed straight toward him, then veered wide, diving and rolling just beneath the grasping talons of a gold-dripping hand the size of a wagon wheel.

The giant sensed that he had missed his quarry and let out a rasping, wordless bellow that shook the very hills around them, so that stones came tumbling down out of the heights. Barrick did not stop to look, but ran as fast as his exhausted muscles could carry him, gasping for breath with every step. The god’s cries of rage dwindled behind until at last they were only a distant noise like thunder.

He had finally staggered far enough to feel safe. He dropped onto his hands and knees, straining for breath. A black shape plummeted down out of the air, its wide wings brushing him as it landed. It took a few hopping steps and then leaped up onto a rock to regard him with a bright eye. Barrick had never thought he would be so pleased to see the horrid creature.

“Skurn—is that you?”

“Where be my other master?”

It took a moment for Barrick to realize what the bird was asking. “Vansen. He...he fell. Down in the mine. He’s not coming out.”

The raven regarded him carefully. “Saved you, I did. Poked that big one’s eye right through, did. Was that Jack Chain?”

Barrick nodded, too tired to speak.

“Then I be the mightiest raven what ever lived, be’nt I?” The bird appeared to consider this, walking back and forth along the top of the stone, clucking a bit. “Skurn the Mighty. Pecked out a god’s eye.”

“Demigod.” Barrick rolled onto his back. He had better be far enough away now, because he couldn’t move another step.

Skurn leaned back his head. His throat pumped, swallowing. “Mmmm,” he said. “God’s eye. Slurpsome. Wishet I’d got the whole thing.”

Barrick stared at the bird for a moment, then began to laugh, a ragged, painful bray that went on and on until he began to choke.

When the boy had his breath again and was sitting up, a thought came to him. “Tell me, you horrible creature, do you know where Qul-na-Qar is? The House of the People?”

The raven regarded him. “What be in this plan for me?

Didn’t save me like my master did—fact be, I saved you.” He preened. “Fact. Skurn the Mighty.”

“If you’ll help me take this...if you’ll help me get to Qul-naQar, I’ll make sure you never have to hunt for food the rest of your life. In fact, I’ll bring you fresh kills on a plate, every day.”

“True?” The raven hopped a few times, fluttered up, and settled. “Bargain, then. If you be trustworthy.”

Despite feeling as empty as a forgotten scarecrow, Barrick could still muster a little irritated pride. “I am a prince—the son of a king.”

Skurn made a snorting noise. “Oh, aye, that makes a difference.” He thought, blinking his dark eyes slowly. “But you were my master’s friend. So—partners.”

“Partners. By the gods, who would have thought?” Barrick crawled into the bushes, not caring where he lay his head. “Let me know if anyone comes to kill me, will you?”

He did not wait to hear the raven’s reply, because sleep was already pulling him down into dark places deeper than any mineshaft.

Vansen kept on because there was nothing else he could do, putting one foot in front of the other, trudging forward along the endless pale span through black nothing. There were times that he paused to rest, but he never did it for long, because each time he would begin to worry that he might somehow get himself turned around, that he would confuse the two indistinguishable directions and by accident set off back in the direction he had come. At other times he entertained the amusing notion that instead of a curving span across an abyss, he was walking on the outside of a great ring floating in darkness, that it had no beginning or end, and that he, Ferras Vansen, sentenced for crimes about which he was not quite certain (although he could judge himself guilty of much) would walk it forever, undying, an endless sentence.

But could the gods really be so cruel? And even if they were, why did he still feel tired, as a living man might feel?

And what was it about the gods that pricked at him? Why were they weighing so heavily on his thoughts? Every time he tried to remember how he had come to this place, what had seemed solid fell apart in his grasp, like fog. He could not remember where he had been before this—in fact, he could remember almost nothing that had happened since he threw himself against the guards in the demigod’s underground fortress. He seemed to recall a city, and something about his father, but surely those were dreams, since his father had been dead for years.

But if those had been dreams, then what was this place? Where was he? Who or what had set him on this unending track?

What if he just stepped off this pointless, endless bridge, he wondered, and let himself fall? Could whatever happened —death or an equally pointless, endless plunge—really be so much worse? It was something to keep in reserve, he decided—a door. It might turn out to be the only door that could lead him out of this dreadful emptiness.

Ferras Vansen had no answers, but being able to ask questions at least kept him from going mad.

It was as though he had blinked, but the moment of his eyes being shut had lasted for a year instead of an instant. When he noticed what had happened, everything had changed.

The abyss was gone, the infinite, eternal black faded in some strange way to a much more tangible darkness, that of ordinary shadow. Something that felt like stone still lay beneath his feet, but flat, not curved, and he had the distinct sense of being surrounded by something other than the dreadfully familiar void.

He stopped, surprised and more than a little frightened— after so long, any change was terrifying. He dropped to his knees and sniffed the cold stone, pressed his forehead against it. It felt real. It felt different, which was even more important.

He stood up and to his immense surprise the darkness itself began to recede, or rather the light came and dissolved it: brightness flooded in, the light of actual, homely torches, and he could see walls around him, stone walls that had been decorously carved. He followed the lines of the ceiling up and discovered, to his horror, an immense shape looking back down at him, black and ominous. But it was only a statue, a huge image of Kernios, and although Vansen was startled when he looked down and saw the same statue staring up at him from beneath his feet, he grasped a moment later that he stood on some kind of looking-glass stone, a vast mirror which reflected the pit so intricately carved in the ceiling overhead, as well as great Kernios looking down, or up, from its depths.

Staring up and then down made him dizzy. Vansen almost fell, but caught himself. Where was he? Was this some deep place in the earth beneath the demigod’s mine? He had fallen through the god’s open gateway—was this the heart of the god’s sanctuary? But it seemed too...ordinary, somehow. The carving was beautiful, the statue of Kernios awe-inspiring, but they did not seem otherworldly.

He caught himself when he almost toppled again, forced himself to breathe. He was weary beyond belief. He was alive. The one was proof of the other, and the solid room around him was more proof that he had survived, no matter where he might be. Across from him was a massive doorway. He went to it and tested it. Despite its heaviness, it swung open at a touch.

The room on the other side was full of small figures— waiting for him, Vansen thought at first, but when he saw the startled look on the little men’s faces he knew that was not true. Servants of Kernios, perhaps? But there had also been tiny men like this in Jikuyin’s mines. Vansen held up his hands, wondering if they could speak any language he knew. “Can...you...understand...me?”

“What in the name of the Earth Elders were you doing in the Council Chamber, stranger?” one of the little men asked him, frowning. “You’re not allowed in there.” His eyes grew wide with alarm and he turned and scuttled out the far door. The rest of the little men followed him, looking back fearfully as they fled, as though Vansen were some kind of dangerous beast.

He stared after them and a chill traversed his spine from tailbone to skull and back. Not only was it his tongue the little man had spoken, it had been a perfect Southmarch accent. What was happening? What kind of trick was being played on him?

Vansen stood for a long time letting his heart slow, staring around the wide room and trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but almost afraid to find out. At last the door of the large chamber opened and a group of the little men, this time carrying shovels and picks and other weapons, came cautiously toward him across the shiny stone floor. Vansen lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, but his attention was caught by the stout man who came with them—a normal man, someone Vansen’s own height. There was something oddly familiar about his face... “I know you, sir,” he said as the big man and his child-sized army approached. “You are...gods save me, you are Chaven, the royal family’s physician.”

“So you say,” the man said. He did not look the type to be leading any armed band, even one this size. “But I do not admit it. You are trespassing here, you know. What are you doing in the Funderling’s guildhall?”

“Funderlings? Guildhall?” Vansen could only stare at the man. “What madness is this? Where am I?”

“By all the gods,” Chaven said, and stopped. He put out his arms to hold back the nearest Funderlings, or perhaps to support himself—he looked as though he had been struck a blow. “I know this man, but he was lost in the battle against the Twilight People. Are you not Captain Vansen, sir? Are you not the captain of the royal guard?”

“I am. But where am I?”

“Don’t you know?” The physician shook his head slowly. “You are in Funderling Town, of course, underneath Southmarch Castle.”

“Southmarch...?” Ferras Vansen looked around the chamber again in stunned amazement, then took a staggering step toward Chaven and the Funderlings, causing some of the little men to raise their weapons in alarm. Vansen fell to his knees, raising his arms in the air to praise all the gods, then the crowd of Funderlings watched with worried faces him as he threw himself down on the floor, laughing and weeping, and pressed his face against the blessed solidity of the stone.