by Tad Williams
How had he lived here all his life and never known that? How had his own ancestors lived here for so many centuries and not recognized it? Because they could see only the colors they had been given to see. But now that had changed, at least for him.
Barrick could see it now, at least a little, but could he make sense of it? And would it make any difference if he could?
The short trip along the watercourse was a dreamlike inversion of their trip from M'Helan's Rock, but the waves that rose above them this time were not made of water but of dark granite sprinkled with white limestone foam. They followed their own lantern light through a tunnel of naked rock until they found themselves at last prevented from going forward by a heavy iron grille set in a wall of dressed stones. On all sides, stone-and-clay water pipes opened out of the walls, although in this season they all seemed dry.
Rafe gestured toward the heavy grille, thick with rust and mud. "Beyond lie the backwaters of the castle, under the Lagoonside houses and suchnot. Then comes the lagoon. But you'll not be going there. Far too dangerous for such as you, Your Majesty." He looked at Barrick and frowned in confusion. "Your Majesties, I should say, Egye-Var's pardon on me."
"And so…?" Barrick asked him.
"We wait." Rafe seemed pleased to be able to announce this. He sat back in the bow with his long, thin arms crossed. The Rooftoppers in their box murmured in anxious voices to each other, so that Barrick felt as though he sat beside a hive of sighing bees. "Some are coming to lead us the rest of the way."
They did not wait long. Barrick heard their approach even before Rafe did, and saw them as they approached the end of the pipe, their little torches glowing; none brighter than an Orphan's Day taper. It was another crowd of Rooftoppers-hundreds, as far as he could tell, crowding up against the lip of the pipe.
Rafe stood up abruptly, which made the small boat rock, then lifted out the box and its surprised passengers. He put it down carefully on the brick ledge beside the canal and opened the door along its bottom. The first Rooftopper guards filed out, looking around warily, followed shortly by the impressive if slightly rumpled figure of Duke Kettlehouse.
A squadron of Rooftopper engineers, as if prepared, dropped a ramp into place to bridge the difference of height between the end of the pipe and the brick ledge, then the rest of the Rooftoppers made their way down it, most on foot, but a few dozen seated on hopping birds. The last one to hop forward was the most decorated, and its passenger wore a tremendous headdress on top of her curly red hair. A tiny man stepped out in front of her and held up an equally tiny speaking-trumpet. "Greetings, Saqri of the Fireflower, great Queen. Her Uproarious Highness Queen Upsteeplebat of Rooftop, Wainscoting, and Rooftop-Over-Sea bids you welcome back to your home, Saqri of the Ancient Song."
Welcome back? wondered Barrick, but then a moment later he saw it as if he had been there himself-which something that was now part of him had, he realized-the young Saqri, slim as a birch tree, hair dark as the space between stars, walking along an ancient passage that wound down into the depths beneath Southmarch… Beyond this image, like a succession of mirrors looking on the reflections of other mirrors, the daughters of Crooked's blood, all the queens of Qul-na-Qar, stretched back along those same stairs, each one individual, but also part of a single, many-legged thing that spread forward and backward through time… or at least backward.
Because there may never be another, said a voice in his head, a clear, familiar voice. It ends with her…
Ynnir? he asked, if one could truly ask anything of another part of one's own heart and thoughts. But the blind king's presence was gone again.
"You are kind, sister," Saqri said in her calm, quiet voice. Far below her, Upsteeplebat smiled as Saqri continued: "It has been too long since our two peoples met in concord."
The gathered Rooftoppers, even Kettlehouse's people, made little murmurs of approval and contentment. Barrick could only guess how important it was to such small creatures to be treated as equals.
The little queen took the speaking-trumpet from her herald. "We have much to speak about," Upsteeplebat said to Saqri. "But first we have other business, if you will forgive us."
"Of course." Saqri nodded.
"Duke Kettlehouse-my dear uncle, you are most welcome back!" said the Rooftopper's queen.
Kettlehouse stepped toward her as her grooms helped her down from her beautiful gray dove. She waited for him as he approached, then watched as he at last knelt before her. "I thank the Lord of the Peak heartily for this happy day."
The little queen bent and threw her arms around the bearded man's neck, encouraging him to stand, then kept her grip on him for a long moment. "Too long have the tides splashed between us," she said. "Now our family is whole again."
A great cheer went up from the assembled Rooftoppers-Old Duke Kettlehouse even seemed to be weeping, but he waved his arms and shouted, "So be it! Huzzah for the Wainscoting! Huzzah for the Great Green Drapery! We are one again!"
"Come, then," said Queen Upsteeplebat when the shouting had died down, remounting her dove. "We have prepared a place for all of you in the tunnels beneath the castle. We will settle you and feed you, then we shall talk of how we can aid you, great Queen of the People." She turned to smile at Barrick as well. "You and the other noble guardian of the Fireflower." She waved and the entire contingent of Rooftoppers, mounted and afoot, men at arms, women, children, and old people mounted back up their ramp and into the circle of the great clay pipe. The engineers stayed behind to dismantle their ramp, but even they finished and left in what felt like a very short time.
"Where did they go?" Barrick said.
"We will see Upsteeplebat again, and soon," Saqri told him.
"But why didn't they… why aren't we…?"
"Didn't say we were waiting for them, did I?" said Rafe, who had hung back during the meeting. "Just said we were waiting."
"So who are we waiting for, then?" Barrick asked, but Saqri did not answer.
Rafe spoke in her place. "Somebody else," he said, grinning. "Oh, aye, somebody well else."
The farmer's wife was reluctant to let Qinnitan go. "Are you certain, child? If you stay, you can eat with us again tonight."
Qinnitan wished she spoke the language better. "No. But thanking. And for the carrying, thanking, too." She clambered down out of the wagon. She had encountered this Blueshore farming family on the road and had bartered the dead priest's donkey to them for lodging, food, and clothes during the time it had taken them all to reach this town on the eastern edge of Brenn's Bay. The farmer, who was asking a port reeve where in Onir Beccan's fish market the wagon could be set up, nodded to her. Three of the family's four children were asleep after the long day's ride, but the oldest shyly waved farewell.
She walked through the center of the town but passed by the market, continuing instead until she reached the town walls and could look down at the port, which stretched away north for a little distance along the intricate coast of the wide bay. Surely somewhere in this muddle of ships, she could hire someone with the money she'd stolen from Daikonas Vo who would take her away from here without asking questions. If Vo had been carrying her to the autarch's camp at Southmarch then she would be happy to get on almost anything going in the opposite direction. But what after that? She could never set foot in Xis again-to do so would almost certainly mean death. But Hierosol, the only other city she knew, was also in the autarch's power. Where else could she go?
Qinnitan stared across the bay toward the sunset skies over Southmarch Castle. Every now and then a dim thump flew to her on the wind-it had only just occurred to her that she was hearing cannons firing. Those must be the autarch's guns, the same ones Sulepis had used to level the walls of Hierosol. And here she stood, separated from him only by the width of the water! She flinched a little and took a step back, as though he might suddenly reach out all the way from the farther shore.
Anywhere but here, she told herself. Anywhere but this close.
The Onir Beccan Market was the best and biggest fish market in all of Blueshore, and the healthy portion it took from all the catches sold there by fishermen from all the cities along Brenn's Bay had been enriching the ruling Aldritch family for at least two centuries. It was a bustling, successful place, oddly no less so now even with war on its doorstep, and it was the first real city she had seen since Agamid. As Qinnitan walked through the marketplace between arguing Blueshoremen, hurrying cooks, ostlers and innkeepers and drunken Marrinswalk sailors, she was reminded of the seafront in Great Xis, a place she seen only once since she was a child, on the night of her escape from the Seclusion. Perhaps it would not seem so impressive now, but as she remembered the port's mad crush of people and the sights and sounds and smells that could exist together nowhere else on earth, she felt a terrible pang of homesickness for the places where she had grown up and the people she had known as a child. But her parents had all but sold her, she reminded herself, and her childhood friend Jeddin had nearly gotten her killed, so what exactly was she missing?
Still, she had certainly been happy at the docks. She remembered one time she had gone with her father when he had to speak about a job for her older brother. While he was talking to the dock factor, little Qinnitan had wandered off and spent a blissful time alone in a world of dreams and miracles and mysteries. She had seen a man selling monkeys and another selling parrots, and then one of the monkeys had got loose and climbed up among the parrots and what screaming and shouting there had been! She had also seen a real witch, a woman being carried along the waterfront on a litter by two bearers, an old, cruel woman weighted down with necklaces of gold, with a face like a sea turtle, and everywhere she passed, the people behind her turned away and made the pass-evil sign, or spat on the ground.
Qinnitan had also seen a man dancing on crutches even though he had no legs, and another who could set his skin on fire and then blow it out again, both performing for coppers. She saw children singing and dancing, too, and many of them did not seem to have parents. Young as she was, she had still been a little envious of them.
Now, ten or more years later, far away from her home or even any thought of having a home, she again touched the feeling from that long-ago day, being alone but not lonely, of being solitary and yet sufficient. Because what else was there to…?
Qinnitan banged into something and suddenly found herself tangled in a heavy cloak or cloth. Her arms caught, she lost her balance and fell, and something large stumbled over her, driving her knee and elbow into the stony cobbles so that she cried out in pain and even cursed a little.
It was only when the man yanked his cloak away from her, almost knocking her over again, that she realized she had collided with a soldier and made him fall. His friends, three more soldiers, helped him up.
She was confused and frightened by the way they all stared at her, but it was only when one of the soldiers said, "She curses in the name of Nushash!" in perfect Xixian that she realized she must have said something in her native language.
Before she could even begin to guess what four Xixian soldiers were doing in a fish market in Blueshore, they had surrounded her.
"What a funny thing to find in the middle of nowhere," another soldier said, also in flawless Xixian, accented ever so slightly with the vowel sounds of the southern desert. "A sweet little girl from home. She could be your sister, Paka."
"Watch your tongue," growled the one who must have been Paka. "This little whore is no sister of mine." He grabbed Qinnitan's arm and began to hurry her across the wide market. "But she does have a few questions to answer. Don't you fools remember? We're supposed to have our eyes out for girls this age who speak Xixian-that's straight from the Golden One's minister. If you'd let her go, we'd have been facing the torture-priests."
The other guards, trotting after him now, lowered their heads and muttered in shamefaced piety at the mention of the autarch's name.
Qinnitan could not believe her ill luck. Panicked, she tried to break away, but Paka the sergeant had her tight.
"No use struggling," he told her. "You'll just get hurt."
When they came out of the darkness at last it was not in martial procession like the Rooftoppers, but in a small group-Yasammez, dark as a crow's wing, her chief eremite Aesi'uah (the name drifted into Barrick's thoughts like an echo), and two hulking shapes-Deep Ettins, the Fireflower whispered to Barrick, the largest of them no less important a figure than Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps.
For a moment Saqri and her many-times-great-aunt only stood looking at each other, then Saqri stepped toward her and extended her hands to Yasammez. Their fingers met and they both stopped again, but what passed between them was deeper than any embrace. It went on and on, a river of meaning passing silently between them.
Barrick watched, unmoving. Rafe the Skimmer caught his eye and grinned as if this momentous reunion were some kind of surprise the Skimmer youth had arranged all by himself. The giant Hammerfoot's expression was harder to read, even with the whispers of insight that flooded Barrick's skull, but it was not hard to see dislike and distrust in the creature's deep-sunken eyes and sour expression.
Saqri and Yasammez finally stepped away from each other, so Barrick could compare them side-by-side. The family resemblance was unmistakable, but so were the differences: although at first glance neither of them looked to be out of the prime of womanhood, Saqri had a softer, more rounded face. Yasammez had the look of a predator, her nose strong, her cheekbones high and sharp, her eyes tilted up at the outer corners as if she stood in a perpetual wind. Her black armor-she wore every piece except a helmet-added to her dangerous appearance.
Now she looked Barrick up and down. "I could not have believed that the Book could contain such a strange chapter, yet here you are again." Yasammez spoke aloud, each word like the chime of cold steel. "I had meant only to show Ynnir what the sacred Fireflower had come to in the veins of mortal murderers, but he has bested me again. The Lord of Winds and Thought must be the cleverest coward who ever lived."
"He is no coward," Saqri said calmly, "and it is too soon to assess what he has done, but it seems premature to judge his actions."
"You always had a soft spot for your brother," Yasammez said. "Even when I told you he would bring destruction on all our line. Can you pretend I was wrong?"
"As I said, it seems too early to judge." Saqri bowed her head for a moment. "But I would prefer not to argue with you in any case, my great and beloved. Let us see what we have and what we may yet do. Later there will be time to talk of who was right and who was wrong."
Yasammez could not have made her distaste for this more plain, but still her pale face remained as expressionless as a mask beneath her tangle of dark hair. "Later there may be time only to die," Yasammez said. "However, that is not the way to greet kin, and not the way I wish to greet you, my only heart." And without saying anything more she turned and walked away into the shadows. After a moment, Saqri and Barrick followed.
"I'll just go and tell my folk that it's all begun, shall I?" Rafe called after them. "Tell them to send folks as like to flap lips to join the war council."
Barrick didn't know what to say, and none of the Qar seemed to feel a need to reply.
"Right, so," said the Skimmer cheerfully. "I'll get to it, then."
They were beneath Southmarch-beneath even Funderling Town! Barrick had never suspected there was anything beneath the Funderlings' underground city except stone. Surely they must be in the very roots of the earth now!
As Barrick sat on cushions on the floor of Yasammez' tent, with Saqri and the tent's mistress again locked in deep, silent communication, he could feel the whole history of the place, or at least as much history as was known to the last Qar who walked the same earth as the gods did. He knew that Kernios-Earth Father-had met his end here at the hands of Crooked, the clever god whom mortals called Kupilas. He knew that the cavern in which this tent stood, surrounded by the Qar camp, had once been known as "Glittering Delights," and ha
d served as the garden of Immon, the gatekeeper, although that version of the cavern was no longer visible (or at least only appeared at extremely irregular intervals.)
Saqri sat up straighter. She had put on something more martial, a less spiny version of the armor Yasammez wore, its cream-colored plates trimmed with different shades of gray and blue. "I do not know why you still keep so much hidden from me," Saqri said, and the fact that Barrick heard her say it was evidence that she wanted it heard.
"Because you are not yet yourself." Yasammez' tone was stern but Barrick's deepened understanding could also detect a note of unhappy need-almost a plea.
"May I know the subject?" he asked. "Perhaps Lady Yasammez-to whom I am grateful for having my life spared, of course-now thinks I would have been better off as a dead example than as a live prince. But I am here, and for better or worse your Fireflower now burns in my veins-mine, Lady. So please, talk to me if you value my goodwill. I grow tired of wondering what's afoot."
Saqri actually smiled, although it might have been purely perfunctory. "Wait only a few moments more-talking, in large part for your benefit, Barrick Eddon, is just what we are about to do…"
Even as she said it, folk began filing into the large tent, silent and watchful as deer, although with some the silence was distinctly more threatening. Elementals swathed in runecloths but still leaking radiance, bright-eyed Tricksters, Changers, Stone Circle People (each of whom might have been the twin of little Harsar back in Qul-na-Qar) goblins and drows and Mountain Korbols all entered in groups of two or three and spread themselves along the perimeter of the tent. They were followed by a contingent of Skimmers. Rafe was one of them, and he was carrying the box from his boat. Although the light in the tent was dim, Barrick could see at least a dozen Rooftoppers standing at the rail of the box like passengers on a ship watching for the approaching shore.
