by Tad Williams
Barrick's strength was finally returning. He twisted until he could stretch his bonds as tightly as possible; after a few painful moments, the ropes snapped. The Fireflower ancestors, still stunned by the appearance of the Trickster god, were little more than a muddle of confused noise in his head. He found his sword where one of the panicked guards had dropped it and used it to cut Ferras Vansen's bonds, then carefully did the same for the motionless black-haired girl.
Vansen rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. The girl did not.
"Qinnitan." Barrick knelt beside her, put his face so close he could smell the delicate saltiness of her skin. "Can you hear? Qinnitan, don't leave me!" But it was useless: if she still breathed he could not detect it. The god forcing his way through into the world had burned in Barrick's own thoughts like a glowing ember-how much worse must it have been for her, specially prepared to be a vessel of that god? He blinked rapidly, unable to look at her slack features any longer. Fate could not be so cruel-or could it?
Of course it could. It always has been.
He turned then to the other figure that lay beside her. His father's beard had far more gray than he remembered, but otherwise it was the face he knew so well, one he had loved and hated in almost equal measure. Olin, too, seemed dead, but Barrick could sense a tiny pulse still throbbing beneath his ear. Was there anything left of him inside this near-corpse, or had the god burned it away while he occupied him? Was anything left besides barely breathing meat…?
A tremendous splash startled him from his confusion. The monstrous, beautiful youth had waded into the middle of the silver sea to snatch up a handful of Xixian soldiers who had been trying to swim to safety. The god held the tiny, thrashing figures close to his beaming face.
"Do you like the taste of heavenly blood?" Zosim boomed. "It is a heady nectar for mortals.Do you hope it will change you?Let us see!"
Even as he spoke, the shrieks of the terrified Xixians altered as they began to stretch and lose their human forms. Barbs of the silvery blood, stretching and growing inside them like thornbushes, began to pierce their flesh. Their eyes bulged with terror and their limbs flailed, but they could not escape what was already inside them. Tendrils of twining silver sprung out of them like vines, lifting them up into the air until they dangled on thorns of their own solidified and shiny blood, like the larder of a butcher bird.
Vansen stared helplessly at the dying Xixians as if he would never move again.
"You must get Qinnitan and my father away from here," Barrick told him. "Take the boat and cross. Lie still. Hope the god doesn't see you."
Now Ferras Vansen turned to look at him, his face pale, his eyes full of the horrors he had seen. "What will you do, Prince Barrick?"
"Whatever I must." He could not help laughing at the idiocy of his own words-what on earth could he do against a god? "Take the girl first-I'll protect my father. Go. Hurry!"
As Vansen staggered off with Qinnitan's limp body in his arms, a huge shadow passed over Barrick's head. He turned, raising his sword, but it was only the god stepping back onto the island. The Trickster was headed toward the autarch and his remaining men, who had just reached the makeshift camp where they had first come up onto the island.
"The cannon, curse you!" Sulepis shouted at his minions. "Kill that thing!"
"Oh, yes, show me what men have learned to do while I slept!" cried the god, laughing again. "Crooked the artificer seems to have taught you creatures well!"
But even though the autarch's men tried to do as he ordered, their cannon had never been meant to fire so high in the air. At its greatest elevation it still did not point higher than the god's knee. Zosim had now grown taller than the famous statues of the Three Brothers in the center of the great Trigonate temple in Syan. The cannon roared, but because the god was moving, the great cannonball hissed past and crashed against the far cavern wall, sending a shower of stone down onto the fleeing Xixians, killing many of them.
The autarch and his guards ran toward the tunnel that led back from the island to the Maze, but before they could reach it, the gigantic Zosim stepped past them and snatched up the cannon that had just been fired. He crushed the great bronze gun into a shapeless mass and then shoved it into the crevice like a bung into a barrel, leaving the autarch and his soldiers with nowhere to go.
"Scatter, ants!" Zosim called down to them, laughing, then began plucking up the nearest of the soldiers, deforming them into ghastly, inhuman shapes even as they screeched and wept in his hands.
Barrick raced across the rocky crest of the island toward the huge figure, his fairy sword gripped tightly in his hand. Vansen was shouting behind him, but he knew the god must be stopped here. In a short time, Zosim would run out of victims, and his thoughts would turn to the castle above.
"Just take my father and the girl!" Barrick called to Vansen. "There is nothing else you can do here."
"I can't leave you!"
"For the love of the gods, man, why not?"
"Your sister told me not to do it! And I promised!"
Vansen's words kindled something in Barrick, a small train of thoughts that nevertheless stopped him in mid-stride. It's true… I am both. Qar and man. The blood in me… it is her blood, too. Briony. I remember…!
His walk became a run, as though he could really make a difference-as if he, a mortal, could actually fight against a god.
A pair of unnatural shapes dropped from Zosim's gigantic hand and landed on the stony ground before him-two Xixian soldiers who had been squeezed by the god until they looked like crabs made of melted brown candle wax. They scuttled toward him. Most horrible of all were the helpless, miserable expressions Barrick could still see on their warped faces.
"And where are you, little Autarch?" crooned the god, sifting with his immense fingers through the pile of squirming, screaming Leopards and priests he had made. Zosim picked one up and examined it, but shook his massive, fiery head. The thrashing creature in his hand puffed into flames and began to melt and run through the god's fingers like warm grease. He picked up a particularly fat figure-it might have been the Xixian high priest-and popped it like a grape, then licked his blazing fingertips, grinning. "Splendid! It tastes like worship!"
"Face one who is not afraid of you!" Barrick scrambled up the slope toward the monstrous being crouched beside a pile of shrieking captives. "Turn, Trickster. My ancestor defeated you and his blood still runs strong!"
But before Barrick could even swing his sword, Zosim darted out a hand like baking-hot marble and snatched him up. The pain was so fierce that it was all Barrick could do not to scream like a terrified child, but his skin didn't seem to burn: Zosim clearly did not want to lose this entertaining moment so quickly. Zosim lifted Barrick closer, his face as big as a house. "Ancestor, you say? And who was that? Some mortal who pissed in the corner of one of my temples? Some village lout who used my name as a curse, then cowered the rest of his life in terror I might hear of it?"
"No," Barrick said, struggling in the creature's grip. "No, you piece of filth. Kupilas was my ancestor-Crooked, who beat you and bound you!"
"Truly?" Zosim seemed pleased. He lifted Barrick closer, took a deep sniff of him, each nostril as wide as an arrow port. "Ah, you do stink of him. how amusing!So his blood still creeps and crawls the earth in mortal flesh! But Crookedis dead, and I am free. What do you think of that, little ant?"
"This!" said Barrick, and used both hands to thrust his sword as deep into the monster's hand as he could. With a rumble of surprise and discomfort, Zosim shook Barrick free and let him fall. The landing knocked the breath from him and for a moment Barrick could only lie on the stones, gasping, but he had the small satisfaction of knowing he had annoyed his gigantic enemy.
"That was a nasty trick, little ant. Yes, this is a real body made from the dust and clay of this world. I can feel things-and I felt that, you little mortal mouse turd." Zosim lifted his foot, ready to crush him. Helpless, Barrick could only look up at the shadowy shape, b
ig as boat being winched up into dry dock. "But soon the rest of my essence will have crossed the void and filled this body," the god rumbled, swaying a little as he waited to bring his foot down. "When that has happened, even Whitefire, the Sun Lord himself, could not hurt me…"
"I am not the sun god," a new voice cried; loud as a trumpet's call. "But I carry his sword. Come and taste its edge!"
As Zosim turned in surprise, Barrick rolled out from beneath the shadow of the god's great heel and dragged himself as far away as he could. Yasammez stood at the edge of the Sea in the Depths, her face the only clear thing in the murk of her black armor and cloak; her blade, a clean slice of white light, was in her hand.
"You will die, old woman." The god sounded pleased, as though he had finally discovered something in this mortal world that interested him. "Even with uncle Whitefire's Pale pig-sticker, you cannot hope to inconvenience me!"
"Perhaps not," said Yasammez. "But perhaps as you said, that body is more vulnerable than you wish anyone to know, little earthbound god."
Laughing, Zosim threw back his beautiful head and the flames leaped higher, so that the stones of the cavern gleamed with yellow light far above him. "This weakness is a nice idea, old woman-but untrue. Come! Show me your mettle!" He held out his hand and a great golden sword appeared there.
Yasammez stepped into the underground sea. The thick, shining liquid flowed away from her like a retreating tide, but even as she neared the center of the Sea in the Depths Yasammez did not sink between the hovering waves; instead she appeared to be growing, so that by the time she reached the far side she was almost half Zosim's size. A cold breeze knifed through the sweltering cavern as she passed, so that Barrick, who had been trying to rise, fell shivering back to his hands and knees.
By the time she had reached the Trickster god, Yasammez was as tall as he was, but where he appeared as solid as stone, the fairy woman was thinner and less substantial, as though she had stretched herself far beyond what was ordinarily possible. Barrick could see almost nothing of her true shape-she seemed as ill-defined as smoke. Only the great, white blade had retained its brilliance and density. It gleamed through the dark lady's own essence like a slice of the full moon.
Barrick finally struggled back onto his feet as the two great swords clashed for the first time, meeting with a sound like a monstrous bell that made the entire cavern throb. He could hear the autarch shrieking somewhere on the island, demanding that his terrified men help him attack Zosim again. Barrick doubted he would find many volunteers. Above his head, the heavenly blades rose and clashed again, over and over until the ringing deafened him. Barrick hobbled toward the gigantic pair. The combatants now resembled some fantastic illusion at the center of the island, cloud-shapes whirling above a troubled sea, blades sweeping before them like the wisps of a growing storm. Zosim's bright flames rippled and stretched, but as if in answer Yasammez only grew darker, more contained.
Barrick dodged through the murk until he saw the great moving wall of Zosim's heel and limped toward it. He stabbed at it as hard as he could, shoving his sword into the weirdly liquid flesh to the hilt, but although he heard a dim rumble of discomfort, as he watched in dismay, the sword itself seemed to melt and vanish, so that only the hilt fell to the ground like the blossom of a broken flower. The vast foot moved suddenly and knocked him flying.
"Run, manchild!" Yasammez's face appeared from the haze above him, grimacing in agony as though she held the weight of all the world and could not put it down. "You can do nothing here. Even I can do no more than steal his time for a few more moments." Something crashed against her, and she swayed back, vanishing for a moment in the clouds of her own gigantic essence. The face appeared again like the sun struggling to pierce thick clouds. "Go! Save those you can. I can give you nothing else…"
Something struck her again, and she shuddered and fell away from him, the whole of her dark mass toppled like a collapsing tower. Her white blade lanced out as she fell, but the monstrous burning shape that was Zosim was too fast, too strong. He leaped atop her and yanked her back upright again, or at least that was what Barrick thought he saw-it was all too blurry, too strange, like a battle in the mud at the bottom of a deep lake. The god's own golden blade hacked at the dark apparition like a great tongue of fire, and Barrick heard the terrible sound of Yasammez screaming in pain, a hideous, wrenching cry that seemed to shake the very stone from the cavern walls.
Someone was pulling at his arm. Barrick turned slowly, as if in a dream, to find Ferras Vansen standing behind him, bloodied and dirty.
"You cannot help her-she said so!" Vansen shouted, struggling to be heard above the sounds of god and demigoddess tearing at each other. "Help me get the others to safety."
"There is no safety…" Barrick said, then a great, flaming hand swung down from above and knocked him spinning through the air.
All over… at last… was all he had time to think, and then blackness burst inside him.
The work crew hurried to place the last of the blasting powder beetles along the base of an immense stone wall that ran the length of Brewer's Store cavern-the "cold wall," as the monks called it. The cavern-a place Beetledown the Bowman had never seen before, and obviously would never see again-stank of sulfur and other, less familiar things, and lay perhaps a hundred feet or more beneath the temple itself. Because it was cooler than most of the other caves, the monks aged their mossbrew in rootwood barrels there, but the precious brew had all been carried away days ago. As far as Beetledown could tell, the beetles-wedgeshaped iron objects the size of a big person's shoe-were all meant to burst at the same time and take down the entire side of the cavern. How the Funderlings thought this would affect a battle taking place much farther below he could not guess.
Beetledown could not sit comfortably after his long time in the saddle, but instead walked back and forth across the raised slab of stone that served as Antimony's writing table, waiting while the monk sent messages up the line to the other, smaller caverns that were receiving similar treatment, each of his hastily-scratched missives sealed with clay and the imprint of the Astion.
The presence of so much blasting powder was making Beetledown very fretful. Since war had come to Southmarch, he had seen what the stuff could do. The roof of Wolfstooth Spire, a sacred Rooftopper spot for as long as anyone could remember, had been blown to flinders by one of the southern cannons, and pieces of all the cardinal towers, including most of the top of the Tower of Winter, lay scattered across the inner keep like a child's broken toys. Yes, the black powder frightened him-but the waiting was even worse.
"Cinnabar, un said that the need were hasty," Beetledown called up to Antimony, who was bent over his plans, sweat beading on his forehead and dripping onto the little slabs of clay on which he wrote. "Un said that t'were almost too late…"
"For the love of the Hot Lord, little man, please be silent!" Antimony wiped his face. "I know we need haste, I know Cinnabar and the rest said to hurry-I know, I know, I know! But if we have made an error…"
Beetledown didn't know for certain what was going to happen if the Funderling engineers had planned incorrectly, but it was clear it wouldn't be good for anyone. "Tha pardon, Brother. My family always said I had too much to say…" He caught Antimony's look of exasperation and fell silent.
"That's the last," said Antimony a few moments later, pressing the Astion into the clay and passing the pile of messages to the waiting courier. "Take the rest to the other works, boy, but this to Brother Salt-he'll check the sums and if they're right, he'll lay the train." The young messenger sped off. With so many men at war, nearly every remaining male worker was either a child or an elder.
Antimony sat back and wiped away more sweat. The young monk's hands, Beetledown could not help noticing, were trembling badly. "We'll have to set fire to the train on the next level-that's the place the powder trails join and can all be lit at the same time." Antimony looked up as someone hurried toward them. "Mistress Opal? " he said in
surprise. "Why are you still here? Only the last few engineers remain."
"He's gone!" said Chert's wife. "I can't find him!"
"Your boy?" Now it was Antimony's turn to look fearful. "Flint? Spite him for a rascal, where has he gotten to now? He knows this is your husband's plan-Chert's plan. It's too dangerous for him to be wandering. By the Elders, what is he thinking?"
Beetledown walked to the edge of the slab. "Mistress Opal, I greet 'ee again, and have some happy news which had gone astray. I saw him, your son. It was un who saved both the leatherwing and your servant from yon hunting owl, and who bid me say all was well."
Opal stared at him, eyes wide, then turned helplessly to Antimony. "What is he saying? A bird told him my son was well?"
It took no little time before the Funderlings understood Beetledown's tale, but when he had finally gotten the gist of it across, Opal was a little relieved, though not particularly happy.
"Always, with that child, since the very first…" she muttered as if to someone else.
"Go, then, Mistress," said Antimony. "If the Elders will it, you, your brave husband, and your son will all be reunited. Make certain the camp is empty as you go-call out that it is time to make haste to higher ground."
"Come with me, Antimony," she said. "You don't want to wait too long yourself."
He shook his head, but Beetledown thought there was something strange in his face. "Not yet. Still I must wait on Salt Nitre and the last of our engineers and powder-trail men. You go, Mistress Opal. I will join you all presently."
After she had gone, and the rest of the Funderlings in Antimony's employ began to hurry past, Beetledown began to wonder if he shouldn't move on himself. These depths disturbed him at the best of times-after all, he was not just beneath the ground here but several levels beneath Funderling Town itself-but now there was also the little matter of two hundredweight or more of blasting powder, primed and ready, so even a spark might set it off. The very idea made him shiver.
