Night Fires
Pale Daughter told her father Thunder that she had seen a handsome lord dressed all in pearly armor, with hair like moonlight on snow, and that her
heart now rode with him. Thunder knew that it was his half brother
Silvergleam, one of the children of Breeze, and forbade her to go out of the
house again. The music between father and daughter lost its purest note.
The sky above the god's house filled with clouds.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
A
FTER SO MANY CENTURIES, it was hard for Yasammez to accustom herself to true daylight again. Even this shy, cloud-blanketed winter sun seemed to blaze into her eyes from the mo¬ment it rose until it slid down behind the hills. She disliked it, but also felt a sort of wonder: had it really been like this once, walking in these south¬ern lands, moving beneath Whitefire's orb every day in light so bright that it turned shadows into stark black stripes? She could scarcely remember it. She had taken the mortals' city, but it was meaningless without the cas¬tle-worse than meaningless, because time was against her. Yasammez had prepared herself for fire and blood, for her own long-forestalled death, for meaningless victory or the finality of defeat, but she could never have pre¬pared herself for this… waiting. The dragging stalemate was beginning to feel as though it might last until the unfamiliar sun burned out and the world went dark. She cursed the Pact of the Glass and her own foolishness
lor agreeing she should never have let her hands be tied. Even if it worked, it would buy the one she loved only a few more moons of life and make the eventual loss even more heartbreaking.
As usual, the traitor was waiting for her on the steps outside the great hall she had taken for her own, a market hall or court where the mortals had once performed the meaningless routines of their short, busy lives. The one the sunlanders had called Gil-the-potboy looked up as she approached and smiled his slow, sad smile. His face, so human now she could scarcely recognize what he had once been, seemed as unmoving and opaque as dough.
"Good morning, my lady," he said. "Will you kill me today?"
"Did you have other plans, Kayyin?"
Something that the King had done to him still prevented her speaking to him mind to mind, so they had fallen back on the court speech of Qul-na-Qar, the common tongue of a hundred different kinds of folk. Yasammez, never one to waste even silent words, could not help feeling that here was another way that blind Ynnir was thwarting her, robbing her mind of rest.
Kayyin rose to follow her inside, hands hidden in his robe. Two of the guards looked at her, waiting for her to order this strange creature kept out, but she made no gesture as he trailed her through the door.
"I do not wish to speak to you today," she warned him.
"Then I will not speak, my lady."
Their footsteps echoed through the hall. Other than two or three of her silent, dark-clad servants waiting in the gallery above, the tall, wood-timbered room was empty. Yasammez preferred it so. Her army had the whole of a city in which to nest. This place was hers, which made the pres¬ence of the traitor even more galling.
Yasammez the Porcupine curled herself into her hard, high-backed chair. Her unwelcome guest seated himself cross-legged at her feet. One of her servants from Shehen appeared as if stepping out of nowhere, and waited until Yasammez flicked her fingers in dismissal. She wanted nothing. Noth¬ing was what she had. She had been outmaneuvered and now she was pay¬ing the price.
"I will not kill you today, Kayyin," she said at last. "No matter how you plague me. Go away."
"It is… interesting," he said, as if he had not heard the last part of what she said. "That name still does not seem entirely real to me, although it was how I thought of myself for centuries. But while living in the mortal lands
1 truly became Gil, and although in some ways 1 slept through those yers, it is like trying to shake off a powerful dream."!
"So first you betray me, now you would renounce your people entirely?"
He smiled, doubtless because he had lured her into conversation, Even when they had been close, when he had been allowed as near to her as Yasammez allowed anyone, he had always enjoyed the sport of making her talk. No one left alive cared about such things at all. It was one of the rea¬sons the sight of his altered, now-alien face filled her with such disquiet. "I renounce nothing, my lady, and you know it. I have been a catspaw-first yours, then the King's-and cannot be faulted for insufficient loyalty. I did not even remember who I truly was until one moon ago. How does that make me a traitor?"
"You know. I trusted you."
"Trusted me, you say? You are still cruel, my lady, whatever else time has done." He smiled, but the mockery was mixed with true sorrow. "The King was wiser than you guessed. And stronger. He made me his. He sent me to live among the mortals. And it has borne fruit, has it not? For the moment, no one is dying."
"It would only have been sunlanders dying. We had won."
"Won what? A more glorious death for all the People? The King, ap¬parently, has other ambitions."
"He is a fool."
Kayyin lifted his hand. "I do not seek to arbitrate the quarrels of the highest. Even when you lifted me up, you did not lift me far enough for that." He peered at her from the corner of his eye, perhaps wondering whether this little gibe had shamed her, but Yasammez showed him noth¬ing but stone, cold stone. She had been old already when Kayyin's father had fought with her against Umadi Sva's bastard offspring, and she had held him as he died in the agony of his burns on the Shivering Plain. If it had been in her to weep at someone's death, she would have wept then. No, she had no shame in her-not about anything to do with Kayyin, at any rate.
After a long silence, the traitor laughed. "You know, it was strange, liv¬ing among the sunlanders. They are not so different from us as you might think."
She did not honor such filth with a reply.
"I have considered it a great deal in the days since I returned to you, my lady, and I think I understand a part of the King's thinking. Perhaps he is
less Willing than you to destroy the mortals because he thinks that they are not entirely to blame."
She stared at him.
"It could even be that our king, in his labyrinthine wisdom, buttressed with the voices of his ancestors-your ancestors, too, of course-has come to believe that we may have helped to bring our woeful situation upon ourselves."
Yasammez rose from the chair in a blind rage, her aspect abruptly jud¬dering about her, shadow-spikes flaring. Kayyin came closer to his prom¬ised death at that moment than ever before. Instead, she raised a trembling, ice-cold finger and pointed to the door.
He stood and bowed. "Yes, my lady. You need solitude, of course, and with the burdens you bear, you deserve it. I await our next conversation."
As he walked out the room behind him came to life with flickering shadows.
The strange, glaring sun had long since set. Yasammez sat in darkness.
A soft voice bloomed inside her head. "May I speak with you, Lady?"
She gave permission.
The far door opened. The visitor glided in like a leaf carried on a stream. She was tall, almost as tall as Yasammez herself, and slender as a young wil¬low. Her white, hooded robe seemed to move too slowly for her progress, billowing like something underwater.
"Have things changed, Aesi'uah?" Yasammez asked.
The woman stopped before the chair and made a ritual obeisance of spread hands as her strange, still face lifted to Yasammez. Her pale blue eyes gleamed like sunlight through stained glass, giving the face a little anima¬tion: but for that effulgent stare she might have been an ancient statue. "Lady, things have, but only slightly. Still, I thought you should be told."
Someone other than Yasammez, someone other than the famously im¬perturbable Lady Porcupine, might have sighed. Instead she only nodded.
Her chief eremite spread her arms again, this time in the posture of bringing-the-truth. Aesi'uah was of Dreamless blood, and although that blood had been diluted by her Qar heritage, she had inherited at least one trait beside her moonstone gaze from those ancient forebears: she had an extreme disinterest in lies or politic speech, which was why she had be¬come Yasammez' favorite of all her eremite order. "The touch of the King's glass has made him restless."
"Is he awakening already?"
"No, Mistress." The face was placid but the words were not. "But he is stirring, and something is different, although I cannot say what. He is like out-fevered-restless, full of unsettling dreams."
Yasammez would have scowled at that, but she had lost the habit of showing emotion in such a naked way. "We know nothing of his dreams.»
"fust so." Aesi'uah bowed her head. "But his sleep seems to be that sort of sleep, and what is just as important, his restlessness makes the other sleepers un-easy, too."
She was just about to ask the chief eremite how much longer before everything ended for good and all when another voice spoke in her head, faint as a dying wind.
Where are you… do you hear me? Do you… know me?
Of course I know you, my heart. A claw of terror gripped Yasammez, but she tried to keep it from her thoughts. How could you doubt it?
Her beloved one was gone for a moment, then returned, sighing, tat¬tered. So… cold. So dark.
Yasammez made the sign for "audience ended." Aesi'uah did not change expression. She spread her hands, then glided out of the chamber like a phantom ship sailing beneath the moon.
Speak to me, my heart, said Yasammez.
I fear… I am going soon into… that greater sleep…
No. Strength is coming to you. I have sent the glass.
Wliere is it? I fear it will never come. The thoughts were timid, simple as a child's. To Yasammez that was the worst torment of all.
Gyir brings it, she promised. He is young and strong and his thoughts are clear. He will find his way to you in time.
But what… what if he does not…?
Do not even think it. Yasammez put every bit of strength she could be¬hind the thought. He will come and you will be strong again. I will bring the scorched stones of the sunlanders' cities to make you a necklace.
But even so… even so…!
Quiet, my heart. Not even the gods themselves can unmake that which is. Rest. I will stay with you until you sleep-not the greater sleep, but only the lesser. Fear not. Gyir will come.
She held on, then, to that faint wisp of thought and gave it comfort, though it fluttered against the darkness like a dying bird, by turns terrified and exhausted. The shadows flickered again in the hall, moving and stretching all through the true night as she took her aspect upon her once more, but this time they were softer-not spikes but tendrils, not the black, reach¬ing claws of death but the fingers of soft, nurturing hands, as Lady Porcu¬pine struggled to soothe the only living being she had ever truly loved.
The day was cold and gray, seasoned with drifts of rain, and although the doors to Effir dan-Mozan's front room were open to the courtyard as usual, a large brazier had been lit to provide warmth. As Briony came in the mer¬chant was bending forward-not an easy task over his rich-man's belly- and warming his small, beringed hands at the coals.
"Ah, Briony-zisaya," he said. "You have not left your meal too soon? I did not want to interrupt you."
"I was finished, Master dan… Effir. Thank you. The servant said you and Shaso wished to speak with me."
"Yes, but Lord dan-Heza is not here yet. Please, make yourself comfort¬able." He gestured to one of the chairs arranged in a semicircle around the brazier. "It is a filthy day but I cannot bear to have the doors closed." He laughed. "I like to see the sky When I look at it, I might be at home." The smile soured a little. "Well, not today. We do not have skies like this in Tuan. When the rains come, we go to our temples and give thanks. Here, I should suspect it is the reverse."
Briony smiled. "I have never seen a house like this one, so low, with the garden in the center. Do people live like this in Tuan?"
"More or less. The nicer houses, yes. Although I wish I could have shown you my family home in Dagardar. Much larger, much more finely furnished- until it was pillaged and then burned by the old autarch's soldiers. Still, I can¬not complain. The March Kingdoms have been good to an exile."
"It is still a very nice house."
"You are kind. What you politely do not ask is why a rich man would dwell in such an unsalubrious part of Landers Port."
She colored a little. She had wondered just that many times. "They do seem to have better… views from higher up on the hill."
"Ah, yes, Princess. And they are jealous of them, too. A man like me can build himself a fine house here among the other dark-skinned folk and no one is too upset. But I promise you that were I to have built it somewhere that a lord like Iomer M'Sivon or the native merchant-folk had to look on
me and my home every day, I would soon find that neighborhood even less pleasant than this one." His smile had a bit of a twist to it. "The important thing in this life is to know not just who you are but where you are."
Shaso came in, dressed as though he had been outside, his face hidden by scarf and drooping hat. He shook the rain off his cloak and draped it across a chair. Effir dan-Mozan did not look pleased to have water sprin kled across his carpeted floors.
Shaso took off his hat and sat down. "A ship came in from Hierosol," he said by way of explanation. "The sailors were drinking. And talking. I was listening."
"And what did you learn, Lord?" asked Effir, who had regained his equa¬nimity.
"Hierosol is preparing. Several dromons-that is what they call their war¬ships, Princess-that were awaiting repairs are being rushed through dry-dock. Drakava has also called back his captains, who were punishing reluctant taxpayers along the Kracian border. He seems to expect a siege."
"And my father?"
Shaso shook his head. "These tidings come from sailors, Highness. They know little and care less about politics or prisoners. No news, as they say, is doubtless good news. The only concern is what will happen when Drakava realizes he will get no ransom out of Southmarch now."
"What do you mean?" she said hotly, then realized a moment later that Shaso was right: the last thing Hendon Tolly wanted now was for King Olin to return. "Oh, those… swine! Will Ludis Drakava hurt him?"
"I cannot imagine he would." Shaso shook his head but wouldn't meet her eye. He was unpracticed at deception and did not do it well. "There is nothing to gain from it and much to lose-like any chance of help from the northern countries if he is attacked by Xis."
As if sensing Briony's doubt and fear, Effir suddenly clapped his hands. "Come, let us have something hot to drink! A chilly day like this gets into your bones if you are not careful. Tal! Ah, no, wait, he is not at home today-off on some errand of his own." He clapped again, and at last one of his older and more doddering servitors meandered in. When the ancient had been dispatched for mulled wine, Effir rubbed his hands and began talking, perhaps making sure the conversation did not wander back onto the uncertain ground of a few moments earlier. "We brought you here be¬cause the time has come to make plans, Princess."
"What plans?"
"Just so, just so." Effr turned to Shaso. "My lord?"
"You and I cannot stay here forever," the old Tuani said. "You have told me so yourself, Highness."
"Where will we go?" Her heart seemed to swell and grow lighter. "To my father?"
"No." The scowl turned his face into a mask. "No and no, Briony. I have told you, there is little we could do for him, and it would be even worse foolishness now that the autarch seems to be considering an attack on Hier-osol. What we need are allies, but there are very few people we can trust."
"Surely there must be someone left who believes in honor." Briony balled her fists. "By the holy Trigon, will they all simply stand by and see our throne stolen? What about Brenland, or Settland-we've sent help to them more times than I can count!"
"Your fellow rulers will do what suits them-and their people. I would advise you no differently myself." He raised a hand to forestall her indig¬nant objection. "That is not so bad as it sounds, Highness. Any alliances we can make will be more straightforward if we do not clutter them with ideas like 'honor. As long as we can bring our new ally some benefit, he will re¬main our ally-a simple, clean arrangement. And things are not so helpless as I may have painted them earlier. We do not necessarily need an entire army to reclaim Southmarch. All we need is enough strength to prevent Tolly getting his hands on you and killing you outright or pronouncing you an impostor-we could get by with a fairly small force. Then, if we can avoid being overwhelmed immediately, we will be able to reveal you to the people of Southmarch and denounce the Tollys as murderers and usurpers. That is the first step."
Briony frowned. "Why is that only the first step? Surely if we could en¬gineer such a thing that would solve the whole problem."
Shaso clicked his tongue at her. "Think, Highness! Do you believe that even if he is revealed as the worst sort of usurper, Hendon Tolly will sim¬ply surrender? No. He and his brother Caradon will know they must hold what they have stolen or die on a traitor's gibbet. Hendon will go to ground in Southmarch like a badger in a hole and Caradon will reinforce him. Anyone trying to force Hendon out will find himself trapped between the castle walls and the army of Summerfield."
"So we don't need an army, but we need an army? You're not making sense."
"Think on it carefully, Highness," Shaso told her.
She hated it when her elders talkechhat way. What it meant was, I al-ready know the answer because I'm grown and I know things, but you need to learn how to think, and then you can be wise and wonderful like me. "I don't know."
"What is our true need-no more, no less?"
Effir dan-Mozan, meanwhile, was watching the exchange with bright-eyed interest, as though he were a spectator at some particularly fascinating contest. That reminded Briony of something. "What is it my father always says when he's playing King's Square?" she asked Shaso. "Something from one of those old philosophers, I think."
"Ah, yes. 'Errors of caution are more likely to be considered at leisure than er¬rors of boldness-but less likely to be considered after a victory. In other words, if you are too careful, you are more likely to live, but less likely to win. It is one of his favorite epigrams-and one of the reasons I admire him."
"It is?" She was so pleased to hear someone, especially Shaso, talk about her father as a living person instead of as though he were already dead that she forgave the old man his lecturing ways.
"Yes. He is one of the most thoughtful men I have ever met, but he is not afraid to move swiftly and boldly when necessary-to take risks. It is how he beat me at Hierosol, you know."
"Tell me."
"Not now. We need to consider our present situation, not review ancient battles." Was that the hint of a smile? "Now think. What do we truly need?"
"To do something bold, I suppose. To get our castle back."
"Yes, and you will only get it with the Tollys out, or dead. But as I said, we do not necessarily need an army. We can raise that from the March Kingdoms and even within the walls of Southmarch itself, if we can keep you alive long enough."
"So we need an ally with at least a small force of soldiers." She thought. "But who? You've said we don't know who to trust."
"We must make trust-we must find an ally who wants to bargain with us. And we must do something bold to find that ally. Hendon has no doubt filled the roads to Brenland and Settland with spies and assassins. I do not doubt he has people in the courts of all the March Kingdoms as well, prob¬ably under the guise of being emissaries from the court of the infant prince."
"I'm going to kill him."
"Beware your own anger, Highness. But I think we must make a move
Hendon docs not suspect. As I said, I doubt any of your fellow rulers will do something for you out of the good of their hearts.
"Syan is our best hope, I think. To begin with, King Enander has no love for Summerfield Court, going back to the days when Lindon Tolly, the old duke, was trying to marry his sister to your father. When your father chose your mother instead, Lindon was so determined to build a link to the throne of the March Kingdoms that he snubbed one of King Enander's own nephews and married his sister Ethna to your father's younger brother, Hardis…"
Briony shook her head. "Gods give us strength, you remember more of this family lore than I do."
Shaso gave her a stern look. "This is not 'family lore, as you know very well-this is the stuff of alliances… and betrayals." He frowned, thinking. "In any case, Enander of Syan might be sympathetic to your cause-he has never quite forgiven the Tollys-but he will exact a price."
"A price? What sort of price? By the gods, does the Treaty of Coldgray Moor mean nothing? Anglin saved them all, and Syan and the others prom¬ised they would always come to our aid." She bit back several unladylike words: Shaso had heard her worst while training her, but she felt shy about cursing in front of Effir dan-Mozan. "Besides, until we take Southmarch back we have nothing to give these greedy people…"
"Enander of Syan is not particularly greedy, but that treaty is centuries old, however much it is revered in the March Kingdoms. It could be he will settle for gold when we have your throne back, but I believe he also has a marriageable son, who is said to be a goodly man…"
"So I must sell myself to get my throne back?" She felt so hot in the face that she pushed herself back from the brazier. "I might as well marry Ludis Drakava!"
"I think you would find the Syannese prince a much more pleasant hus¬band, but let us hope there is some other way." Shaso frowned, then nod¬ded. "In fact, if you will excuse us, Highness, perhaps Effir and I can begin inquiries in Syan. Whatever we do, it should be soon."
Briony stood, angry and miserable but struggling not to show it. "I will marry to save my family's throne, of course… if it is the only way."
"I understand, Highness." Shaso looked at her with what could almost pass for fatherly fondness, if she had not known the old man to avoid it like an itching rash. "I will not sell your freedom if I can avoid it, having fought so hard in my life to keep my own."
Sad and confused, Briony had more than her usual small share of the sweet wine that Idite and the others liked so much. As a result, when she woke in the dark her head was heavy and it took long moments to make sense of where she was, much less what was going on.
One of the younger girls, wrapped head to toe in a blanket so that she looked like a desert nomad, was standing in the doorway.
"Mistress Idite, there are men at the gate, demanding to be let in!" she cried. "Your husband the Dan-Mozan, he is arguing with them, but they say they will break it down if he does not let them in!"
"By the Great Mother, who are they? Robbers?" Idite, although obvi¬ously frightened, was keeping her voice almost as level as she did during their evenings of storytelling.
The girl in the doorway swayed. "They say they are Baron Iomer's men. They say we are harboring a dangerous fugitive!"
Briony, who had just clambered out of bed, went wobbly in the knees and almost tumbled to the floor. A fugitive-who else could that be but her¬self? And Shaso, too, she remembered. He would still be called a murderer.
"Dress, girls-all of you." Idite raised her voice in an attempt to quiet the frightened murmuring. "We must be prepared for trouble, and at the very least we must be decently dressed if strangers burst in."
Briony was not so much concerned with being decent as being able to defend herself. She hesitated for only a moment before pulling on the loose tunic and breeches borrowed from Effir's nephew, then grabbed the one pair of practical shoes Idite had given her, leather slippers that would at least allow her to run or fight if she had to. She tucked her Yisti knives into the cloth belt of the tunic and then pulled her robe around herself to hide the male clothing and the knives, giving herself at least a chance to blend in with the other women.
As the sound of raised, angry voices came echoing through the house, Briony saw that Idite intended to keep the women hidden in the hopes that everything would be happily resolved without them ever having to come into contact with the baron's men. Briony was not willing to pas¬sively await her doom. The women's chambers had few exits, and if things turned bad she would be trapped like a rat in a barrel.
She pushed past young Fanu, who grabbed ineffectually at her arm as Briony stepped out into the corridor.
"Come back!" Idite shouted. "Br… Lady!"
As she ran toward the front of the hadar, Briony silently thanked Idite for having the good sense not to call out her name. The hallways were full of clamorous voices and flickering light, and for a dizzying moment it was as though she had stumbled into some eddy of time, as if she had circled back to the terrible night in the residence when Kendrick had been murdered.
She staggered a little as she reached the main chamber, stopping to steady herself on the doorframe. The smoke was thick here and the voices louder, men's harsh voices arguing. She peered into the weirdly crowded chamber and saw at least a dozen men in armor were shoving and shout¬ing at perhaps half that number of Effir dan-Mozan's robed servants, bel¬lowing at them as though they could force the men to understand an unfamiliar language by sheer force. Several robed bodies already lay on the floor at the soldiers' feet.
As Briony stared in horror, trying to see if one of them was Shaso, an armor-clad man kicked over a brazier, scattering burning coals everywhere. The barefooted servants shrieked and capered to avoid them even as they cringed from the soldiers' weapons.
"If you won't talk," shouted one bearded soldier, "we'll burn out this en¬tire nest of traitors!" He stooped and lifted a torch that had been smolder¬ing on an expensive carpet and held it to one of the wall-hangings. The servants moaned and wailed as the flames shimmered up the ancient hang¬ing and began licking at the wooden rafters.
Briony was digging beneath her robe for her knife, although she had no idea what she could do, when someone grabbed the belt of her robe and yanked her away from the door, back into the corridor.
Her heart plunged-trapped! Caught without even a weapon ready to fight back! But it was not another of the baron's soldiers.
"What are you doing?" hissed Effir's nephew Talibo. "I have looked everywhere for you! Why did you leave the women's quarters?" He grabbed at her arm before she could answer and began to drag her away down the hallway toward the back of the house.
"Let go of me! Didn't you see-they're killing the servants!"
"That is what servants are for, stupid woman!" The hall was rapidly fill¬ing with smoke; after only a few steps he doubled up coughing, but before she could pull away he recovered his breath and began tugging at her again.
"No!" She managed to wrench her arm free. "I have to find Shaso!"
"You fool, who do you think sent me?" Tal's face was so suffused with
both rage and fear that it looked as though he might burst into tears or sim-ply rip into pieces."The house is full of soldiers. He wants me to hide you,"
"Where is he?" She hesitated, but the shrieks of unarmed men being slaughtered like barnyard animals behind her were terrifying.
"He will come to you, I am sure-hurry! The soldiers must not find you!"
She allowed herself to be drawn away up the corridor. Almost as terri¬fying as the servants' screams was the low, hungry roar of the spreading lire.
She pulled away from him again as they reached the part of the residence across the garden from the main chamber. "What of your aunt and the other women?"
"The servants will lead them out! Curse you, girl, do you never do what you are told? Shaso is waiting for you!" He stepped behind her and grabbed both her elbows, shoving her forward at an awkward stumble, another dozen steps down the corridor and then out a door into the open yard at the back of the house, site of the donkey stables, the vegetable garden, and the kitchen midden. He pushed her toward the stable and had almost forced her through the doorway when she threw out her arms and caught herself. She stepped to the side so the front wall and not the open door was behind her, and put her hand into her robe.
"What are you doing?" Talibo was almost screaming, his handsome, slightly childish face as exaggerated as a festival mask. Briony could see flames now on top of the house, greedily at work in the roof. On the far side of Effir dan-Mozan's walls, torches and lanterns were being lit in the surrounding houses as the neighborhood woke up to the terror in their midst.
"You said Shaso was waiting for me. But first you said he would come to meet me. Where is he? I think you are lying."
He looked at her with a strange, wounded fury, as though she had gone out of her way to spoil some pleasant surprise he had planned for her. "Ah? Do you think so?"
"Yes, I do. I think…" But she did not finish because Talibo put both hands on her breasts and shoved her, bouncing her off the wall and into the doorway, then pushed her again, sending her stumbling backward to fall down in the mire of the stable.
"Close your mouth, whore!" he shouted. "Do what you are told! I will be back!"
But even as he scrambled for the door, Briony was sliding across the damp ground toward him. She grabbed at his leg and pulled herself upright, and when he turned, she shoved herself against him, forcing him back against the rough wattle of the stable wall, and pressed the curved blade of the Yisti knife against his throat. Close enough to kiss, Shaso had taught her, close enough to kill.
"You will never touch me again, do you hear?" she breathed into his face. "And you will tell me everything Shaso said to you, everything that has happened and that you saw. If you lie I will slash your throat and leave you to bleed to death right here in the shit and the mud."
Tal's long-lashed eyes widened. He had gone pale, she could see that even in the dim light of the single candle that someone had lit here in the stable-in preparation for her arrival? — and when he sagged Briony let her own muscles go a little slack. Where was Shaso? Was Effir's nephew really lying? How could they escape with soldiers everywhere-and how had the soldiers found out…?
Talibo's hand was open, but his sudden blow to her face was still so hard and so unexpected that Briony flew backward, her knife spinning away into the darkness. For a moment she could do nothing but gasp in help¬less anger and gurgle as blood filled her mouth. She spat, and spat again, but every drop in her body seemed to be streaming from her nose and lips. She scrabbled for the lost knife as the merchant's nephew approached but it was beyond her reach, beyond her sight-lost, just as she was…
"Bitch," he snarled. "She-demon. Put a knife to my throat. I should… I will…" He spat at her feet. "You will spend a month begging me to for¬give you for that-a year!"
She tried to say something, but it felt as though her jaw had been bro¬ken and she could only murmur and spit blood again. She slid her hand down her leg and reached into her boot, but the sheath was empty-the other dagger had fallen out somewhere during the scuffle. Her gut went cold. She had no weapon.
"Shaso, your mighty Shaso, he is dead," said Talibo. "I saw the soldiers kill him-surrounded him like a wild pig, spearing, spearing. I told them where to find him, of course."
She coughed, rubbed at her broken mouth with the back of her hand. "Y-You…?"
"And my uncle, too. Him I did myself. He will never again call me names-spoiled, lazy. Ha! He will rot in the shadows of the land of the dead and I will be the master here. My ships, my merchants, my house…!"
You betrayed…?" It hurt to speak, but the thought of Shaso murdered blazed in her like a tire, like one of the coals that had bounced across Effir dan-Mozan's chamber floor only moments ago, lifetimes ago, lt couldn't be true-the gods could not be so cruel! "Betrayed us… all?"
"Not you, bitch, although now I wish I had. But I will keep you for my own and you will learn to treat me with respect." Panting, he took a few steps toward her and leaned over, keeping well out of reach, even though she had lost the curved blade. Briony took a certain grim pleasure in that, anyway: he craved respect, but it was he, Talibo the traitor, who had learned to respect her. His face was ridiculously young for the emotions that played across it in the candlelight, greed and lust and exultation in his own cru¬elty. "And if you had been a proper woman you would have been safe here until it was all over. Now, I will have to break you like a horse. I will teach you to behave…!"
Briony hooked his ankle with her foot, sending him crashing to the ground. Instead of running away, she threw herself onto him even as he thrashed on the slippery ground, struggling to get his feet under him. She knocked him back but he curled his hands around her throat. Something hard was pressing painfully into her back, but she scarcely noticed it. The merchant's nephew was slender but strong-stronger than she was-and within instants, as his fingers tightened, the light of the single candle began to waver, then to burst into flowers of radiance like the fireworks that had scorched the sky over Southmarch to celebrate her father's marriage to Anissa. Her hand found the thing that was digging into her back.
Talibo's grip was so powerful that it did not slacken immediately even after she had pulled the second, smaller Yisti dagger out from underneath her and rammed it up under his jaw with all her might. Talibo straightened, shuddering and wriggling like an eel in the bottom of a fisherman's boat, so that for a moment it seemed his death throes might break her in half, then at last his hands fell away.
She lay where she was for a long time, fighting for breath, coughing and sputtering. When at last her throat seemed to be open again she stood up. Swaying, legs trembling, she bent over the merchant's nephew cautiously, in case he might be shamming, but he was dead: he did not even twitch when she pulled the blade out of his throat, freeing a gush of dark blood. She spat on his handsome, youthful face-a gob that was red with her own blood- and then turned and went to look for her other knife.
When she emerged from the stable Effir dan-Mozan's entire house was
in flames. Briony stared for long empty moments, as if she had turned to stone, then she limped across the open yard into the shadows by the wall. She found a place she could mount and climbed with quivering, exhausted muscles over the top, then she let herself drop into the cool, stinking dark¬ness of a refuse heap.
When morning came, Briony found a bucket of icy water and did her best to wash the blood from her throbbing, aching face, then pulled her robe tight around her boy's clothes-the clothes of the boy whom she had killed, she reflected with little emotion. She dragged her hood down low and joined the crowd that had gathered outside the smoldering remains of Effir dan Mozan's house. Some of the baron's soldiers were still standing guard over the ruins, so she did not dare go too close, and many of the crowd spoke Xandian languages, since this was the poorest part of Landers Port, but she heard enough to learn that the women of the house, at least, had managed to escape, and were sheltering with one of the other well-known Tuani families. She thought briefly of going to Idite, but knew it was a foolish idea: they had lost everything because of her already-why put them in danger again? Nobody seemed to know for certain exactly what had happened, but many had heard that some important criminal had been captured or killed, that Dan-Mozan had been harboring him and had died trying to defend his secret.
Only one male member of the household had lived to escape. For a mo¬ment, hearing that, Briony felt a rush of hope, but then someone pointed out the survivor-a small, bowed old servant that she recognized but whose name she did not remember. He stood apart from the others, staring at the smoking, blackened timbers of what had been his home. Alone in the crowd, he looked the way Briony imagined she did beneath her hood, shocked, confused, empty.
There was nothing here for her anymore except danger and quite pos¬sibly death. The baron's men did not seem to have tried very hard to take Shaso alive, and he had been nowhere near as dangerous to the Tollys as she was. Briony felt certain that Hendon Tolly's hand was somewhere in all this-why else would Iomer, a man who cared little for politics, have struck in such a swift and deadly way?
She screwed up her courage and joined the crowd of people walking out the city gates for the day and stared at the ground as she walked, meeting no one's eye. It seemed to work: she was not challenged, and within an hour
sne was alone on the cliff road below Landers Port, Briony walked until she reached a place where the woods were thick beside the road, then slaggered off into the trees. She found a hidden spot surrounded by undergrowth and curled herself up in the wet leaves at the base of a mostly naked oak, well out of sight of the road, and then wept until she fell asleep.
1 7 Bastard Gods
Zmeos, brother of Khors, knew that Zona's father and her uncles would
come against their clan, so he raised an army and lay in wait for them.
But Zosim the Clever flew to Perin in the form of a starling and told
the great god that Zmeos and Khors and Zuriyal had laid a trap, so
Perin and his brothers called out the loyal gods of heaven. Together they
descended upon the Moonlord's castle in a mighty host.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
FERRAS VANSEN AND HIS COMPANIONS were not the beak-faced Longskulls' only prisoners, as they discovered when they reached the creatures' camp after an exhausting trudge through the dark woods. The Longskulls seemed almost uninterested in them, despite the dozen or so of their number Vansen and the others had killed, most of them victims of the Storm Lantern's blade. If a prisoner strayed out of the line one of the snouted warders honked at him or even jabbed at exposed skin with a sharpened stick, but otherwise left them alone.
Despite being our ally, Gyir has shown more hatred toward me and the other mortals than these things do toward us, Vansen thought. Why did they take us if they care so little about us?
He quietly asked Barrick about it. The prince asked Gyir and passed on his words: "The Longskulls are more like animals than people, as we would see it. They are doing what they are trained to do, no more. If we hurt one
it may well Hurt us in return, but otherwise they are taught only to bring
us back to their master." Their master was Jikuyin, the one the raven had called Jack Chain-a disturbing name then, even more ominous now.
"What does this Chain want with us?"
Barrick paused, listening again, then shrugged. Gyir's eyes were red slits, "He says we will not know until they bring us to him," Barrick said. "But we will not like it."
The Longskulls' hunting camp looked like something out of an ancient Hierosoline temple-carving-the antechamber of the underworld, perhaps, or the midden heap of the gods. Certainly there seemed to be at least one of every misshapen creature Ferras Vansen could have imagined in his wildest night-terrors-squint-eyed, sharp-toothed goblins; apish Followers; and even tiny, misshapen men called Drows that looked like ill-made Fun-derlings. There was also an entire menagerie of animal-headed creatures with disturbingly manlike bodies, things that crawled and things that stood upright, even some that crouched in the shadows singing sad songs and weeping what looked to be tears of blood. Vansen could not help shiver¬ing, as much to see the misery of his fellow prisoners as their strangeness. Many had their arms or legs shackled, some their wings cruelly tied, a few with no more restraint than a leather sack over their heads, as though noth¬ing else was needed to keep them from escaping.
"Perin's great hammer!" he whispered hoarsely. "What are all these horrors?"
"Shadlowlanders," Barrick told him, then, after cocking his head toward Gyir for a moment, "Slaves."
"Slaves to what? Who is this Jack Chain?"
Gyir, who could understand Vansen even though he could not speak to him directly, bleakly spread his long-fingered hands as if trying to demon¬strate something of improbable size and power, but then shook his head and let his hands drop.
"A god, he calls him," said the prince. "No, a god's bastard. A bastard god." Barrick let his head droop. "I do not know-I can't remember every¬thing he said. I'm tired."
They were shoved off to a place in the center of the camp by themselves, for which Vansen was as grateful as he could be under the circumstances, and where they huddled under a sky the color of wet stone. Vansen and Barrick sat close to each other on the damp, leaf-carpeted ground, for the
warmth and-at least in Vansen's case-the human companionship. The weird army of prisoners that surrounded them, dozens and dozens all told, seemed strangely quiet: only an occasional bleating noise or a spatter of un¬familiar, clicking speech broke the silence. Vansen could not help noticing that they behaved like animals who sensed that the hour for slaughter had come round.
He leaned close to the prince's ear. "We must escape, Highness. And when we do, we must try to make our way back to mortal men's country again. If we stay any longer in this never-ending evening, surrounded by godless things like these, we shall go mad."
Barrick sighed. "You shall, perhaps. I think I went mad a long time ago, Captain."
"Don't say such things, Highness…"
"Please!" The prince turned on him, his weariness forgotten for a mo¬ment. "Spare me these… pleasant little thoughts, Captain. 'Should not… - as though I might bring something bad down on myself. Look at me, Vansen! Why do you think I am here? Why do you think I came with the army in the first place? Because there is a canker in my brain and it is eat¬ing me alive!"
"What… what do you mean?"
"Never mind. It is not your fault. I could have wished you would have made a busybody of yourself somewhere else, though." Barrick lifted his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them.
"Do you know why I followed you, Highness?" The bleak surroundings seemed to be getting into Vansen's blood and his thoughts like a cold fog. Soon I shall be as mournful and mad as this prince. "Because your sister asked me-no, begged me to do so. She begged me to keep you safe."
Now Barrick showed fire again. "What, does she think I am helpless? A child?"
"No. She loves you, Prince Barrick, whether you love yourself or not." He swallowed. "And you are all she has left, I suppose."
"What do you know of it-a mere soldier?" Barrick looked as though he wanted to hit him, despite the shackles on his arms. Gyir, sitting a few paces away, turned to watch them.
"Nothing, Highness. I know nothing of what it is like to be a prince, or to suffer because of it. But I do know what it is like to lose a father and others of my blood. Of five other children in our family, I have only two sisters left now, and my mother and father both are years in the grave. I have
lost friends among the guard as well, one of them swallowed by a demon beast in these lands the first time I came here. I know enough about it to say that sometimes carelessness with your own life is selfishness."
Barrick seemed startled now, both angry and darkly amused. "Are you calling me selfish?"
"At your age, Highness, you would be odd if you were not. But I saw your sister before we rode out, saw her face as she begged me to keep you safe and told me what it would mean to her if she lost you too. You call me 'a mere soldier, Prince Barrick, but I would be the lowest sort of villain in¬deed if I did not urge you to take care of yourself, if only for her sake. That is no burden, from where I see it-it is a mighty and honorable charge."
Barrick was silent for a long moment, anger and amusement both gone, absorbed into one of his inscrutable, cold-faced stares. "You care for her," he said suddenly. "Don't you, Vansen? Tell me the truth."
Ferras realized that even here in the dark heart of the Twilight Lands, on the way to what was almost certain death, he was blushing. "Of course I do, Highness. She is… you are both my sovereigns."
"Back home I could have you whipped for avoiding my question like that, Vansen. If I asked you whether we were being invaded, would you say, "Well, we'll have more guests than we usually do at this time of the year?"
Vansen gaped, then laughed despite himself, something he had not done for so long that it was almost painful. Gyir twisted his featureless face in a way that might almost have been a frown, then turned away from them. "But, Highness, even… even if it were so, how could I speak of such a thing? Your sister!" He felt his own face grow stern. "But I can tell you this-I would give my life for her without hesitation."
"Ah." Barrick looked up. "They are going to feed us, it seems."
"Pardon?"
The prince gestured with his good arm. "See, they are carrying around some kind of bucket. I'm sure it will be something rare and splendid." He scowled and suddenly seemed little more than a youth of fourteen or fif¬teen summers again. "You realize, of course, that there isn't a chance in the world it will ever come to anything?"
"What?"
"Stop pretending to be stupid, Captain. You know what I mean."
Vansen took a breath. "Of course I do."
"You like lost causes, don't you? And thankless favors? I saw you help that disgusting bird to escape, as well." Barrick smiled at him. It was quite
nearly kind."I see I'm not the only one who has learned to live with hope¬lessness. It makes an unsatisfying fare, doesn't it? But after a while, you begin to take a sort of pride in it." He looked up again. "And speaking of unsat¬isfying fare, here come our hosts."
Two Longskulls stood over them, appearing to Vansen like nothing so much as gigantic grasshoppers, although there was something weirdly dog¬like about them, too. Their legs were similar to men's, but the back of the foot and the heel were long and did not touch the ground, so that they perched on the front of their feet like upright rats. The eyes sunk deep in their loaf-shaped, bony heads did not exactly glisten with intelligence, but it was obvious they were not mere beasts, either. One made a little honk¬ing, gabbling noise and ladled something out of the bucket the other was holding. It pointed at Vansen's hands, then honked again.
/ am living in a world of firelight tales, Vansen thought suddenly, remem¬bering his father's old sea stories and his mother's accounts of the fairies that lived in the hills. We are captives in some unhappy child's dream.
He held out his arms, showing the guards his shackles. "I cannot hold anything," he said. The LongskuU merely turned the ladle upside down and let the mass of cold pottage drop into his hands. It did the same for Bar-rick, then moved on to the next group.
In the end, he found he could eat only by bracing the heavy shackles on the ground, then crouching over his own outstretched hands, lapping up the tasteless vegetable pulp like a dog eating from a bowl.
When all the prisoners had been fed the watery pottage, the LongskuU guards returned to the fire to eat their own food, which had been roasting on spits. Vansen could not see what they ate, but when the prisoners were hauled to their feet a short time later and set to marching again, he noticed the Longskulls hanging some empty shackles back on the massive wagon that held the slavers' simple belongings, and where they swung, clinking, as the wagon began to roll.
If Barrick had thought the Twilight Lands oppressive before, every mis¬erable step of the forced march now seemed to take him into deeper and deeper gloom. It wasn't simply that the pall of smoke they thought they had escaped grew thicker above them with every step, turning the land dark as midnight and making breathing a misery, or even the dull horror of their
predicament. No something even beyond these things was afflicting him, although liarrick could not say exactly what it was. Every step they look, even when they reached an old road and the going became easier, seemed to plunge them deeper into a queer malevolence he could feel in his very bones.
He asked Gyir about it. The fairy-warrior, who seemed almost as de¬spondent as his companions, said, Yes, I feel it, even despite the blindness my wounds have caused, but I do not know what causes it.Jikuyin is the source of some of it-but not all.
Barrick was struck by a thought. Will this blindness of yours get better? Will the illness or whatever it is leave you?
I do not know. It has never before happened to me. Gyir made a sign with his long, graceful fingers that Barrick did not recognize. In any case, I truthfully do not think we will live long enough to find out.
Why are we prisoners? Is fikuyin at war with your king?
Only in that he does not bow to him. Only in that fikuyin is old and cruel and our king is less cruel. But we are prisoners, I think, only because we were captured. Look at those around us… He gestured to the slow-stepping band of pris¬oners on either side and stretching before and behind them farther than Barrick could throw a stone. We may be rare things here, Gyir told him in his Wordless way, but these others are as common as the trees and stones. No, we are all being taken to the same place, but the more I consider, the less I think it is be¬cause we were singled out. He opened his eyes wide, something Barrick had come to recognize as a sign of determination. But I think these creatures' mas¬ter will take notice of us when he sees us. If nothing else, he will wonder what mor¬tals are doing again in his lands.
Again? I have never heard of him.
Jikuyin first made this place his own long, long before mortals roamed this coun¬try and built Northmarch, but he was injured in a great battle, and so after the Years of Blood he slept for a long time, healing his wounds. His name was lost to most memories, except for a few old stories. We drove the mortals out of Northmarch be¬fore he returned. That was only a very short time ago by our count. After they had fled we called down the Mantle to keep your kind away thereafter, banishing them from these lands for good and all.
Why did you do that?
Why? Because you would have come creeping back into our country from all sides as you did before, like maggots! Gyir narrowed his eyes, making crimson slits. You had already killed most oj us and stolen our ancient lands!
Not me, Barrick told him. My kind, yes. But not me.
Gyir stared, then turned away. Your pardon. I forgot to whom I spoke.
The procession was just emerging from between two hills and into a shallow valley and a great stony shadow across the road-an immense, ru¬ined gate.
"By The Holy Book of the Trigon!" Barrick breathed.
No oaths like that-not here, Gyir warned him sharply.
But… what is this?
The column of prisoners had shuffled to a weary halt. Those who still had the strength stared up at two massive pillars which flanked the road, lumps of vine-netted gray stone that despite being broken still loomed taller than the trees. Even the smaller lintel that stretched above their heads was as long as a tithing barn. Huge, overgrown walls, half standing, half tumbled, hemmed the crumbling gate like the wings of some god's headdress.
It is worse than I feared. The fairy's thoughts were suddenly faint as a su¬perstitious whisper, hard for Barrick to grasp. Jikuyin has left his lair in North-march and made himself a new home… in Greatdeeps itself. This is its outer gate.
"What is this new misery?" Ferras Vansen was clearly feeling the strange¬ness of the place too, not just its size and immense age but even the hidden something that pressed ever more intrusively into Barrick's mind like cold, heavy fingers.
"Gyir says it was something called Greatdeeps, or at least the first gate."
"Greatdeeps?" Vansen frowned. "I think I know that name. From when I was a child…"
The Longskulls came hissing angrily down the line, poking and prod¬ding, and at last even the most reluctant prisoners let themselves be driven under the massive lintel. It was carved with strange, inhuman faces that looked down on them as they passed-some with too few eyes, some with too many, none of them pleasant to see.
What lay beyond was equally disturbing. The wide, broken-cobbled road dipped down into a valley that lay almost hidden beneath a thick cloud of smoky fog as it wound between two rows of huge stone sculptures. Some of the stonework portrayed ordinary things cast in giant size, like anvils big as houses or hammers and other tools that a dozen mortals together could never have lifted. Other shapes were not quite so recognizable, queer rep¬resentations of machinery Barrick had never seen and the uses of which he could not even guess. All the statues were old, cracked by wind and rain and
the work of creepers and other plants. Many had fallen and been partially buried by dirt and leaves, so that the impression was that monstrous citizens who had once dwelled here had simply packed up one night and left, al¬lowing the mighty road to fall to ruin after they were gone.
Despite the apparent emptiness, or perhaps because of it, Barrick's sense of oppression grew as they trudged forward. Even the Longskull guards grew quiet, their gabbling little more than a murmur as they moved up and down the line of prisoners, goading them forward.
What is this place? he asked Gyir. What is Greatdeeps?
The place where the gods first broke the earth, searching…
A tennight before this Barrick had not quite believed in the gods. Now, in a place like this, the mere word set his heart racing, brought clammy sweat to his skin. Searching for what?
Gyir shook his head. The weight that Barrick felt, the despairing thickness that seemed to lie on him like a net made of lead, seemed to weigh on the fairy even more heavily. Gyir's head was bowed, his back bent. He walked like a man approaching the gallows, struggling to get the smoky air in and out of his lungs. The fairy's thoughts were heavy, too, like stones-it made Barrick weary just to receive them. I cannot… speak to you now, Gyir told him. I must understand what all this means, why… I must think…
Barrick turned to Ferras Vansen. "You said you thought you remem¬bered, Captain. Do you know anything of this Greatdeeps?"
"A memory, and only a faint one. Something-a story we children told to frighten each other when I was young, I think…" He frowned miser¬ably. "I cannot summon it. What does the fairy say?"
Barrick glanced quickly at the fairy, then back to Vansen. "Something about the gods breaking the earth here, but I can make little sense of it and he won't say more." The prince rubbed at his face as if he could scour away the discomfort. "But it is a bad place. Can you feel it?"
Vansen nodded. "A heaviness, as if the air was poisoned-and by more than smoke. No, not poisoned, but bad, somehow, as you say-thick and unpleasant. It makes my heart quail, Highness, to speak the truth."
"I'm glad it's not just me," Barrick said. "Or perhaps I'm not. What will happen to us? Where do you think we're being taken?"
"We shall find that out sooner than we want to, I think. What we should consider instead is how we might get away."
Barrick held up the shackles, which although not too large for an ordinary person his size, were cruelly heavy on his bad arm. "Do you have chisel? If so, I think we'd have something to talk about."
"They haven't tied our feet, Highness," the soldier said."We can run, and worry about freeing our arms later."
"Really? Just look at them." Barrick gestured to the nearest pair of Longskulls pacing the line with their strange, springy gait. "1 don't think we'll outrun those, even without our legs shackled."
"Still, The Book of the Trigon bids us to live in hope, Prince Barrick." Vansen looked curiously solemn as he said it-or maybe it was not so cu¬rious, under the circumstances. "Pray to the blessed oniri to speak for us in heaven-the gods may yet find a way to save us."
"Speaking frankly," Barrick said, "just at the moment, it is the gods themselves I fear most."
The prince seemed a little more like his ordinary self again, which was the only hopeful thing Vansen had seen all day. Perhaps it was because Gyir the Storm Lantern had almost stopped talking to him.
Judging by the usual run of his luck and mine, he'll come back to himself just in time to be executed by our captors, Vansen thought with bleak amusement. At least I'll probably be killed, too. Anything would be better than to face Barrick's sis¬ter with news of her brother's death.
Where is she? he suddenly wondered. In the castle, perhaps under siege? There's no chance that Gyir's people would have beaten us so badly and then fust stopped in the fields outside the city… He felt a moment of terror, worse than anything he had felt for himself, at the idea of Princess Briony being threat¬ened by monstrous creatures like these, perhaps a prisoner herself. He could not let the thought run free in his head-it was too horrible. Perhaps sin-fled, along with her advisers. Wherever she is, Perin grant she is safe. And who was it the princess herself had sworn by so often? Zoria-Perin's merciful daugh¬ter. He had never thought to pray to the virgin deity before, but now he did his best to summon the memory of her kind, pale face. Yes, blessed Zoria, put your hand on her and keep her from harm.
Does Briony ever think of us? Of course, she must think of her brother all the time-but does she think of me at all? Does she even remember my name?
He forced such foolishness away. If there was anything more pitiable lhan mooning after an unobtainable princess, a young woman as high above him
as the gods were above humanity, it was mooning white they were captives in the Twilight Lands, being marched toward the Three Brothers only knew what doom.
You think too much, Terras Vansen. That's what old Murray told you, and he was right.
The sprawling avenue of broken stones and gigantic leaning statues had become even more desolate as they marched on, most of the plinths empty, the stones themselves few and far between, as though scavengers had carried them away. Even the trees had been cleared here; the valley floor, sloping up on either side, seemed as stubbly as the face of an unshaved corpse.
Vansen was also becoming more and more aware of a smell beyond that of the smoke, a strong, sulphurous odor that seemed to lie over the valley like a fog. The worst of it came from holes in the ground on either side of the road, and Vansen could not help wondering what could be under the ground that stank so badly.
"Mines," said Barrick when Vansen voiced his question out loud. "Gyir said these are the first mines his people built, a long time ago, although the digging here began even earlier. They go down into the ground for miles."
"What did they mine here?"
"That's all I know." Barrick gestured with his good arm toward the face¬less fairy. Gyir's eyes were almost closed, as though he slept on his feet. "He's still not talking."
The road, which Vansen thought must once have been the path of an ancient streambed, began to rise as the valley floor rose. Even as they climbed the smoke remained thick in the air, turning the cheerless vista of tree stumps and broken stones into something even more dispiriting, if such was possible. They were nearing the far end of the valley, and even though the road continued to mount upward, it became clear that unless it ended in a ladder half a mile tall it would never climb high enough to take them over the jagged face of rock that hemmed the valley.
Barrick looked up at the looming peak in dismay. "There's nowhere to go. Perhaps we're not to be slaves after all. Perhaps they're just going to kill us here."
"It seems a long way to march us simply to do that, Highness," Vansen reassured him. "Likely there is some secret pass ahead-a path through the heights." But he also wondered, and fear began to poison him again. Soon they would be pressed against the stony cliffs with nowhere to go, the Longskulls hemming them in with sharp spears…
If others had not been trudging through the growing dark ahead of him, Vansen would have tripped on the first impossibly wide, high step. As the prisoners in front clambered up, Vansen followed, turning to help the prince climb despite Barrick's fiercely resentful looks. One massive step ran into the next, one wearying climb after another.
"It's… a… cursed… staircase," Barrick said, fighting for breath. They had been marching without a rest for hours, and each step was a formida¬ble obstacle. "Like the one in front of the great temple back home-but monstrously big." He fell silent except for his ragged breathing as he la¬bored up two more steps behind Vansen. All around him the other prison¬ers were struggling at least as badly-some were simply too short to get up without help. The Longskulls clambered in and out of the procession, jab¬bing with their sticks and making irritated honking noises. "Gyir says that this is it," Barrick reported at last.
"This is what, exactly?"
"Greatdeeps. The entrance to the ancient mine." Barrick closed his eyes for a moment, listening to that silent voice. "He says we must hold hands, because to get separated here might be worse than death."
"A cheery thought," said Vansen as lightly as he could, but his own heart was like a stone. They continued up the great staircase, which seemed wider than the Lantern Broad in Tessis. At the top yawned a great doorway, high as a many-storied house. Compared to the twilight in the valley and on the stairs, its interior was dark as night.
"There will be a fight here, mark my words," Vansen whispered to Bar¬rick. It felt strangely natural to hold the boy's hand, as though this topsy¬turvy land had given him back one of his younger brothers. "No creature would let itself be driven into that without a struggle."
But there was no struggle, or at least not much of one. As the prisoners bunched in the doorway, some moaning and slumping to the ground, some actively trying to turn back, the Longskulls charged. They had been pre¬pared, and now they leaped up the stairs and onto the landing as a unified force, shoving, kicking, poking, and even biting until all those who could do so clambered to their feet and staggered through the door. Many were trampled, and as Vansen let himself and Barrick be drawn into the darkness, he wondered if in the long run those lying bloody and crushed on the top step might not be the lucky ones.
"Should we have tried to get away?" Barrick whispered. "Before they shoved us in here?"
"No, not unless your Gyir says we must. We do know wh.at is inside but we might find a better chance for escape later on." Vansen wished he believed that himself.
They allowed themselves to be dragged along in the river of captive creatures, out of the initial darkness into sloping, timbered tunnels lit Willi torches, then down, down into the heart of the mountain.
He did not notice it at first, but after a short time of trudging through the dank, hot corridors Vansen began to realize that some of the other pris¬oners were disappearing. The group in which they traveled was perhaps half the size now that it had been when they had first been driven through the great doors, and as he watched he saw two of the Longskulls roughly separate a group of perhaps a dozen captives-it was hard to tell in the flickering shadows, because the prisoners were of so many odd sizes and shapes-and drive them away down a cross corridor. He whispered this to Barrick, and saw the prince's eyes widen in alarm.
"Is that because they mean something different for us? To kill us instead of making us slaves?"
"I think it's more likely that they haven't seen many of our kind before," Vansen reassured him. "These LongskuU things don't seem the types to act without orders. They may want someone to tell them where we should be put." He didn't really want to talk-it was hard enough trying to keep some idea in his mind of what turns they'd taken, where they might be in rela¬tion to the original doorway. If there was a chance later for escape, he did not want to run blindly.
Soon there were only a few prisoners left beside themselves, a more or less manlike creature with wings like a dragonfly, taller than Vansen al¬though much more slender, a pair of goblins with bright red skin, and one of the wizened mock-Funderlings-a Drow. This last walked just in front of Vansen, which gave him more chance to look at it the little manlike crea¬ture than he might have wanted: it had a huge, lopsided head, a stumpy body, and hands that were almost twice as big as Vansen's, although the creature itself was far less than half his size.
The remaining Longskulls hurried the last prisoners along. Vansen had to trot, no easy feat with heavy shackles on his wrists, and also to help the prince when the boy stumbled, which was often. The pain in the prince's withered arm from the restraints must be great, Vansen knew, although Bar¬rick refused to mention it: it took no physician's eye to see the boy's pale
skin, his creased, wincing eyes, or to interpret the Silence that had fallen over him in the last hour.
They reached a wide place in the corridor where several other passages branched out. The guards forced them down one of those branches, and within just a few more paces they emerged into a large open space where they stopped before another massive doorway, this one guarded by lower¬ing apelike things that might have been Followers, but grown to the size of men and dressed in dusty, mismatched bits of armor. The Longskulls gab¬bled at these sentries, then stepped forward and used their spears to tap on the door, which despite their deferential touch made a hollow, brazen clang with each knock. The door slowly swung open and the quietly honking guards shoved the prisoners inside.
Behind the door lay the most demented place Vansen had ever seen, a cavern as large as the interior of the Trigon Temple in Southmarch, but fur¬nished by a madman. Broken bits and pieces of the statues that had once lined the valley stood all around the immense space-here half a warrior crouching in the middle of the cracked floor, there a single granite hand the size of a donkey-cart. Moss and little threadlike vines grew patchily on the sculptures, and in many places on the rough-hewn walls and floor as well, and the air was damp with mist from an actual waterfall that poured from a hole high on one side of the cavern and followed a splashing course downward over stone blocks to fill a great pool that took up half of the vast room.
Across the pool from the doorway stood another huge statue of a head¬less, seated warrior, tall as a castle wall. Enthroned on this stone warrior's lap, with various creatures kneeling or lying at his feet like a living carpet, sat the biggest man-the biggest living thing-Vansen had ever seen. Two, no, three times the height of a normal man he loomed, massive and mus¬cular as a blacksmith, and if it had not been so absolutely clear that this monstrosity was alive, Vansen would never for an instant have believed him anything but a statue. His hair was curly and hung to his shoulders, his beard to his waist, and he was as beautiful as any of the stone gods' statues, as if he too had been carved by some master sculptor, except that one side of his gigantic face was a crumpled ruin, one eye gone and the skin of cheek and forehead a puckered crater in which his disarranged teeth could be seen like loose pearls in a jewelry box.
Somewhere deep beneath them, something boomed like a monstrous drumbeat, a concussion that punched at Vansen's ears and made the entire
rocky chamber shudder ever so briefly, but no one in the room even seemed to notice.
Chains of all sizes and thicknesses hung around the terrible god-tiling's waist and dangled from his neck and shoulders, so that if he wore some other garment it could not be seen at all. Hundreds of strange, round objects hung from the chains. As his eyes became used to the light, Vansen realized that every one of the hanging things was a severed head, some only naked skulls or mummified leather, some fresh, with ragged necks still dripping-heads of men, of fairies, even animals, heads of all descriptions.
The full childhood memory came back to Vansen suddenly, the taunt of older boys to scare the younger ones-"Jack-in-Irons! Jack-in-Irons he coming from the great deeps to catch you! He'll take your head!"
Jack in Irons. Jack Chain. He was real.
The apparition raised an arm big as a tree trunk, chains swaying and clanking, the heads dangling like charms on a lady's bracelet. The bastard god grinned and his beautiful face seemed almost to split open as he dis¬played teeth as large as plates, as cracked and broken as the ruined stones.
"I AM JIKUYIN!" he roared, his voice so loud and so painful that Vansen fell to his knees and then slumped down to his belly with his hands over his ears in a fruitless attempt to protect himself from the deafening noise. It was not until the giant spoke again that Ferras Vansen realized he was hearing the words not with his ears, but echoing inside his mind.
All ordinary thought disappeared in the skull-thunder that followed.
"WELCOME, MORTALS-AH, AND ONE OF THE HIGH ONES, TOO, I SEE. WELCOME TO THE UNDERWORLD. I PROMISE I WILL GIVE YOU A USEFUL DEATH, AND AFTERWARD I MAY EVEN SHOW YOU THE MATCHLESS HONOR OF WEARING YOUR SMALL BUT SHAPELY HEADS!"