by Tad Williams
"But then why did Yasammez send me to King Ynnir?" Barrick asked. "Does that mean she's changed her mind about my people somehow? Or that she thought keeping me alive could… could help the Qar?"
Saqri let him feel a blank, cloudy thought, another kind of shrug. "I do not know. I have tried to sense her mind on this but she keeps it hidden, even from me." And now she let him feel a little of the pain that caused her. "So much has changed. Once Yasammez was more to me than my own mother…"
She did not finish the thought, and Barrick did not press for it. Too much hurt and confusion was there, things he could not understand, feelings so naked and private in a being of such immense composure that he did not want to go farther.
"So we face our final hours, Barrick," Saqri finished at last, "and all that was once certain has become uncertain. Except for defeat. That, as always, is the end of all our stories."
The dark lady met them in a place the Funderlings called the Old Baryte Span, her vanguard carrying torches that made the veins of quartz in the walls flash like lightning. Barrick could not help wondering if this great show of light was for him, since most of the Qar saw as well in dark passages as the little people who usually walked here.
As Yasammez stepped down from the crude rock stairway onto the cavern floor, Saqri raised her hands in greeting. "We are together again."
"Yes. We are together again." Yasammez turned her somber face toward Barrick. "You have had to fight against your own people now. Do you still wish to stand with us?"
"My own people?" It took him a moment to understand she was talking about the Xixians, the autarch's soldiers. "They are nothing to me-invaders. Intruders. If I could kill them all with one swing of my sword, I would."
Yasammez looked at him for a long moment, silent and calculating. "Time is short," was all she said.
The council was surprisingly brief. Barrick had grown used to the Qar taking days to decide or do anything, but it seemed the passing of the Seal of War to Saqri had brought a great change: Yasammez offered little in the way of advice and objected to almost nothing, letting Saqri make the decisions and give the orders.
"We must try to beat the southerners to the Last Hour of the Ancestor in the uttermost deeps," Saqri said when she had heard from all her lieutenants. "But they are too many for us to stop them by main strength. Even if Vansen and his drows are still alive and we could attack the southerners from both sides, the autarch has too many soldiers. Fighting is beside the point, anyway. Time is what is important now, and they are already deep below us, at the doorway to the depths."
Fireflower thoughts and memories swirled in Barrick's head, but the silent presence that had been Ynnir led him to those that mattered, each as delicately precise as a note picked out on a lute. He began to understand. "But Crooked… is dead." He shook a little at the storm that realization raised inside him-all the meanings, the memories, the ancient hopes and miseries. It was hard even to say it. The god whose blood ran in him and in Saqri was dead. The god who had fathered Yasammez, and whose own parentage had started the Godwar… Barrick ignored a cold wind of irritation from Yasammez and some of the others. "He pushed the old gods through and then sealed the way behind them. But the autarch wants to release them again!"
Saqri nodded. "And like most mortals, he has no idea of how dire many of these… beings are, how long they have waited outside the walls of nightmare…"
"And how fiercely and greedily they are watching for their chance." Yasammez stood, her black armor covering her like a shadow, so that for a moment it seemed her face rose in darkness like the moon. "Whatever sins mortal men have committed, I would not wish such horrors on the earth itself, which is blameless. It is time. We can wait no longer. What is your wish, granddaughter?"
Saqri paused as if the Porcupine's abruptness had caught her by surprise. "We need a better way." She turned to the Ettins. "Singscrape, you and others have been working here while the rest of us fought the southerners. What have you found?"
Hammerfoot's son spoke in a rumbling voice like a slow avalanche. "Tunnels that will lead us down to the naked wound of Crooked's last and greatest effort, and from there to the ultimate depths, Mistress. Some of the way must still be cleared, and we will have to fight when our way crosses the autarch's line of descent, but if we strike swiftly and work tirelessly, we may yet beat the humans to the Last Hour of the Ancestor."
"Let it be so, then." Saqri let out a breath, the closest thing to a sigh Barrick had ever heard from her. "Tomorrow is the last day-perhaps the last day that ever will be. Let none of us say that he or she could have given more."
Daikonas Vo watched the parade of monsters with dull fascination. He had been stumbling in darkness for so long that the glare of their torches made him blink and shy away. What did they want? Were these truly pariki as the Xixians called them-the fairies of his own mother tongue? What were they doing here beneath the castle? He had thought the autarch had driven them all away…
Vo shook his head to clear away some of the confusion. Did it matter? He had been wandering in darkness for so long he could scarcely remember who he was. Only the hot pain that had spread from his gut and now ran through his entire body like poison reminded him of what had happened to him, why he still breathed and walked when everything inside him urged him to lie down and accept the sweet relief of death.
If even death would be a relief, that was. Because in the dark, lost hours Vo had begun to hear his mother's voice again, whispering the stories of the gods to him, warning him of the serpents and other shadowy demons that would hunt him after he died and keep him from the bosom of Grandfather Nushash, the sun.
And weren't these grotesques marching below him through the underground caverns proof that such things could and did exist even in life? Bat-winged, hyena-headed, some covered with rough scales like the lowest desert snake… and their eyes! Glittering, glowing eyes that burned like coals. Surely they could see him even in his stony hiding place high on the cavern wall where the narrow trail he had been following had suddenly ended, a hundred feet above the cavern floor. So many times he had almost fallen to his death in this dark, ancient hell-there must be a reason he still lived! The gods existed and had taken pity on Daikonas Vo. There could be no other explanation. And when he completed his task they would honor him. No beasts would hunt him in the dark lands of death. No serpents would devour him.
The things below had been still for a long while, immersed in some silent ritual. At last, though, they roused themselves and began to make their way farther into the depths, toward what must be the same ultimate goal as Daikonas Vo's. He would follow them, he decided. To one who had been wandering so long in darkness even the distant light of their torches would be enough to lead him, their stealthy passage loud enough to guide him without his coming too close and being discovered.
As if to remind him what the penalty for such clumsiness would be, a burning pain made him grimace and bend himself double so that he almost tumbled from the ledge. The agony did not pass for long moments.
The girl with the red streak in her hair, the girl who had tried to murder him, was waiting in the depths. Great Sulepis was waiting there, too. Even the gods were waiting there for Daikonas Vo. He could not disappoint them.
As the pain ebbed and the last of the immortal monsters passed out of the cavern he began to climb carefully and quietly down from his high place.
After traveling for so long by dark, narrow ways that Barrick fell into a waking dream, Saqri at last signaled that it was time to make camp. For a while now they had been following a ledge around the lip of a great, nearly circular chasm that seemed only a little less wide than the old inner walls of Southmarch, and which fell away far beyond the light of any torches.
"This is the wound," Saqri said as she stood watching her householders preparing the camp. "This is the scar of Crooked's last struggle."
"This? This hole?" It did not match with the Fireflower memories that drifted up through his though
ts like bubbles. "We are there…?"
"No." She moved closer to the edge. "If you dropped a stone, it would drop for long, long moments still before it rattled to the bottom. But far down, past many twists and turns of this great rift, that low place waits-the Last Hour of the Ancestor. So this is the beginning of the last part of our journey. When we have prepared, we will begin the climb down."
"All the way to the bottom?" Barrick thought of the stone dropping and dropping through darkness and could not imagine descending such a distance. "There aren't ropes long enough for that in the whole world!"
Saqri allowed herself a tiny smile. "We will go down a little way to the next tunnels, then use them. Later we will return to the wound again. It will take time, but at last we will reach the place where our enemies… and our allies… are gathering." She made another gesture with her palm facing down-Water Enters Soil. "You have some little time now, manchild, so rest. I will send for you when we are ready to move on."
He did his best to follow Saqri's advice, but his own disquiet and the continuous murmur of the Fireflower voices made him too restless. He rose and walked among the Qar, watching them work, marveling at their different shapes and types despite the Fireflower chorus assuring him that all was ordinary and familiar. He did not speak unless one of the Qar spoke to him, still uncertain of his place among these strange and ancient people. He thought he saw resentment on many of their inhuman faces, curiosity on some others, and it occurred to him that his presence was at least as disturbing to them as it was strange to Barrick himself.
What am I? I'm certainly not their prince, but I'm no ordinary subject, either. I have the blood and the memories of all their kings inside me, but I know less about them than I know about the peasants in far-off Xis.
He made his way at last to the edge of the rift and stood a long while in silence, trying to make sense of such a great hole in the earth. How could his family have ruled this place for generations and know so little about it? Or was it only Barrick himself, hung and smoked in his own misery, who had been oblivious?
"Master?" someone asked. It was a Qar term of carefully chosen resonance-it meant not so much a leader or superior as a foreigner whose status was not yet known. Barrick turned and found a trio of goblins standing behind him, looking up with solemn, shining eyes.
"Yes?"
"We have been in the side tunnels, doing the bidding of the queen in white. While there, we smelled a man. A human man."
For a moment he thought they were insulting him obliquely, perhaps suggesting that he bathe: the Qar were much more interested in cleanliness than Barrick's own people, he had noticed already. "A man…?"
"Yes, Lord. Like you, but different." The goblins nudged and glared at each other, then the one who had been chosen as spokesman tried again. "Older. A little smaller. Will you come and see?"
Barrick let himself be led away from the lip of the great chasm. "What have you done to him? Is he a captive?"
The goblins looked shocked. "No, Lord!" said the spokesman. "We would do nothing without your word…"
"The queen was busy," said one of the others, earning a glare from the one who had been talking. "And we are frightened of the dark lady."
"Quiet, fool," muttered the third, but it was unclear to whom she was speaking. Only the whispered knowledge of the Fireflower allowed him to discern which goblins were male and which female.
They led him up a winding path through the Qar forces until they were just beyond the camp. Here at the edge of things, where the light of the torches was dim and the shadows long, Barrick was reminded again of how little he had seen of the sun since he had first set out on this blighted adventure.
I should have stayed under the open sky as long as I could…
His thoughts were interrupted by a memory of Briony and himself as children, running along the bright hillside of M'Helan's Rock, knee-deep in white meadowqueen blossoms as the sea boomed and hissed below. The thought was as painful as a dagger, a cold stab in his heart. He felt the Fireflower memories swarm up and cover it like butterflies alighting on a bush, but for the briefest moment he had a twinge of doubt. Was the Fireflower keeping things from him, somehow? Separating him from his own life?
A moment later all such speculation vanished as another group of bare-foot goblin soldiers appeared, half a dozen at least, prodding diffidently with their slender, sharp spears at a man twice their small size. For half a moment Barrick thought it might be one of the Xixian soldiers who had become separated from his troop, but the man's round face was as pale as Barrick's own…
Barrick stared. The man stared back at him.
"My prince…?" the man said at last. "Are you… do you…? Is that truly you, Prince Barrick?"
It took longer for Barrick to remember. "Chaven," he said at last, speaking the name out loud. His voice was dry and ragged from disuse. "What are you doing here, physician?"
"Prince Barrick-it is you!" The man stared as though newly awake; a moment later, as if something had slipped inside him and his feelings could now move freely, he suddenly lurched toward Barrick with arms wide. Barrick stepped back from the embrace. "But you are so tall, Highness!" Chaven said. "Ah, I suppose it has been almost a year…" He shook his head. "Listen to me babble. How do you come to be here? How did you survive the war with the fairies?" He gestured to the goblins, who were watching the exchange with deep suspicion. "Are you a prisoner? No, you have made them your prisoners somehow…"
Barrick found himself increasingly impatient with this stocky little man who would not stop talking. "I asked you what you are doing here. You are in the middle of a Qar camp and we are at war. You do not belong here."
Chaven stared at him. "Why so cold, Highness? Why so angry? I have done nothing but good for your family in your absence-I helped to save your sister's life!"
Barrick was awash in confusing ideas, the voices of the Fireflower and his own memories. He did not even know himself why he was angry with the physician. "I will ask you one last time, Chaven-why are you here, sneaking around on the outskirts of our camp?"
"Sneaking? I…" The scholar shook his head, then fell silent. "I will be honest, Prince Barrick-I do not know. I… I confess that I am a little confused. I seem to be lost, too." He looked around him slowly. "Yes, where am I? Last I remember I was with Chert and the others…"
The name meant nothing to Barrick. He was about to turn his back on the man when one of the goblins pulled at his sleeve. "He is hiding something, Master. We saw it when he approached-there, under his robe. It is a little man of stone. 'Ware lest he try to hit you with it…"
"What? Nonsense!" Chaven cried, but he seemed more baffled than offended. He wrapped his arms around his middle as if he meant to protect his belly against an attack.
"What are they talking about, Chaven? Show it to me."
"But… it's not…" Frightened by the look in Barrick's eyes, Chaven reached into his robe and lifted out the thing he had been hiding. It was a small statue of a man with an owl crouched on his shoulder, crudely carved in crystal that was streaked with pale pink and gray and blue. The Fireflower voices sang loud and harsh in his head, as full of confusion as Barrick himself.
"I've… I've seen that statue before, somewhere." He stared at it, then glanced up to Chaven, who still looked half awake but fearful, like a man dragged out of bed into a completely unexpected situation. Then it came to him, like a fire racing through dry kindling. "It was in the Erivor Chapel at home. Someone stole it." Barrick's face felt as if it was someone else's-he had no idea what expression he wore. "I stole it. And Briony and I threw it into the ocean. How could you possibly have it?"
"I don't know, Highness!" The physician shook his head violently. "No, I do know-of course I know! The Skimmers brought it to me. Some of their oyster divers found it and… and they thought I might tell them if it was worth anything. I bought it from them." He looked up at Barrick, his face full of calculation but also something deeper and stranger, a kind of
animal terror. "I had never seen anything like it-an image of Kernios Olognothas, the all-seeing Earth Lord. I… I wanted it so very much."
"You wanted this heavy statue of the dour god of death so much that you carry it around with you through these depths? What are you doing here under the castle at all, man? What are you hiding?"
Chaven cringed a little. "My prince, you are frightening me. I will tell you everything, I promise! Answer all your questions, yes. Just take me into your camp and give me some water to drink. I find that I am very dry. I'm not certain how long I've been lost in these lonely tunnels…"
"You will do more than come back to the camp," Barrick said. "You will meet Saqri, the queen of the fairies, and answer her questions as well. And if you are very unlucky you will also meet Yasammez. Some of them call her Lady Porcupine. She will likely make you wet yourself."
Barrick stared hard at the physician for a moment, then thanked the goblin sentries and dismissed them. When they had scuttled away, he turned back to Chaven. "But first…"
The physician's mouth was hanging open. "You spoke to them-but you did not say a word that I could hear. How did you do that?"
"That doesn't matter." Barrick waved his hand. "First, before we go back to the camp, you will leave the statue in my tent for now. I don't think I want Saqri and the others to know about it just yet." He took Chaven by the elbow and directed him back along the rocky path that circled the great hole at the center of the cavern.
"I… I don't understand, Highness," said Chaven.
"No, you don't." Barrick gave him a little push to speed him up. "That's because you don't have the blood of gods and monsters running in your veins like some of us do."
