Crooked and his Great-Grandmother
The great family of Twilight was already mighty when the ancestors
of our people first came to the land, and the newcomers were drawn to
one or the other of the twin tribes, the children of Breeze or the children
of Moisture, who were always contesting.
One day Lord Silvergleam of the Breeze clan was out riding, and caught
sight of Pale Daughter, the child of Thunder, son of Moisture, as lovely as
a white stone. She also saw him, so tall and hopeful, and their hearts
found a shared melody that will never be lost until the world ends.
Thus began the Long Defeat.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
BARRICK EDDON WOKE UP in the grip of utter terror, feeling i as though his heart might crack like an egg. He could smell some¬thing burning, but the world was cold and astonishingly dark. For long moments he had no idea of where he was. Out of doors, yes-the rus¬tle and creak of trees in the wind was unmistakable… He was behind the Shadowline, of course.
Barrick felt as though he had just awakened from a long, bizarre dream-a feeling he knew all too well-but the waking was not much more reassuring than the dream. The endless twilight of these lands had actually ended, but only because the sky had turned black and not |usl night dark, but empty of stars, too, as though some angry god had thrown a cloak over all of creation. Had it not been for the last of the coals still glowing in the stone fire circle, the darkness would have been complete. And that terrible, acrid smell…
Smoke. Gyir said it was the smoke from some huge fire, filling the sky, killing the light. Barrick's eyes had stung for most of a day, he remembered now, and they had been forced to stop riding because he and Vansen the guard captain had trouble breathing.
Barrick crawled to the fire and poked the embers. Vansen was asleep with his mouth open, wearing his arming-cap against the chill. Why was the man still here? Why hadn't he turned and ridden back to Southmarch as any sane person would have done? Instead, here he lay beside his new friend, that ugly, splotch-feathered raven (which was sleeping too, appar-endy, its head under its wing). Barrick disliked the raven intensely, although he could not say why.
When he looked at Gyir Barrick's heart sped again, even as his stomach seemed to twist inside him. By all the gods, the fairy was a horror! He dimly remembered a feeling of friendship, of kinship even, between himself and this faceless abomination that had led an army of other monsters into the lands of real people, to burn and to kill. How could such madness be? And now he was virtually this creature's prisoner, being led toward the gods only knew what kind of horrible fate!
Barrick looked to the place the horses stood, mostly in shadow, Vansen's slumbering mount and the restless bulk of the Twilight horse which had somehow become Barrick's own, although he did not remember it hap¬pening. / could be in the saddle and riding away in an instant, he realized. Should he wake Vansen? Did he dare risk the time? Barrick's hand slid across the ground until it closed on the pommel of his falchion. Even bet¬ter: he could have the long, sharp edge on the Gyir-reature's throat just as quickly.
But even as the fingers of Barrick's good hand closed around the corded hilt, Gyir's eyes flickered open and fixed on him just as if the fairy-man had smelled something of the prince's murderous thoughts. Gyir stared hard and knowingly at him for a moment, his pupils round and black in the dim light, but then he closed his eyes again as if to say, Do what you will.
Barrick hesitated. The loathing itself now seemed alien, just another un¬likely feeling to grip him. My blood, my thoughts-they turn and change like
the wind! He had always been moody and had often feared lor his sanity, but now he felt a terror that he might lose his very self. Father said own malady was better once he left the castle. For a while mine seemed the same, but now it is back and stronger than ever.
Barrick tried to order his thoughts as his father had taught him, and could not help wishing he had spent more time listening and less sulking when the king spoke. He was trapped in a place where errors could kill him. How could he decide what was real and what was not? Only hours before he had thought of the faceless man as an ally, perhaps even a friend. Moments ago he had seemed an utter monster instead. Was Gyir really such a threat, or was he simply a warrior who served a foreign master?
Not master-mistress, Barrick reminded himself. And suddenly, as though everything had been tilting and threatening to tumble because of a single missing support, he saw the warrior-woman again in his mind's eye and his thoughts grew more stable. Gyir the Storm Lantern was not a monster, but not his friend, either. Barrick could not afford to trust so much. The Qar woman, the Lady Yasammez, had held him with her bottomless stare and had told him amazing things, although he could remember very few of them now. What had she said that had sent him so boldly across the Shadowline? Or had it been something else, not ideas but a spell to enslave him? She told me of great lands I had never seen, the lands of the People, as she called them-of mountains taller than the clouds, and the black sea, and forests older than Time, and… and…
But there had been more, and it was the more that he knew had been im¬portant. She said she was sending me as a… a gift? A gift? How could he be a gift, unless the Qar ate humans? She sent me to… Saqri, he remembered, that was the name. Someone of importance and power named Saqri, who had been sleeping but would awaken soon into a world that had moved far¬ther into defeat. Whatever that might mean. Like any dream, it had begun to fade. Except for the fairy-woman's eyes, her predatory eyes, watchful and knowing, bright as a hunting hawk's, but with ageless depths-what he might have imagined the eyes of a goddess to look like, when he had still believed in such things.
But if I don't believe in the gods and their stories, he asked himself, then what is all this around me? What has happened to me if I haven't been god-struck like the ones in the old stories, like Iaris and Zakkas and the rest of the oracles? Like Soteros who flew up to the palace of Perin on top of Mount Xandos and saw the gods in their home?
Barrick realized that he had found, if not answers, a kind of peace with his predicament. Reasoning in the way his father would have had helped him. He looked at Gyir now and saw something fearful but not terrifying, a creature both like and unlike himself. They had spoken with their minds and hearts. He had felt the faceless Qar's angers and joys as he talked about his homeland and about the war with the humans, and had almost felt he understood him-surely that could not all have been lies. Could someone be both a bitter enemy and a friend?
Barrick felt sleep stealing over him again and let his eyes fall shut. Whether they were friends or enemies, as long as the Qar woman's en¬chantment drove Barrick on he and the Gyir the Storm Lantern must at least be allies. He had to trust in that much or he would go mad for certain.
With a last few flicks of his spur Ferras Vansen finished currying his horse, then bent to strap the spur back on. The one good thing about this cursed, soggy weather was that the beast seemed to pick up few brambles, although its tail was a knotted mess. He paused, eyeing the strange dark steed that had carried Prince Barrick away from the battle. The fairy-horse looked back at him, the eyes a single, milky gleam. The creature seemed unnaturally aware, its calm not that of indifference but of superiority. Vansen sniffed and turned away, shamed to be feeling such resentment toward a dumb brute.
"Gyir says the horse's name is Dragonfly."
Barrick's words made Vansen jump. He had not realized the prince was so close. "He told you that?"
"Of course. Just because you can't hear him doesn't mean he's not speaking."
Ferras Vansen did not doubt that the fairy-man spoke without words- he had felt a bit of it himself-but admitting it seemed the first step on a journey he did not wish to begin. "Dragonfly, then. As you wish."
"He belonged to someone named Four Sunsets-at least that's what Gyir says the name meant." Barrick frowned, trying to get things right. There were moments when, the subject of his conversation aside, he seemed like any ordinary lad of his age. "Four Sunsets was killed in the bat¬tle. The battle with… our folk." Barrick smiled tightly with relief: he had got it right.
Chilled, Vansen could not help wondering what it was he had been tempted to say instead. Does he have to struggle to remember he's not one of them? He shook his head. This was the puzzle the gods had set for him he could only pray for strength and do his best. "Well, he is a fine enough horse, 1 suppose, for what he is-which is a fairy-bred monster."
"Faster than anything we'll ever ride again," said Barrick, still boyish. "Gyir says they are raised in great fields called the Meadows of the Moon."
"Don't know how they would know of the moon or anything else in the sky," said Vansen, looking up. "And it's got worse now, the sky's so dark with smoke." Their progress had been slowed to a walk-they led their horses now more often than they rode them. Vansen had hated the eternal twilight but he longed for it now. It seemed, however, that he was fated to realize such things only after it was too late.
Skurn hopped into the road to smash a snail against a stone embedded in the mud. The raven pulled out his meal and swallowed it down, then turned his dark, shiny eye on Vansen. "Shall us ride, then, Master?" Skurn shot an uneasy look at Barrick, who was staring at the raven with his usual disdain. "If us hasn't spoken out of turn, like."
"You seem in good cheer," Vansen said, still not quite accustomed to talking with a bird
"Broke us's fast most lovesomely this morning with a dead frog what had just begun to swell…"
Vansen waved his hand to forestall the description. "Yes, but I thought you were afraid of where we were going. Why have you changed?"
Skurn bobbed his head. "Because we go away, now, not toward, Master. This new road leads us away from Northmarch and Jack Chain's lands. 'Twas all us ever wanted."
Vansen felt a little better to hear that. If it had not been for the contin¬ual dreary, ashy rain, the lightless sky, and the fact that he knew he'd be spending another day's thankless journey surrounded by madmen and monsters out of dire legend, finishing with a bed on the cold, lumpy ground and a few bitter roots to gnaw, he might have been cheerful, too.
It was almost impossible to choose Skurn's single most annoying trait, but certainly high on the pile was the fact that unless something had terri¬fied the bird into silence, he talked incessantly. Relieved by their new di¬rection, the raven yammered on throughout the day, loudly at first, then more quietly after Vansen threatened to drag him on a rope behind the
hone, naming trees and bushes and sharing other obscure bits of woodlore, and going on at great length about the wonderful tilings to eat that could be found on all sides-an urpsome subject that Vansen throttled shortly after being told how lovely it was to guzzle baby birds whole out of a nest.
"Can you not just stop?" he snarled at last. "Close your beak and just sit silently, for the Trigon's sake, and let me think."
"But us can't sit quiet, Master." Skurn squatted, holding his beak in the air in a way Vansen had learned was meant to suggest he was suffering- either that or he was fouling the saddle, one of his other charming traits. "You see, it is riding on this horse that has us so squirmsome, and when us talks not, us squirms more and the horse takes it ill. You have seen him star¬tle up, have you not?"
Vansen had. Twice today already, Skurn had done something to make the horse balk and almost throw them. Vansen couldn't blame his mount: Skurn had trouble holding on, and when he lost his balance he sank in his talons, and if he happened to be off the saddle and on the horse's neck at the time, no matter.
Skyfather Perin, I beg you to save me, Vansen prayed. Save me from everything you have given me. I doubt I am strong enough, great lord. Aloud he said, "Then tell me something more useful than how to catch and eat yon hairy spiders, for I will not be doing that even if starvation has me in its grip."
"Shall us tell tha one story, then? To make time slip more easy, eh?"
"Tell me about the one you called Crooked, or this Jack Chain you are so frightened of. What is he? And the others, Night Men and suchlike."
"Ah, no, Master, no. No talk of Jack, not so close still to his lands, nor of Night Men-too shiversome. But us can tell you a little of the one us called Crooked. Those are mighty stories, and all know them-even my folk, from nestlings to high-bough weavers. Shall us speak on that?"
"I suppose so. But not too loudly, and try to sit still. I don't want to find myself in a ditch with my horse running away into the forest."
"Well, then." Skurn nodded his head, closed his tiny eyes, rocked slowly against the saddle horn.
"Here he came," the raven began in a cracked, crooning voice that seemed half song, "tumble-dum, tumble-dum, crooked as lightning, but slow as the earth rolling over, all restless in her sleep. He limped, do you see? Though just a child then, he came through the great long war fighting at his father's side, and were struck a great blow near the end of it by the Sky Man,
so that ever after, when it healed, one pin he had longer than the other. Was even captured, then, by Stone Man and his brothers, and they took away from him summat which they shouldn't have, but still he would not tell them where his father's secret house was hid.
Later on, when his father and his mother was both taken away from him, and all his cousins and brothers and sisters were sent away to the sky lands, still he lived on in the world's lands because none of the three great brothers feared him. They mocked him, calling him Crooked, and that was his name always after.
Still, here he came through the world, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg the shorter, and everywhere he went was mocked by those that had won, the brothers and their kin, although they were glad enough to have the things he made, the clever things he made.
So clever he was that when he lost his left hand in the forge fire he made another from ivory, more nimble even than the one he'd been born with, and when he touched pizen with his right hand and it withered away he made himself a new one from bronze, strong as any hand could ever be. Still they mocked him, called him not just Crooked but also No-Man because of what they themselves had taken from him, but, aye, they did covet the things he could make. For Sky Man he made a great iron hammer, heavier and grander than even his war hammer of old, and it could smash a mountain flat or knock a hole in the great gates of Stone Man's house, as it did once when the two brothers quarreled. He also made the great shield of the moon for her what had took his father's place, and for Night her necklace of stars, Water Man's spear what could split a mighty whalefish like a knife splits an apple, and a spear for Stone Man, too, and many other wonderful things, swords and cups and mirrors what had the Old Strength in them, the might of the earliest days.
But he did not always know the very greatest secrets, and in fact when first he was become the servant of the brothers whom had vanquished his people, though he was clever beyond saying, still he had much to learn. And this is how he learned some of it.
So here he came on this day, tumble-dum, tumble-dum, one leg shorter, walking like a ship in a rolling sea, wandering far from the city of the broth¬ers because it plagued him and pained him to have to speak always respect¬fully to his family's conquerors. As he walked down the road through a narrow, shadowed valley, the which was fenced with high mountains on either side, he came upon a little old woman sitting in the middle of the path, an ancient widow woman such as could be seen in any village of the people, dry and
gnarled as a stick. He paused, did (brooked, and then lie says to her, "Move, please, old woman. I would pass." But the old woman did not move and did not reply, neither.
"Move," he says again, without so much courtesy this time. "I am strong and angry inside myself like a great storm, but I would rather not do you harm." Still she did not speak, nor even look at him.
"Old woman," he says, and his voice was now loud enough to make the valley rumble, so that stones broke loose from the walls and rolled down to the bottom, breaking trees as a person would break broomstraws, "I tell you for the last time. Move! I wish to pass."
At last she looked up at him and says, "I am old and weary and the day is hot. If you will bring me water to slake my thirst, I will move out of your way, great lord."
Crooked was not pleased, but he wasn't mannerless, and the woman was in truth very, very old, so he went to the stream beside the road and filled his hands and brought it back to her. When she had drunk it down, she shook her head.
"It does not touch my thirst. I must have more."
Crooked took a great boulder and with his hand of bronze he hollowed it into a mighty cup. When he had filled it in the stream he brought it back to her, and it was so heavy, when he set it down it made the ground jump. Still, the old woman lifted it with one hand and drained it, then shook her head. "More," she says. "My mouth is still as dry as the fields of dust before the Stone Man's palace."
Marveling, but angry, too, at how his journey had been halted and bollixed, Crooked went to the stream and tore up its bed, pointing it so that all the water flowed toward the old woman. But she only opened her mouth and swal¬lowed it all down, so that within a short time the stream itself ran dry, and all the trees of the valley went dry and lifeless.
"More," she says. "Are you so useless that you cannot even help an old woman to slake her thirst?"
"I do not know how you do those tricks," he says, and he was so angry that his banished uncle's fire was a-dancing in his eyes, turning them bright as suns, pushing back the very shadows that covered the valley, "but I will not be courteous any more. Already I must carry the load of shame from my family's defeat, must I also be thwarted by an old peasant woman? Get out of my way or I will pick you up and hurl you out of the road."
"I go nowhere until I have finished what I am doing," the crone says.
Crooked sprang forward and grabbed the old woman with his hand of
ivory, but as hard as he pulled he could not lift her. 'Then he grabbed her with his other hand as well, the mighty hand of bronze which its strength WAS be-yond strength, but still he could not move her. He threw both his arms around her and heaved until he thought his heart would burst in his chest but he could not move her one inch.
Down he threw himself in the road beside her and said, "Old woman, you have defeated me where a hundred strong men could not. I give myself into your power, to be killed, enslaved, or ransomed as you see fit."
At this the old woman threw back her head and laughed. "Still you do not know me!" she says. "Still you do not recognize your own great-grandmother!"
He looked at her in amazement. "What does this mean?"
"Just as I said. I am Emptiness, and your father was one of my grand¬children.You could pour all the oceans of the world into me and still not fill me, because Emptiness cannot be filled. You could bring every creature of the world and still not lift me, because Emptiness cannot be moved. Why did you not go around me?"
Crooked got to his knees but bowed low, touching his forehead to the ground in the sign of the Dying Flower. "Honored Grandmother, you sit in the middle of a narrow road. There was no way to go around you and I did not wish to turn back."
"There is always a way to go around, if you only pass through my sover¬eign lands," she told him. "Come, child, and I will teach you how to travel in the lands of Emptiness, which stand beside everything and are in every place, as close as a thought, as invisible as a prayer."
And so she did. When Crooked was finished he again bowed his head low to his great-grandmother and promised her a mighty gift someday in return, then he went on his way, thinking of his new knowledge, and of revenge on those whom had wronged him."
It was strange, but Vansen was wondering if being lost again behind the Shadowline was not stealing his wits. Even after the raven's harsh voice had fallen silent Vansen could feel words in his head, as though someone was muttering just out of earshot.
"Foolishness," Barrick said after a long pause. "Gyir says the bird's tale is foolishness."
"All true it is, on our nest, us swears it." Skurn sounded more than a lit¬tle irked.
"Gyir says that it is impossible that the one you call Crooked would not
know his great grandmother, who was the mother of all the Early Ones. It is a foolish raven story, he says, told from between two leaves."
"What does that mean?" asked Vansen.
"from where a raven sits, in a tree," Barrick explained."We might say it is like groundlings discussing the deeds of princes."
Vansen stared for a moment, wondering if he were being insulted, too, but Barrick Eddon's look was bland. "The fairy talks in your head, yes?" Vansen asks. "You can hear him as though he spoke to your ears?"
"Yes. Much of the time. When I can understand the ideas. Why?"
"Because a moment ago I thought I heard it. Felt it. I don't know the words, Highness. A tickling, almost, like a fly crawling in my head."
"Let us hope for your sake that you did indeed sense some of Gyir's thoughts, Captain Vansen. Because there are other things behind the Shad-owline, as you doubtless already know, that you would not want crawling around in your head, or anywhere else on you."
Will you tell me now who this Jack Chain is that the raven has been prattling about? Barrick asked Gyir. And the Longskulls? And the things he called Night Men?
You are better not knowing most of that. The fairy-man's speech was grow¬ing more and more like ordinary talk in Barrick's head. It was hard to re¬member sometimes that they were not speaking aloud. They are all grim creatures. The Night Men are those my folk call the Dreamless. They live far from here, in their city called Sleep. Be grateful for that.
I am a prince, Barrick told him, stung. I was not raised to let other people do my worrying for me.
He could feel a small burst of resigned frustration from Gyir, something as wordless as a puff of air. "Jack Chain" is a rendering of his name into the com¬mon tongue, he explained. Jikuyin he is called among our folk. He is one of the old, old ones-a lesser kin to the gods. The one in the bird's story, Emptiness, she was his mother, or so I was told. In the earliest days there were many like him, so many that for a long time the gods let them do what they would and take pieces of this earth for their own, to rule as they saw fit, as long as they gave the gods their honor and tribute.
The gods? You mean the Trigon-Erivor and Perin and the rest? They're truly real? Not just stories?
Of course they are real, Gyir told him. More real than you and /, and that is the problem. Now be quiet for a moment and let me listen to something,
Barrick couldn't help wondering exactly what "be quiet" was supposed to mean to someone who wasn't talking out loud. Was he supposed to slop thinking, too?
There is nothing to fear, Gyir said at last, fust the sounds that should be heard at this time, in this place.
But you're worried, aren't you? It was painful to ask, painful even to con¬sider. He was still uncertain how he felt about the fairy, but in these few short days he had grown used to the idea of Gyir as a reliable guide, some¬one who truly knew and belonged in this bizarre land.
Anyone who knew what I know and did not worry would be a fool. Gyir's thoughts were solemn. Not all lands under the Mantle are ruled from Qul-na-Qar, and many who live in them hate the king and queen and the rest of the… People. One word was a meaningless blur of idea-sounds.
What? What people? I don't understand.
Those like myself and like my mistress. Can you understand the idea of High Ones better? I mean the ruling tribes, those who are still close to the look of the earliest days, when your kind and the People were not so different. As if without witting thought, his hand crept up to the tight drumskin of his empty face. Many of the more changed have grown to hate those who look similar to the mortals-as though we High Ones had not also changed, and far more than any of them could understand! But our changes are not on the outside. He dropped his hand. Not usually.
Barrick shook his head, so beset by not-quite-understandable ideas that he almost felt the need to swat them away like gnats. Were… were you mor¬tals once? Your people?
We Qar are mortal, unlike the gods, Gyir told him with a touch of dry amusement. But if you mean were we like your folk, I think a better answer is that your folk-who long ago followed ours into these lands you think of as the whole world-your folk have stayed much as they were in their earliest days walking this world. But we have not. We have changed in many, many ways.
Changed how? Why?
The why is easy enough, said Gyir. The gods changed us. By the Tiles, child, do your people really know so little of us?
Barrick shook his head. We only know that your people hate us. Or so we were taught.
You were not taught wrongly.
Gyir's thoughts had a grim, steely feel Barrick had not sensed before. For
the first time since they had begun this conversation he was reminded of now different Gyir was-not just his viewpoint, but his entire way of being. Now Marriek could feel the fairy-warrior's tension and anger throbbing like muf¬fled drums behind the unspoken but still recognizable words, and he realized that what the faceless creature was thinking of so fiercely was about slaugh¬tering Barrick's own folk and how happily he, Gyir, had put his hand to it.
Very few of my people would not gladly die with their teeth locked in the throat of one of your kind, boy-sunlanders, as we call you since our retreat under the Mantle. Startled by the force of Gyir's thought, Barrick turned to look back at the fairy. He had the uncomfortable feeling that if the Storm Lantern had anything like a proper mouth, he would have grinned hugely. But do not be. frightened, little cousin. You have been singled out by the Lady Yasammez herself. No harm will come to you-at least not from me.
In the days they had traveled together, Barrick had tried to winkle in¬formation about the one called Yasammez, with little success. Much of what Barrick did not know the faceless Qar thought too obvious for ex¬planation, and the rest was full of Qar concepts that did not make words in Barrick's head but only smeary ideas. Yasammez was powerful and old, that was clear, but Barrick could have guessed that just from his own muddled memories, the bits of her that still seemed to drape his mind like spider-webs. She also seemed to be in the middle of some kind of conflict between the fairy rulers Gyir thought of as king and queen, although even these concepts were far from straightforward-they all seemed to have many names and many titles, and some of them seemed to him oddly contradic¬tory: Barrick had felt Gyir think of the king as recently crowned, but also as ageless, as blind but all-seeing.
It was hard enough just to understand the simple things. You were going to tell me about fack Chain. Jikuyin. Is he really a god?
No, no. He is a child of the gods, though. Not like I am, or you are, or any think¬ing creature is-a child of great power. His kind were mostly spawned by the con¬gress of the gods and other, older beings. The gods walk the earth no more-that is the first reason we are living the Long Defeat-but a few demigods such asjikuyin apparently still remain.
Barrick took a deep breath, frustrated again. They had left the over¬grown road hours ago because it had been blocked by a fallen tree, and had wandered far afield before they had spotted the road again, now on the far side of a rough, fast-moving stream. They were trying to make their way back to it on something that was closer to a deer track; the rains had
stopped, but the trees were wet, and it had occurred to Barrick several times that every branch that smacked him in the face was one that did not hit Gyir, who rode behind him. I don't understand any of that. I just want to know what this Jack Chain is and why he worries you. Why is the bird still so frightened} Aren't we going away from Northmarch where he lives?
Yes, butjikuyin is a Power, and like any of his kind, he rules a broad territory. I think among your people there are bandit lords like that, who respect no master but their own strength, yes?
There used to be. Barrick at first was thinking of the infamous Gray Com¬panies, but then he remembered the adventurer who held their father even now-Ludis Drakava, the so-called Lord Protector of Hierosol. Yes, we have people like that.
So. That isjikuyin. As the bird said, he has made the ruined sunlander city of Northmarch his own, although it was ours before it was yours-it is an old place.
The Qar lived in Northmarch?
So I am told. It was long before my time. There are certain places of power, and people are drawn to them, places like… Here another strange concept bounced uselessly in Barrick's head, a shadowy image of light the subtle gold of a falcon's eye gleaming from deep underwater, all muddled with something that was bright, piercing blue and as tangled and twined as a grapevine. In the old days all the Children of Stone lived there in peace, and their roads ran beneath the ground in all directions-some say as far as the castle where you were born… Gyir's words suddenly changed, insofar as Barrick was able to tell, the voice in his head growing suddenly cautious, withdrawn. But all that does not matter. The simple tale is this-we are skirting Jikuyin's lair as widely as we can.
But what about those… things that the bird said would be hunting us-Night Men and Longskulls…?
Gyir was dismissive. / do not fear the Longskulls, not if I am armed. And no Dreamless, I think, would be willing servants tojikuyin-surely the world has not changed so much. They have their own lands and their own purposes…
The Dreamless-Barrick shivered at the name. Will we have to cross their lands, too? he asked.
At some point, all who go to Qul-na-Qar, the great knife of the People, the city of black towers, must cross their lands. For a moment, there was something al¬most like kindness in Gyir's thoughts-almost, but not quite. But don't fear, boy. Many survive the journey. He considered for a moment; when he spoke again, his thoughts were somber. Of course, none of your kind has yet tried it.
A Little Hard Work
The three children Oneyna birthed were Zmeos, the Horned Serpent, his
brother Khors Moonlord, and their sister Zuriyal, who was called Merciless. And for long no one knew these three existed. But Sveros was a
tyrannical ruler, and his true sons Perin, Erivor, and Kernios made
compact to dethrone him. They fought courageously against him and threw
him down, and then returned him to the Void of Unbeing.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
THE SKIES OVER HIEROSOL were bright on this mild winter day, clouds piled high and white as the snowfall on the distant sum¬mit of Mount Sarissa and its neighbors. The thousand sails in the huge Harbor of Nektarios seemed a reflection of those clouds, as if the bay were a great green mirror.
The small inspector's boat that had tied up beside the much larger trad¬ing vessel now cast free, the rowers ferrying the petty official back to the the harbor master's office in the labyrinth of buildings behind the high east¬ern harbor wall where all legitimate business of the mighty port was trans¬acted (and a great deal of its shadier workings, too). The trading ship, having duly submitted to the official's inspection-a rather cursory one, noted Daikonas Vo-was now free to move toward its designated harbor slip.
Vo did not think much of the harbor master's defenses against smug¬gling, and thought it likely that the lackey's visit had been more about the
ceremonial exchange of bribes for permits than any actual search for con-traband, but he could not help admiring the city's fortifications. Hierosol's eastern peninsula, which contained most of the anchorage, was as formida-ble as its reputation suggested, the seawalls ten times the height of a man, studded with gunports and bristling with cannon like the quills of a por¬cupine. On the far side of the Kulloan Strait stood the Finger, a narrow strip of land with its own heavy fortifications. Modern planners, reexamining the walls in this new age of cannonfire, had realized that if a determined attack should overthrow the much more thinly defended areas along the Finger, the heart of Hierosol would then be vulnerable to the citadel's own guns. Thus, they had mounted smaller guns in those forts on the western side of the isthmus facing the city-cannons which could reach the middle of the strait, well within the compass of the eastern guns, but could not themselves reach the eastern wall.
Vo respected that in his cold way, as he respected most types of careful planning. If, as rumors suggested, Autarch Sulepis truly intended a conquest of Hierosol, Xis' ancient rival, the Golden One would have hard work laid out before him.
Still, it would be interesting-a problem well worth the time and trou¬ble, even without the rich reward of plunder, not to mention the choke hold a successful conqueror of Hierosol would gain on vast Lake Strivothos, the still mighty (and wealthy) kingdom of Syan, and the rest of the interior of Eion. Perhaps, Vo mused, after his own project was successfully con¬cluded he might find himself moving higher in the circles of the autarch's advisers. Yes, it would be a grand entertainment to devote adequate time and attention to cracking open Hierosol's mighty walls like a nut, exposing all the frail, human flesh within to the mercies of the autarch's armies, es¬pecially Vo's own comrades, the White Hounds. If such a day came the Hounds would bloody their muzzles well, there was no doubt about that. Vo did not think particularly highly of the cleverness of his fellow Perikalese mercenaries but he had a deep respect for their essential hunger for combat. They were well-named: you could kennel them for years, but when you let them out, they struck like red Nature.
As he thought about it he could almost smell blood in the salty air, and for a moment the seagulls' shrill cries seemed the lamentation of bereaved women. Daikonas Vo felt a thrill of anticipation, like a child being taken to the fair.
•**
His belongings in a seabag slung across his shoulder, Vo gave the trading ship's captain a farewell nod as he stepped onto the gangplank. The captain, flush with the pride of a man about to unload a full cargo hold, returned the gesture with magisterial condescension.
The merchant captain had proved to be a garrulous fool, and for that Vo was grateful. During their conversations on the eight-day crossing from Xis to Hierosol he had told Vo so much about his fellow captain Axamis Dorza that he had saved Vo days of work, without ever once wondering why this low-level servant of the palace (for so Daikonas Vo had presented himself) should be asking all those questions. In ordinary circumstances Vo would have found it hard to resist killing the captain and throwing him overboard- the man talked with his mouth full as he ate, for one thing, and dribbled bits of food onto his beard and clothes, and he had an even more annoying habit of saying, "I swear it, by the red-hot doors of the house of Nushash!" a dozen times or so in every conversation-but Vo was not going to com¬plicate his mission. The memory of the autarch's cousin spewing blood and writhing helplessly on the floor was very much with him.
Daikonas Vo did not know whether he believed in the gods or not. He certainly did not much care whether they existed-if they did, their inter¬est and involvement in human life was so capricious as to be, ultimately, no different in effect than pure chance. What he did believe in was Daikonas Vo: his own subtle pleasures and displeasures made up the whole of his cos¬mos. He did not want that cosmos to come to an early end. A world with¬out Daikonas Vo at the center of it could not exist.
Very few people looked at him as he made his way along the busy har¬bor front, and those who did scarcely seemed able to see him, as though he were not fully visible. That was in part because of his outward appearance, which, because of his Perikalese ancestry, was similar to many of the folk he passed. He was also slight in build, or at least appeared that way, not short, but certainly not tall. Mostly, though, eyes slid off him because Daikonas Vo wanted it that way. He had discovered the trick of stillness when he was young, when first his father and then later his mother's other male friends had stormed through the house, drunk and angry, or his mother had played out her own shrieking madness; the trick had been to become so calm, so invisible, that all the rage blew past him like a thunder¬storm while he lay sheltered in the secret cove of his own silence.
The passersby might not look at him, but Vo looked at them. He was a
spy by nature, curious in a mildly contemptuous way as always about crea-tures that seemed to him like another species from himself, things that wore their emotions as openly as their clothes, faces that reflected fear and anger and something he had come to recognize as joy, although he could not connect it to his own more abstract pleasures. They were like apes, these ordinary folk, carrying on their private lives in the full sight of anyone with eyes to see, the adults as uncontrolled in their bleatings and grimaces as the children. In this regard the Hierosolines around him now were barely dif-ferent from the people of Xis, who did at least have the sense to clothe the revealing nakedness of their wives and daughters from foot to crown, al¬though not for the reason Vo would have done so. Here in Hierosol the women seemed to dress any way they chose, some decently modest in loose robes and veils or scarves that covered their heads and part of their faces, but some nearly as shameless as the men, with necks, shoulders, legs, and most especially their faces exposed for all to see. Vo had seen women naked, of course, and many times at that. Like his fellow Perikalese mercenaries he had visited the brothels outside the palace's Lily Gate many times, although in his case it had been mostly because not to do so would have attracted attention, and Vo hated attention even more than he disliked pain. He had used some of the women as they chose to be used, but after the first time, when the oddness of the experience had some value in itself, it had meant little to him. He understood that copulation was a great motivator of mankind and perhaps even womankind as well, but to him it seemed only another ape trick, different from eating and defecating only because it could not be practiced solitarily, but required company.
Vo paused, his attention returned to the ships moving placidly in the gentle tides of the bay, tied up alongside the quay like so many great cows in a barn. That one, there, with the lean bow like the snout of a hunting animal: that must be the one he sought. The name painted in sweeping Xixian characters was unfamiliar, but anyone could change a name. It was less easy to hide the shape of a ship as swift as Jeddin's.
Daikonas Vo approached the gangway and looked up to the nearly empty deck. It could be that Dorza, her captain, was not here. If that was so, he would ask some questions and Dorza would be found. He felt con¬fident that he could get everything else he needed from Axamis Dorza himself. It was an impossibly long coincidence that the captain should sail out from Xis in the disgraced Jeddin's own ship on the very night of both the Leopard captain's arrest and the disappearance of Vo's quarry. Captain
Jeddin, despite torments that, had impressed even Vo, had denied any in volveinenl with the girl Qinnitan, but his denial seemed suspicious in it¬self: why would a man watching his own fingers and toes being torn loose from his body protect a girl he barely knew instead of assenting to anything the inquisitors seemed to want to hear? It certainly did not correspond with Vo's thorough experience of humanity in its final extremes.
He shouldered his bag and walked up the gangplank of the ship that had been the Morning Star of Kirous, whistling an old Perikalese work song his father used to sing while beating him.
Since Dorza had thrown her out, it had taken Qinnitan several days and many inquiries to find this woman, the laundry mistress. In the mean¬time, she had found herself in a situation she had never imagined in all her life, sleeping rough in the alleys of Hierosol, eating only what the mute boy Pigeon could steal. It could have been worse, but Pigeon had proved surprisingly adept at pilfering. From what Qinnitan could grasp of his story, he had not been fed well in the autarch's palace and he and the other young slaves had been forced to supplement their meager fare with thievery.
The citadel's laundry was huge, a vast space that had once perhaps been a trader's warehouse, but which now was filled not with cedar wood and spices but tubs of steaming water, dozens of them-the room, Qinnitan marveled, must exist in a permanent fog. Every tub had two or three women leaning over it, and scores more women and young boys were car¬rying buckets from the great cauldron set in the floor at the center of the room, which was kept continually bubbling by a fire in the basement. As Qinnitan watched, one of the girls slopped water over the edge of a bucket onto herself and then collapsed to the ground, shrieking. A woman of mid¬dle years, impressively thick-limbed but not fat, came over to examine the hurt girl, then gave her a cuff on the head and sent her off with two other washwomen before directing a third to take the bucket which the injured girl had somehow miraculously not dropped. The big woman stood with her hands on her hips and watched the wounded soldier being helped off the battlefield, her expression that of someone who knows that the gods have no other occupation but to fill her life with petty annoyances.
Qinnitan gestured for Pigeon to wait by the doorway. The laundrymistress watched her approach, scowling at this clear sign that her day was about to be unfairly interrupted again.
"What do you want?" she said in flat, unfriendly Hierosoline.
Qinnitan made a little bow, not entirely for show: up close, the woman was quite amazingly large and her sun-darkened skin made her seem some thing carved out of wood, a statue or a ship of war or something else wor¬thy of deferential approach. "You… Soryaza are?" she asked, aware that her Hierosoline was barbarous.
"Yes, I am, and I am a busy woman. What do you want?"
"You…from Xis? Speak Xis?"
"For the love of the gods," the woman grumbled, and then switched to Xixian. "Yes, I speak the tongue, although it's been years since I lived in the cursed place. What do you want?"
Qinnitan took a deep breath, one obstacle passed. "I am very sorry to bother you, Mistress Soryaza. I know you are an important person, with all this…" She spread her hands to indicate the sea of washing-tubs.
Soryaza wasn't so easily flattered. "Yes?"
"I… I have lost my father and my mother." Qinnitan had prepared the story carefully. "When my mother died of the coughing fever last summer, my father decided to bring me and my brother back here to Hierosol. But on the ship he too caught a fever and I nursed him for several months be¬fore he died." She cast her eyes down. "I have nowhere to go, and no rela¬tives here or in Xis who will take me and my brother in."
Soryaza raised an eyebrow. "Brother? Are you sure you do not mean a lover? Tell the truth, girl."
Qinnitan pointed to Pigeon. The child stood by the door with his eyes wide, looking as though he might flee at a sudden loud noise. "There. He cannot speak but he is a good boy."
"All right, brother it is. But what in the gods' names could this possibly have to do with me?" Soryaza was already wiping her hands on her volu¬minous apron, like someone who is finished with something and about to move on to the next task.
This was the risky part. "I… I heard you were once a Hive Sister."
Both eyebrows rose. "Did you? And what do you know of such things?"
"I was one myself-an acolyte. But when my mother was dying I left the Hive to help her. They would have let me come back, I'm certain, but my father wanted me here in Hierosol, his home." She let a little of the very real tension and fear mount up from inside her, where she had kept it carefully bottled for so long. Her voice quivered and her eyes filled with tears. "And now my brother and I must sleep in the alleyways by the harbor, and men… men try…"
Soryaza's brown face softened a little, but only a little. "Who was the high priestess when you were there? Tell me, girl, and quickly."
"Rugan."
"Ah, yes. I remember when she was merely a priestess, but she had a head on her shoulders." She nodded. "Do the priests still come into the Hive every morning to collect the sacred honey?"
Qinnitan stared, surprised by such a strange, illogical question. Had things changed so much since this woman's days as a priestess? Then she realized she was still being tested. "No, Mistress Soryaza," she said carefully. "The priests never come in… except for a few Favored who tend the altar of Nushash, that is. No true men do. And the honey only goes to the priests twice a year." The amount sent in the winter ceremony was slight, only enough taken from the jars covered with holy seals to symbolize the light of the magnificent, holy sun that would survive the cold months and re¬turn again. Then, in summer, the high priestess herself and her four Carri¬ers always took the wagon filled with jars of sacred honey to the high priest of Nushash during the important ceremony of Queening, when the new hives were begun and the weariest of the old hives were sacrificed to the flames. The high priest took that honey and presented it to the autarch, or so it was told: Qinnitan and the other acolytes never saw any of the cere¬monies that took place outside the Hive, even one so important as the de¬livery of the god's honey.
"And the Oracle?"
"Mudri, Mistress. She spoke to me once." But that was telling more than she needed to. Fortunately, Soryaza didn't seem to notice.
"Ah, Mudri, was it? Hands of Surigali, she was there when I was a girl and she was old then."
"They say she has outlived four autarchs."
"The gods bless her and keep her, then. One autarch was enough for me, and now I hear there's a new one who means even less good than his father."
Qinnitan flinched at this casual blasphemy, so trained was she in the decorous and unthinking autarch-praise of the Seclusion. Still, she thought, I could tell her things about this autarch that would freeze her blood. She felt a small thrill of power even as the memories brought a rush of fear. She had
survived-she, Qinnitan, had escaped. Had any other wife ever left the Seclusion except in a casket?
"Well, then, I believe your story, child," Soryaza said. "I will find work for you. You can sleep with the other girls, those who live here-some stay nights with their families. But you will work, I promise you! Harder than you've ever done. The Hive is a dream of paradise compared to the palace laundries."
"What about my… my brother?"
Soryaza regarded the boy sourly. He straightened up in an effort to look useful, even though from such a distance he could have no idea what was being discussed. "Is he clean? Does he have decent habits-or has he been allowed to run wild like most simpleminded children?"
"He's not simpleminded, Mistress, just mute. In truth, he's very clever, and he will work hard."
"Hmmmph. We'll see. I suppose I can find a few things for an able child to turn his hand to."
"You are very kind, Mistress Soryaza. Thank you so much. We won't give you any cause to regret…"
"I have regrets enough already," the laundry-mistress said. "More if you don't stop chattering. Go with Yazi-the one with the red arms, there. She's a southerner, too. She'll show you what to do." She turned to leave, then stopped and looked Qinnitan over, a disconcertingly shrewd appraisal. "There's more than you're telling me, of course. I can hear from your way of speaking, though, that the part about the Hive is true. No poor girl gets a place there, and no poor girl ever spoke like you. You'll have to learn to talk proper Hierosoline, though-you can't get away with Xixian here, someone will knock your head in. They don't care much for the autarch in this city."
"I will, Mistress!"
"What's your name?"
Qinnitan s mouth fell open. With all the talk about the Hive, she had forgotten the false name she had chosen, and now it had vanished as though it had never existed. In a stretching instant that seemed hours, her mind flit¬ted wildly from one woman's name to another, her sisters Ashretan and Cheryazi, her friend Duny, even Arimone the autarch's paramount wife, but then lighted on that of a girl who actually had left the Hive, an older acolyte whom Qinnitan had envied and admired.
"Nira!" she said. "Nira. My name is Nira."
"Your name must he 'addled, girl, if it takes you so long to remember. Go now, and I kid better not catch you standing around with your mouth hanging open-everyone works here."
"Thank you again, Mistress. You have done…"
But Soryaza had already turned her back on Qinnitan and was on her way across the steaming laundry floor, off to deal with whatever practical joke rude Fate would next set in her path.
Axamis Dorza, sensing something wrong when no one responded to his greeting, came through the door with surprising delicacy for a big man. The captain seemed to have some idea of the pantomime Vo had prepared for him, but though he was obviously a clearheaded fellow and not to be underestimated, his eyes still grew wide when he saw the blood on the floor. When he in turn observed Dorza's heavily muscled arms, Vo took his blade back a few finger-widths from the boy's throat: he didn't want things happening too quickly. If he had to kill the boy he'd lose much of his lever¬age; if he had to kill Captain Dorza before he could be made to speak, the entire day's careful work would be wasted.
"What are you doing?" Axamis Dorza said hoarsely. "What do you want?"
"A few words. Some friendly conversation." Vo slowly moved the blade back until its needle-sharp tip touched the boy's convulsing throat. "So let us all move slowly. If you tell me what I need to know I will not harm the boy. Your son?"
"Nikos…" Dorza waved weakly. "Let him go. You cannot want any¬thing from him.»
"Ah, but I can and do. I want him beside me while you answer my questions."
The captain's eyes darted away from his captive child, scanning the rooms for other bandits. Daikonas Vo could all but hear the man's thoughts: Surely so confident a criminal as this one must have confederates. There were no confederates, of course, which was how Vo liked it, but it also forced cau¬tion. Dorza was a head taller than him; if Vo hurt the boy the captain would be on him like a mad bear.
Vo wanted to head off the next problem too-anything to keep the man calm as long as possible. Any moment now he would notice the body crumpled on the floor just behind the door. Better simply to tell him.
"I have bad news for you, Captain Dorza. Your wife is dead. She caught me by surprise. I did not know she was in the house. She was a brave one, it must be said. She tried to kill me with that club-a belaying pin, I think you sailors call it? So I had to kill her. I am sorry. I did not wish to do it but it is done, and… ah, ah, careful… if you let anger get the best of you the boy will die, too."
"Tedora…!" Dorza looked around frantically, at last saw the blood-soaked shape behind the door. "You… you demon!" he shouted at Vo. "Nushash burn you, I'll send you to hell!" His eyes, red with tears, widened again. "The other children…!"
"Are under the bed. They are safe." Daikonas Vo prodded gently with his long blade at the boy's gorge, eliciting a squeal of fear. "Now speak to me or this one dies, too. You carried a young woman on your ship. Some say she was Guard Captain Jeddin's mistress. Where is she now?"
"I'll break you…!"
"Where is she?" He pulled the boy's chin back until it seemed the skin of his throat, downy with his first beard, might part without even the touch of the blade.
"I don't know, curse you! She stayed here with us but I threw her out when I found out what she was!"
"Liar." He pinked the boy just enough to make a drop of blood grow, wobble, then slide down into the neck of his shirt.
"It's true! She came to me with a note from Jeddin, saying to bring her here to Hierosol where he would meet us. I did not know she was the autarch's wife!"
"And you didn't know Jeddin was a traitor? You are surprisingly igno¬rant for a veteran captain."
"I didn't know anything until we arrived here. She hid it from me. She came with orders to leave that evening-the very evening when… when Jeddin was arrested."
"I do not think I like your answer. I think I will take one of the boy's eyes out and then we will try again."
"By the gods, I swear I have told you all I know! It was only a few days ago that I threw her out-she is doubtless still in the city! You can find her!"
"Did she know anyone here?"
"I don't think so. That was why she stayed with me-she and the child had nowhere else."
"A child? She had a child?"
"Not hers, he W;IS too old. A little mute boy her servant, I think." The captain ran his thick fingers through his beard. Though it was evening, and eool, his face was running with sweat. "And that is all I know. Here, even if you kill my son I can tell you nothing more, I swear on the blood of Nushash! On the autarch's head!"
"Swearing by the ruler you betrayed? Not a good choice of oaths, I think." Daikonas Vo experimentally lifted his blade until it hovered just a fingernail's breadth from the boy's eye, but the captain only wept. It seemed he truly had nothing more to say.
"Very well…" Vo began, then, with a fluidity learned only through long practice, snapped the knife across the room into Axamis Dorza's throat. A good trick, Vo thought, but bad when you miss. The man's hands flew to his neck, eyes wide with surprise. Gurgling, he sank to his knees.
"It had to be," Vo said. "Be glad I give you a quick death, Captain. You would not have liked to find yourself in the hands of the autarch's special craftsmen."
Shrieking like a much younger child, the boy suddenly began to thrash in Daikonas Vo's arms, trying to break away. Vo cursed his own inattentiveness- he had let his grip loosen when he threw the knife-but quickly managed to get the boy's arm twisted behind his back again. He turned him then, put a boot in his backside, and shoved the youth's head so hard into the table that the whole mass of oak tipped and turned. The boy was stunned but not dead. He lay bloody-headed in the broken crockery, weeping.
An instant later Vo was himself upended and knocked to the ground, a huge, red-smeared thing atop him like an angry mastiff. Dorza had not bled out as fast as Vo had thought he would, a misjudgment he was regretting already. Something smashed hard against his head, a blow he only partially managed to deflect with his forearm, and then the bloody face was right above his, eyes goggling with final rage and madness. Vo rolled so that he was on his side, then his hand went down his leg and another dagger came out of his boot. A moment later it was beneath the captain's ribs, and the man's bulk was jerking and stiffening even as Vo held him fast-as intimate as lovemaking, but somehow less distasteful. When the movement stopped, Vo rolled the corpse off and stood, wondering how he would get all the blood off his jerkin.
The boy was still on the floor, but he had drawn himself up onto his hands and knees, head wagging like an old dog's, blood drizzling down the side of his face.
"Someday…" he said, "someday I'll find you… and kill you."
"Ah… Nikos, was it?" Vo wiped his dagger on the captain's shirt inline returning it to his boot, then tugged the other one loose from the gristle of the dead man's throat. "I doubt it. I don't leave enemies behind me, so there won't be a someday, you see." He took a few steps forward. Before the boy could pull away Daikonas Vo had his hair gripped tight, then slashed him beneath the throat like a pig held for slaughter.
Only now, as the boy wriggled in the spreading pool of red, did Vo hear the muffled sobbing of the children under the mattress, doing their best to be quiet but-understandably, given the circumstances-failing. He heaved up the heavy mass of the table and threw it on top of the pallet, then poured lantern oil on the floor and splashed it on the walls. He took a smoldering stick from the oven and tossed it over his shoulder as he went out the door. Flames had already begun to lick up the walls inside the house as he.walked, swiftly but without obvious hurry, down the steep hill road.
So there's a child with her, he thought. One of the boy-eunuchs had dis¬appeared from the Seclusion on the same night, but that escape had been linked only to the traitorous Favored Luian, not the girl he sought: Vo, like everyone else, assumed the boy had taken advantage of the confusion to run away, and now he was displeased with himself for making such an obvious but unwarranted assumption.
Well, if the child's with her, it will make them that much easier to find. He could see yellow light gleaming fitfully on the roofs of the houses he was passing, which meant that up the hill the captain's house must be burning well. Too bad about the children. He had nothing against children partic¬ularly, but he wanted no one knowing what he had questioned the captain about.
Yes, this might not be too difficult after all, he thought with satisfaction. Hiersol was full of girls and young women, but how many of them were traveling with a mute boy? Tracking down his quarry would be only a matter of time and effort, and Daikonas Vo had never been afraid of a lit¬tle hard work.