Secrets of the Black Earth
When Pale Daughter's child was born he reached his full growth in only a few seasons. He was called Crooked, not because of his heart, which was straight as an arrow's flight, but because his song was not
one thing or the other and flowed in unexpected directions. He was
mighty in gifts, and by the time he was one year old he had become so
great in wisdom that he created and gave to Silvergleam his father the
Tiles that would make their house mighty beyond all others.
But then the war came and many died. The oldest voices remember how the People took the side of the children of Breeze, even though they died like
ants before the anger of Thunder and his brothers. And ever after the
firstborn children of Moisture hated the People for opposing them, and
persecuted them. But in later days those who took Thunder's side would
prosper because of their fealty to Moisture's brood.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
AT FIRST VANSEN COULD NOT even muster the will to sit up. The memory of the corpse-pit was like a weight on his chest. / will say it again. Rise, Ferras Vansen. It was not his own name that resounded in his head so much as an image of himself, although it seemed a distorted view, the skin too dark, the fea¬tures coarse as those of the inbred families of the upper dales he used to see
in the market at Greater Stell when he was a child. It was the Storm Lantern's view of him, perhaps.
What do you want? Let me sleep.
We must try to make sense of what we have seen, sunlander-and there is some¬thing else, too.
Vansen groaned and opened his eyes, then forced himself into a sitting position, scraping his back and elbows on the cell's rough wall. Barrick was still asleep, but he twitched and moaned quietly, as if trapped in a nightmare.
Let him he for the moment. I have words to share with you.
The memory of the pit would not go away. Gods protect us, what are they doing down there to work all those creatures to death?
Gyir nodded. So you too noticed that most of them showed no sign of what killed them.Yes, perhaps they were worked to death. The fairy touched the palm of one hand to the back of the other. Whatever the tale behind it, it is certainly a new page for the Book of Regret. The thought that accompanied the words was not so much of a real book as of a sort of frozen storm of ideas and pictures and feelings too complex, too alien for Vansen to grasp.
What else could it be? They looked like they'd just fallen down dead. No marks on most of them. Vansen was more familiar with corpses than he wished to be, especially those found on a battlefield, each one its own little Book of Regret, the ending written in cruel wounds for all to read.
We must not make the mistake of supposing that which we do not know for cer¬tain, Gyir said. The waters in these deep places are sometimes poisonous. Or it could be that they were felled by a plague. Or it might be something else
Even while his skin crawled at the thought of being locked in a massive prison with plague raging through it, Vansen could not help being struck by the quality of the Storm Lantern's thinking. The creature he had con¬sidered little more than a beast, a bloodlusting wolf, was proving instead as careful as an Eastmarch scholar. Something else? What?
I do not know. But I fear the answer more than I fear poison or plague. Gyir looked to Barrick, still murmuring in fitful sleep. I wished to spare the boy talk of the dead we have seen. His thoughts are already fevered with terror and other things I do not entirely understand. But now we must wake him. I have something to say to both of you-something important.
More important than plague?
Gyir crouched beside the prince and touched his shoulder. Barrick, still twitching, immediately calmed; a moment later the boy's eyes opened. The
fairy readied into his jerkin and pulled out a handful of bread he had
hoarded from the earlier meal, went to the barred window in their cell
door and, as Vansen watched in astonishment, threw it into the center of
the outer chamber.
After a moment of surprised hesitation the other prisoners rushed to the scattered bread like pigeons, the bigger taking from the smaller, those of similar size or health fighting viciously among themselves to keep what they had grabbed or to steal what they had failed to get by quickness. In a few heartbeats the chamber outside went from a place of quiet misery to a nest of yowling, screeching mad things.
Now we may talk-at least for a moment, Gyir said. I feel someone is listen¬ing close by-Ueni'ssoh or one of his lieutenants, perhaps-but just, as noise will cover the sound, of spoken voices, enough anger and fear will muffle our conversation from anyone near who can hear unspoken words.
Vansen did not like the sound of that. People can hear us talking in our heads'?
Speaking this way is not a secret, sunlander, only a matter of skill or birth-or perhaps in your case, strange fortune. The Dreamless, Uein'ssoh, can certainly do it when he is close. Now give me your attention. He turned to look at Barrick, who still looked bleary. Both of you.
Gyir took something else out of his jerkin, but this time kept his hand closed. J will not show this thing I hold to you, he said. I dare not expose it, even in this chaos-but this will show you its size in case you must take it later.
Vansen stared. Whatever lay in the fairy's long-fingered hand was com¬pletely hidden, small as an egg. What…?
Gyir shook his head. It is a precious thing, that is all you need to know- unspeakably precious. My mistress gave me the duty of carrying it to the House of the People. If it does not reach them, war and worse will break out again between our two folk, and the suffering will not stop there. If this is not delivered to the House of the People, the Pact of the Glass will be defeated and my mistress Yasammez will destroy your castle and everyone in it. Ultimately, she will wake the gods themselves. The world will change. My people will die and yours will be slaves.
Vansen glanced at Barrick, who did not look as dumbfounded as Vansen felt. The boy was staring at Gyir's fist with what seemed only passing in¬terest. Why… why are you telling us this?
I am telling you, Ferras Vansen, because the prince has other burdens to carry- struggles you cannot know. Yasammez has laid a task on Barrick as well. I do not know it or understand its purpose, but she has sent him to the same place as I gothe House of the People. The Pact of the Class must be completed, and so I tell you now because I know that even if you do not believe all I say, you will follow the prince wherever he goes. Listen!
He fixed Vansen with his weird red eyes, demanding, pleading: his words swam in fearful thoughts like fish in a swift cold, current. Understand this- if I die here, you two must take this thing from me and carry it to the House of the People.You must. If you do not, all will be lost-your people, mine, all drowning in blood and darkness. The Great Defeat will have a swifter, uglier end than anyone could have believed.
Vansen stared at the strange, almost entirely expressionless face. You are asking me to perform some task…for you? Or for your mistress, as you call her- the one who has put a spell on the prince? For your people, who slaughtered hun¬dreds of my guardsmen, burned towns, killed innocents? He turned without thinking to Barrick, but the prince only stared at him as though trying to remember where they had met before. Surely this is madness.
I cannot compel you to do anything, Terras Vansen, said the fairy. J can only beg this boon. I understand your hatred of my kind very well-believe me, I have all those feelings for your folk, and more. Gyir lifted his head, listening. We can speak of this no longer. But I beg you, if the time should come-remember!
How could I forget? Vansen wondered, but this time his thoughts were only for himself. I have been asked to help the murderers of my people. And, may the gods help me, I think I will have to do it.
After the confusing conversation between Gyir and Vansen, only a little of which he remembered, let alone understood, Barrick fell back into sleep again. The nightmares that plagued him in the next hours were much like others he had suffered in his old life-dreams of rage and pursuit, dreams of a world that he did not recognize but which recognized him and feared him-but they seemed fuller now, deeper and richer. One thing had changed, however: the girl with dark hair and dark eyes now appeared in every dream, as though she were as much his twin as Briony, his own flesh and blood. Barrick did not know her, not even in the suspended logic of a dream, and she took no active part in any of his dire fancies, but she was there through it all like a shepherd on a distant hilltop, remote, uninvolved, but an indisputable and welcome presence.
Barrick woke Lip blinking. His companions had moved him into the sin gle shaft of light (if something so weak could be graced with the name) that fell through the grille and into their cell, illuminating the crudely mortared stones.
He sat up, but the cell spun around him and for a moment he felt as if the corpse-pit itself they had seen had somehow reached up to clutch him, to pull him down into the stink and the jellying flesh. He managed to crawl to the privy-hole at the far end of the narrow cell before vomiting, but his aim was hampered by his convulsive movement. Even though his stomach had been almost empty, the sour tang quickly filled the small space, adding shame to his misery. Ferras Vansen turned away as Barrick retched again, bringing up only bile this time-an act of courtesy by the guard captain that only made Barrick feel worse. He still had not forgotten that Vansen had struck him-must the man condescend to him as well? Treat him like a child?
He tried to speak but could not summon the strength. He was hot where he shouldn't be, cold where he shouldn't be, and his bad arm ached so that he could barely stand it. Vansen and Gyir were watching him, but Barrick waved away the guard captain's helping hand and ignored the throbbing of his arm long enough to crawl back to the cell wall. He wanted to tell them he was only tired, but weakness overcame him. He let them feed him a morsel of bread moistened with water, then he fell yet again into miserable, feverish sleep.
What day was this? It was a discordant thought: the names of days had become as much of a vanishing memory as the look of the sky and the smell of pleasant things like pine needles and cooked food. The silence sud¬denly caught his attention. Barrick rolled over and sat up, certain in his panic that the Qar and the guardsman had been taken away and he had been left alone. He gritted his teeth through a moment of dizziness and fluttering sparks before his eyes, but when the sparks cleared he saw that Vansen and Gyir were only a short distance away, slouched against the wall, heads sagging in sleep.
"Praise all the gods," he whispered. At the sound of the prince's voice Gyir opened his red eyes. Vansen was stirring, too. The soldier's face was gaunt and shadowed with unkempt beard. When had the man become so thin?
"How are you feeling, Highness?" Vansen asked him.
It took Barrick a moment to clear his throat. "Does it matter? We will
die hero. Hverything 1 ever thought… said… it doesn't matter now. This is where we'll die."
Do not give in to despair yet. Gyir's words were surprisingly strong. All is not lost. Something in this place seems to have strengthened my… Barrick could not understand the word-the feeling was of something like a small, fierce flame. My abilities, you would say-that which makes me a Storm Lantern.
Funny. I feel worse than I have since I left the castle. It was true: Barrick had actually experienced some easing of the nightmares and strange thoughts after leaving home, especially during the days he had ridden with Tyne Aldritch and the other soldiers, but since he and his companions had en¬tered this hellish hole in the ground the old miseries had come back more powerfully than ever. He could almost feel doom following just behind him like a shadow. Do you think it is that horrible fikuyin who has done it to me, that giant? I felt as though his voice… it hurt me…
Gyir shook his head. I do not know. But there is something strange about this place-stranger even than the presence of the demigod himself, I think. I have spent much of the last days casting out my net, gleaning what thoughts I can from the other prisoners, and even some of the guards, although most of them are little more than beasts.
You can do that?
I can now. It is strange, but this place has not only given my strength back to me, I think it has even made me a little stronger than I was before. Barrick shrugged. Strong enough to get us out of here?
He felt sure that Gyir would have smiled regretfully if he had a mouth like an ordinary man. I think not-not by pitting strength alone against the pow¬ers of both Ueni'ssoh and great fikuyin. But do not despair. Give me a while longer to think of something. I need to learn more of the great secret of this place.
Secret? Barrick saw that Vansen was listening raptly, too-might even be carrying on his own conversation with Gyir. Instead of the burst of jeal¬ously such a realization usually caused, this time he felt oddly connected to the man. There were moments he hated the guard captain, but others when he felt as though he were closer to Ferras Vansen than to any other living mortal-except Briony, of course. Gods protect you, he thought, his heart suddenly, achingly full. Oh, strawhead, what I would give just to see your face, your real face, in front of me… I
I have not wasted the time while you were lost in fever dreams, Gyir told him. / have found a guard who works sometimes in the pit-one who watches over the prisoners who put the bodies on the platform and send them up to the wagon-slaves.
Can you… see his thoughts? Can you see what's down below us?
No. 'The guard has a curious emptiness where those memories should be.
Then what good is he to us? Barrick was weary again. How absurd, when he had been awake such a short time!
I can follow him-stand inside him as I stood inside the thoughts and feelings of the woodsprite. I can see what he sees down in the depths.
Then I will go with you again, like last time, Barrick said. I want to see. Gyir and Vansen actually exchanged a look, which infuriated him. / know you two think me weak, but I will not be left behind in this cell.
I do not think you are weak, Barrick Eddon, but I do think you are in danger. Whatever about this place troubles you grew worse when I carried your thoughts with me last time. And Terras Vansen and I will not leave-only our thoughts will. You will not be alone.
Barrick should have been too weak for fury, but he wasn't. Don't speak in my head and tell me lies. Alone? How could I be more alone than stuck here with your empty bodies? What if something happens to you and your thoughts are… lost, or something like that? I would rather it happens to me, too, than to be left here with your corpses.
Gyir stared at him a long time. / will consider it.
"I don't think it's a good idea, either," Vansen said out loud.
Barrick did his best to regain his mask of cold control. "I know you don't follow orders you don't like, Captain Vansen, but unless you have given up your allegiance to me entirely, you are still sworn to my family as your liegelords. I am the prince of Southmarch. Do you think to order me as to what I may and may not do?"
Vansen stared at him, a dozen different expressions moving across his face like oil spreading on a pool of water. "No, Highness," he said at last. "You will do what you think best. As always."
The guardsman was right, of course, and Barrick hated that. He was a fool to take such a risk, but he had told the truth-he was far more terri¬fied of being left alone.
"Doirrean, what are you doing? He is too far from the fire-he will be cold and then ill." Queen Anissa leaned forward in her bed to glare at the nurse, a sturdy, sullen girl with pale, Connordic features.
"Yes, Highness." The young woman picked up both the baby and the
cusion underneath him, taking tare to show just how much trouble she was being put to, and then used her foot to move the chair closer to the large fireplace. Sister Utta could not help wondering whether a healthy baby was not at more risk from flying sparks than from a few moments naked in an otherwise warm room. Of course, I've never had a child, though I've been present for my share of births. Perhaps it feels different when it's your own.
"I just cannot understand why I am saying things over and over," Anissa declared. Her thin frame had rounded a little during her pregnancy, but now the skin seemed to hang loosely on her bones. "Does no one listen? Have I not had enough pain and suffer… sufferance?"
"Don't fret yourself too much, dear," Merolanna told her. "You have had a terrible time, yes, but you have a fine, fine son. His father will be very proud."
"Yes, he is fine, is he not?" Anissa smiled at the infant, who was staring raptly up at his nurse in that guileless, heart-tugging way that babies had- the only thing about them that ever made Utta regret her own choices in life. It would be appealing, she thought, perhaps even deeply satisfying, to have an innocent young soul in your care, to fill it like a jewel case with only good things, with kindness and reverent thoughts and love and friend¬ship. "Oh, I pray that his father comes back soon to see him," the queen said, "to see what I have done, what a handsome boy I have made for him."
"What will you name him?" Utta asked. "If you do not mind saying be¬fore the ceremony."
"Olin, of course. Like his father. Well, Olin Alessandros-Alessandros was my grandfather's name, the grand viscount of Devonis." Anissa sounded a bit nettled. "Olin. What else would I name him?"
Utta did not point out that the king had already had two other sons, nei¬ther of whom had been given his name. Anissa was an insecure creature, but she had reason to be: her husband was imprisoned, her stepchildren all gone, and her only claim to authority was this tiny child. Small surprise she would want to remind everyone constantly of who the father was and what the child represented.
Somebody knocked at the chamber door. One of the queen's other maids left the group of whispering women and opened it, then exchanged a few words with one of the wolf-liveried guards who stood outside. "It is the physician, Highness," she called.
Merolanna and Utta exchanged a startled look as the door swung open, but it was Brother Okros, not Chaven, who stepped into the room. The
scholar, dressed in the wine-colored robes ol Eastmarch Academy, bowed deeply and stayed down on one knee. "Your Highness," he said. "Ah, and Your Grace." He rose, then added a bow for Utta and the others. "Ladies."
"You may come to me, Okros," called Anissa. "I am all in a trouble. My milk, it hardly ever flows. If I did not have Doirrean, I do not know what I would do."
Utta, who was impressed that Anissa was nursing at all-it was not ter¬ribly common among the upper classes, and she would have guessed the queen would be only too glad to hand the child over to a wet nurse- turned away to let the physician talk to his patient. The other ladies-in-waiting came forward and surrounded the queen's bed, listening.
"We haven't spoken to Okros yet," said Merolanna quietly, "and this would be a good time."
"Speak to him about what?"
"We can ask him about those strange things the little person said. That House of the Moon jabber. If it's to do with Chaven, then perhaps Okros will recognize what it means. Perhaps it's something that any of those doc¬toring fellows would know."
Utta felt a sudden pang of fear, although she could not say exactly why. "You want to… tell him? About what the Queen's Ears said?"
Merolanna waved her beringed hand. "Not all of it-I'm no fool. I'm certainly not going to tell anyone that we heard all this from a Rooftopper- a little person the size of my finger."
"But… but these matters are secret!"
"It's been a tennight or more and I'm no closer to finding out what hap¬pened to my son. Okros is a good man-a smart one, too. He'll tell us if he recognizes any of this. You let me take charge, Utta. You worry too much."
Brother Okros had finished with the queen and was writing down a list of instructions for her ladies. "Just remember, he is too young for sops."
"But he loves to suck the sugar and milk from my finger," said Anissa, pouting.
"You may give him milk on your finger, but not sugar. He does not need it. And tell your nurses not to swaddle him so tightly."
"But it will give him such a fine neck, my handsome Sandro."
"And bent shoulders, and perhaps even a pigeon chest. No, tell them to swaddle him loosely enough that the act would not wake him if he was sleeping."
"Nonsense. But, of course, if you are saying it must be so…" Anissa
looked as though she would probably deliberately forget this advice as soon as the physician had left the room.
Okros bowed, a smile wrinkling his thin, leathery face. "Thank you, Your Highness. Blessings of the Trigon-and Kupilas and our good Madi Surazem-upon you." He made the sign of the Three, then turned to Merolanna and Utta, bowing again. "Ladies."
Merolanna laid a hand on his arm as he passed. "Oh, would you wait for a moment outside, Brother Okros? I have something I would ask you. Will you excuse us, Anissa, dear? I mean, Your Highness? I must go and have a little rest-my age, you know."
Anissa was gazing raptly at her infant son again, watching Doirrean swathe him in linen. "Of course, dear Merolanna. You are so kind to visit me. You will come to the Carrying, of course-Sandra's naming cere¬mony? It is only little while from now, on the day before the Kerneia- what do you call that day here?"
"Prophets' Day," said Merolanna.
"Yes, Prophet's Day. And Sor Utta, you are most certainly welcomed for coming, too."
Utta nodded. "Thank you, Highness."
"Oh, I would not miss it for a bag of golden dolphins, Anissa," Merolanna assured her. "Miss my newest nephew being welcomed into the family? Of course I will be there."
Okros was waiting for them in the antechamber. He smiled and bowed again, then turned to walk beside them down the tower steps. Utta saw that the duchess really was tired-Merolanna was walking slowly, and with a bit of a limp because of the pains in her hip.
"What can I offer you, Your Grace?" Okros asked.
"Some information, to be honest. May I assume you still have not heard anything from Chaven?"
He shook his head. "To my deep regret, no. There are so many things I would like to ask him. Taking on his duties has left me with many ques¬tions, many confusions. I miss his counsel-and his presence, too, of course. Our friendship goes back many years."
"Do you know anything about the moon?"
Okros looked a little startled by the apparent change of subject, but shrugged his slender shoulders. "It depends, I suppose. Do you mean the object that rides the skies above us at night and sometimes in the day-yes,
see, there it is now, pale as a seashell! Or the goddess Mesiya of the silver limbs? Or the moon's effect on women's courses and the ocean's tides?"
"Not any of those things," said Merolanna. "At least 1 don't think so. Have you ever heard of anything called the House of the Moon?"
He was silent for so long that Utta thought they had upset him some¬how, but when he spoke he sounded just as before. "Do you mean the palace of Khors? The old moon demon conquered by the Trigon? His palace is spoken of in some of the poems and stories of ancient days, called by that name, House of the Moon."
"It could be. Did Chaven ever own something that could be called a piece of the moon's house?"
Now he looked at her carefully, as though he hadn't. really noticed the duchess until just this moment-which was nonsense, of course. Utta knew it was her own nerves making her see phantoms.
"What makes you ask such a question?" he said at last. "I never thought to hear such dusty words of scholarship from you, Your Grace."
"Why shouldn't I?" Merolanna was annoyed. "I'm not a fool, am I?"
"Oh, no, Your Grace, no!" Okros laughed-a little anxiously, it seemed to Utta. "I meant no such thing. It's just that such old legends, such… trivial old stories… it surprises me to hear such things from you when I would more expect them from one of my brother scholars in the Eastmarch library." He bowed his head, thinking. "I remember nothing about Chaven and anything to do with the House of the Moon, but I will give it some thought, and perhaps even have a look at the letters Chaven sent to me over the years-it could be some investigation he had undertaken that I have forgotten." He paused, rubbing his chin. "May I ask what makes you in¬quire about this?"
"Just… something that I heard," Merolanna said. "Doubtless a mistake. Something I thought I remembered him saying once, that's all."
"And is it of importance to you, Your Grace? Is it something that I, with my humble scholarship and my friends at the academy, could help you to discover?"
"No, it's really nothing important," said Merolanna. "If you find anything about Chaven and this House of the Moon thing, perhaps we'll talk more. But don't worry yourself too much."
After Okros had taken his leave the women made their way across the Inner Keep toward the residence. Flurries of snow were in the air, but only a few powdery scatterings had collected on the cobbled paths. Still, the sky
was dark as burned pudding and Utta suspected there would be a lot more while on the ground by morning.
"I think that went rather well," said Merolanna, frowning. Her limp had become more distinct. "He seemed willing to be helpful."
"He knows something. Couldn't you see?"
"Yes, of course I could see." Merolanna's frown deepened in annoyance. "All these men, especially the scholars, think that such knowledge belongs to them alone. But he also knows now that he'll have to give something to get something."
"Did it ever occur to you such a game might be dangerous?"
Merolanna looked at Utta with surprise. "Do you mean Brother Okros? The castle is full of dangers, dear-just the Tollys alone are enough to give someone nightmares-but Brother Okros is as harmless as milk. Trust me."
"I'll have to, won't I?" said Utta, but she could not stay angry with her friend for more than a few moments. She took Merolanna's elbow, letting the older woman lean on her as they walked back through powdery snow in swiftly darkening afternoon.
Even with a dumb brute like this it will not be as easy as prying at unprotected thoughts, Gyir said. I must have silence just to bring him to the door of our cell.
Barrick was only too happy to comply. He was already regretting his in¬sistence. The memory of being trapped in the woodsprite's dull, hopeless thoughts, of handling corpses like they were discarded bits of clothing dropped on the floor, still roiled his stomach and made him light-headed.
A bestial, leathery face appeared in the grille, the brow so bony and low that Barrick could not even see the creature's eyes. It grunted and then snarled, angered by something, but was clearly compelled to remain where it was.
Gyir stood eye-to-eye with it for what seemed to Barrick like a terribly long time, in a silence broken only by the occasional pained cry of a pris¬oner in the other chamber. The guard-beast swayed but could not free it¬self from Gyir. The fairy stood almost motionless, but Barrick could sense a little of the tides of compulsion and resistance flowing back and forth be¬tween the two of them. At last the creature made a strange, rough-throated noise that could have been a gasp of pain. Gyir wiped sweat from his pale brow with his sleeve, then turned toward them.
/ have him, now.
Barrick stared at the guard, whose tiny eyes, rolled up behind half-open lids, had finally become visible as slivers of white. But if you've mastered him, couldn't he free us? Help us to escape?
He is only a minion-one who brings food. He has no keys for this inner cell. Only Ueni'ssoh has those. But this dull savage may yet give us better aid than any key. Sit down. I will show you something of his thoughts, his sight, as I send him on his way.
Even as Barrick settled himself on the hard stone floor, the guard turned and staggered away across the outer cell. Prisoners scurried to avoid him, but he walked past them as though they were invisible.
Gyir's presence pressed on Barrick's thoughts. He closed his eyes. At first he could see nothing but red darkness, then it slowly began to resolve into shapes he could recognize-a door swinging open, a corridor stretching out beyond.
Barrick could feel very little of the creature's own thoughts beyond the muted jumble of perceptions, of sight and sound, and he wondered whether that was because the guards were not much more than mindless beasts.
No. The fairy's voice came swiftly and clearly: Gyir truly had gained strength. Barrick could even feel Vansen's presence beside him in the beast's thoughts, like someone breathing at his own shoulder. He is not just an an¬imal, Gyir said. Even the animals are not just animals in the way you are think¬ing. But I have quashed his mind with my own as best I can, so that he will do what we like and not remember it afterward.
The guard-beast trudged down into the depths, a long journey that took him far beneath even the level of the corpse-room. Despite the odd gait forced on him by Gyir's awkward control of his movements, he was avoided by prisoners and the other guards barely seemed to acknowledge his exis¬tence. They might not be mere beasts, Barrick decided, but even among their own kind they showed little life. For the first time it occurred to him that maybe these large, apelike guards were, in their own way, prisoners just as he and his companions were.
Every few hundred paces something boomed and rumbled in the depths, a noise Barrick could feel more than hear through the creature's muffled perceptions.
What is that noise? It sounds like thunder-or cannons!
You are closer with the second. Gyir was silent for a moment as the creature
stumbled, then righted itself. it is Crooked's Fire, or at least so we Kill it. Your people call it gun-flour.
Then they truly are shooting off cannons down there?
No. I suspect they are using it to dig. Now let me concentrate.
Down and down and down they went, until the guard-beast reached a room where corpses were being loaded into the huge corpse basket to be winched to the top by more of the neckless, mushroom-colored men. The dead were being unloaded from ore wagons pushed by more servitors, and the guard-beast followed the dirt track of the wagons down into darkness.
They were still descending, but this slope was more gradual so that the haulers could push their carts up it. The wagons were not just bearing bod¬ies, either: at least ten times as many were coming up from the depths full of dirt and chunks of raw stone, but these were being rolled away down an¬other branch of the tunnel..
Barrick could almost feel Vansen and Gyir trying to make sense of the arrangement, but he was already feeling queasy from the depth, the heat, and the frequent rumble of the concussive, hammering sounds farther down in the deeps. If they put me to work here, he thought, I wouldn't last long. Barrick Eddon had fought all his life against being called frail or sickly, but living with a crippled arm had made him hate lying to himself as much as he hated it when others did it to soothe him. I could not do what these crea¬tures are doing, working with hardly any water in this dreadful, dust-ridden place. I would die in a matter of hours.
The guard-beast trudged downward into an ever increasing throb of ac¬tivity. The inconstant thundering of what Gyir called Crooked's Fire was much stronger now, so loud that the staggering guard-beast almost fell over several times. Hundreds of prisoners pushed carts past him up the long, wide, sloped passage, but no matter how monstrous their burden, they al¬ways moved out of the guard-beast's way.
At last Barrick saw the end of the passage, a huge, low arch at least twice as wide across as the Basilisk Gate back home. When the guard stepped through it into the cavern beyond, a monstrous chamber which dwarfed even the cave that housed the corpse-pit, Barrick could feel hot air rush up at his host, tugging the matted fur, bringing tears to the creature's already blurry vision. A line of torches marked the broad track down through the swirling dust and marked off the cross-paths where other guards and pris¬oners labored with the weight of ore carts. To Barrick each step seemed to take a terrible effort-the powerful discharge of hot air he had felt at the
doorway continued to buffet the guard-beast at every.step, as though he walked down the throat of a panting dragon. It pressed at Barrick's thoughts like crushing hands and Barrick thought he might faint away at any mo¬ment, simply swoon into insensibility like the frailest girl-child.
Can't you feel it? he cried to the others, his thoughts screaming. Can't you? This is a bad place-bad! I can't hold on anymore!
Courage. Gyir's thought came with the weight of all his power and knowledge, so that for a moment Barrick remembered what it was to trust him completely.
I'll try. Oh, gods, don't you and Vansenfeel it?
Not as powerfully as you do, I think.
Barrick hated being weak, hated it worse than anything. All through his childhood nothing could more easily prompt him to act foolishly than the suggestion, however kindly meant, that his crippled arm or his young age might give him an excuse to avoid doing something. Now, though, he had to admit he could not hold out much longer. No amount of steadying words could obliterate the cramping pain from his stomach, the queasiness that did not grow any less wretched by having been nearly constant since they had reached this place.
Why do I feel this way? I'm not even really here! What is doing this to me? This was more than just pain and weariness-waves of fear rolled through him. He had spoken a truth to Gyir that he could feel in his bones, in his soul: this was a bad place, a wrong place.
We don't belong here. He might have said it so the others could hear. He didn't know and he didn't care. He wasn't even ashamed anymore.
The air grew hotter and the sounds grew louder. The guard-beast was clearly familiar with it all, but still seemed to feel almost as frightened as Barrick did himself. The rising stench was not that of spoiling bodies and unwashed slaves, although there was a hint of each-Barrick could clearly recognize them even through the alien thoughts of the guard. Instead something altogether stranger billowed over him, a scent he could not identify, something that had metal in it, and fire, and the tang of ocean air, and something even of flowers, if flowers ever grew in blood.
The edge of the pit was just before him now, glaring with the light of hundreds of torches, swimming in the haze of the burning, dust-laden air. If he could have hung back while the other two went forward, he would have-would have happily acknowledged himself a coward, a cripple, any¬thing to avoid seeing what was in that chasm before him. But he could not
leave them. I le no longer knew how. He could only cling to the idea of Gyir and the idea of Vansen, cling to the creature that carried them as if it were a runaway horse and wait for it all to end. The chaos in his head was constant now and seemed to have little to do with what was actually around him-mad sounds, unrecognizable voices, moving shadows, flashes of ideas that made no sense, all hissing in his skull like angry wasps.
The light was bright. Something sang triumphantly in his head now above all the other noise, sang without words, without a voice, but sang. He stumbled forward, or the thing that carried him stumbled forward, like a blind man into a cave full of shrieking bats. He stood at the edge and looked down.
The great hole in the stone had been dug almost straight downward. Far below, the bottom of the pit was alive with the beetling bodies of slaves like a carcass full of maggots, hundreds of them with sweating, naked bodies and rags around their heads and faces. In the center, its peak half a hundred feet below him, sunk into the very stone of the wall and only half-uncovered by digging, was a strange shape that Barrick could not at first understand, something upright and unbelievably huge. It gleamed strangely in its ex¬posed matrix of rock, a monstrous rectangle of black stone trimmed with dull gold and fishscale green beneath the shroud of dust and stone that clung to its exposed surface. It was astonishingly tall-almost as high as Wolfstooth Spire and far, far wider. Somebody had carved a rune deep into the black stone, a pine tree that covered most of the black rock face. An¬other carved shape, a crude bird with two huge eyes, had been superim¬posed over the tree. The far-distant shape looked immensely old, like something that had fallen down to the earth from the high stars. In the chaos of his thoughts, Barrick struggled to make sense of it, then abruptly saw it for what it was.
A gate-a gigantic stone portal scribed with the ancient signs of the pine tree and the owl. The symbols of Kernios, god of death and the black earth.
Dizziness at its sheer size overcame Barrick then. He let go of Gyir, let go of the guard-beast's dull, terrified thoughts, and fell away into emptiness, unable to look at the blasphemous thing a moment longer.