Son of the First Stone "Eenur, the king of the fairies, is said to be blind. Some say he took this wound when he fought on the side of Zmeos Whitefire during the Theomachy and was struck by a fiery bolt from Perin's hammer. Others say that he gave his eyes in return for being allowed to read the Book of Regret." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" A FIGURE IN A PALE ROBE stepped forward out of the confusing shadows. The three beast-things retreated to swarm around it like a huntsman's hounds, but these crouching, apish creatures were nothing like hounds.
Barrick drew himself up so that he could defend himself but the stranger only stood looking down at him with an expression that might have been bemusement. At first glance Barrick had thought the newcomer a man, but now he was not so certain: the stranger's ears were an odd shape and set too low on his hairless skull, and the shape of his face was also unusual, with very high cheekbones, a long jaw, and a nose that was little more than a low bump above two slits.
"What are…?" Barrick hesitated. "Who are you? Where am I?"
"I am Harsar, a servant. You are in the House of the People, of course." The stranger was speaking-his lips even moved-but Barrick heard the voice in the bones of his head. "Was that not your destination?"
"I… I suppose it was. The king. The king told me to come here…"
"Just so." The stranger reached out a hand as cold and dry as a lizard's claw and helped Barrick to his feet. The three creatures capered around him for a moment and then went scampering out the door into the blue-lit hallway beyond where they stood, crouched and waiting. Barrick looked at his surroundings for the first time and saw that he was in a room decorated with intense but somber intricacy, surrounded by a forest of striped columns, far too many for any mere structural purpose. Set into the otherwise featureless black stone floor beneath him, a great disk of some glowing pearlescent material provided the only light in the large chamber.
"Am I still…?" Barrick shook his head. "I must be. Behind the Shadowline?"
The hairless one cocked his head as if he had to consider the question. "You are still in the People's lands, yes, of course-and this is the People's greatest house."
"The king. Is the king here? I have to give him…" He hesitated. Who knew what intrigues existed among the Twilight People? "I need to speak with him."
"Just so," Harsar said again. He might have smiled-it passed like the flicking of a snake's tongue. "But the king is resting. Come with me."
The strange little creatures gamboled around their feet as they left the room with the glowing floor and stepped out into a high hallway, dark but for shimmers of weak turquoise light. Barrick was exhausted, breathless. He had reached his destination at last, he realized-Qul-na-Qar, as Gyir the Storm Lantern had named it. Even the compulsion that the dark woman had put upon him, which had subsided over time into a sort of dull, constant ache, was now satisfied. He had done it!
But what exactly have I done? With the need at last satisfied, uncertainty began to blossom. What will happen to me here?
Everything about the place was strange to Barrick's eyes. Its architecture seemed shapeless, every right angle subverted by another less explicable shape; even the dimensions of the passages shifted between one end and the other for no reason he could see.
The light was odd as well. At times they stepped into utter darkness, but then flagstones down the center of the floor gleamed beneath their feet. Most other places were lit by candles, but the flames were not all the ordinary yellow-white: some burned pale blue or even green, which gave the long halls the watery appearance of submarine caverns.
Barrick was also beginning to notice that everywhere he went he seemed to be surrounded by quiet noises-not just the breathy sounds of the little creatures scampering around Harsar's legs, but sighs, whispers, voices quietly singing, even the gentle fluting or sounding of invisible instruments, as though a host of ghostly courtiers hung in the air above their heads and followed wherever they went. Barrick could not help remembering an old Orphan's Day tale from his childhood, Sir Caylor with the bag of winds that had swallowed all the voices in the world, and how some of them leaked out as he rode and almost drove him mad.
"And only he returned to tell the tale…" Barrick thought. That's how it ended.
Remembering that famous tale of a lonely escape brought another thought. "Wait," he said. "Where are they? The others who came with e…!"
His slender guide stopped and gave him a mild but disapproving look. "No. You were alone."
"I mean they came through Crooked's Gate with me. From the city of Sleep. A man named… named Beck-and a black bird." For a moment he hadn't been able to remember the merchant's name: the last moments in Sleep seemed far away not just in distance but in time.
"I'm afraid I cannot help you," the hairless one said. "You must ask the Son of the First Stone."
"Who?"
The disapproval became a shade less mild. "The king."
They continued through the empty halls. Barrick was finding it hard to keep up with his guide's deceptively rapid pace, but was determined not to complain.
It was perhaps the strangest hour of his life, he would think later-this first time in Qul-na-Qar, this last time of seeing it with his old eyes, his old way of looking and understanding. The shapes of the place were like nothing he had experienced: the building was clearly orderly and logical, but it was a logic he had never encountered before, with walls abruptly bending inward or ending in the middle of a room for no clear reason, and stairs that led up to the high ceilings and then back down again on the other side of the room, as though built solely on the chance that someone might wish to walk high above the room. Some doors opened onto apparent nothingness or flickering light, others stood in isolation with no wall on either side of them, disconnected portals in the middle of chambers. Even the building materials seemed bizarre to Barrick's eyes: in many places dark, heavy stone was coupled with living wood that seemed to grow within the substance of the walls, complete with roots and branches. The builders also seemed to have exchanged random sections of wall for colorful streaks of gemlike, brilliantly glowing stuff as clear as glass but thick as slabs of granite, allowing views of what was outside but never clearly enough for him to make out more than a blur of shapes and shadows. And everywhere they went seemed deserted.
"Why isn't anyone here?" he asked Harsar.
"This part of the People's House belongs to the king and queen," the servant answered, giving his little pack of straying followers a stern glance until they trotted back to him. "The king himself has few servitors and the queen is… elsewhere."
"Elsewhere? "
Harsar began walking again. "Come. We still have far to go."
The empty halls and the chambers they traversed to get from one hallway to another were furnished, some of it quite ordinary to his eyes, some almost incomprehensible, but Barrick could detect a similarity between every piece, from the simplest to the most complex, a unifying vision behind them all that he could not fail to notice because it was so different from anything he had known, as if cats had made clothes for themselves or snakes had choreographed an intricate dance. Chairs, tables, chests, reliquaries-no matter how simple or ornate the pieces, they all had an obvious similarity he could not quite grasp, a disturbing shared subtlety. From a distance the carpets on the dark, polished floors and the tapestries hung on the walls seemed familiar enough objects, but when he looked more closely their dense, complex designs made him dizzy and reminded him uncomfortably of the living lawn that had guarded Crooked's Hall. And though some chambers had tall windows opening onto the twilight sky, and some were windowless, though some sparkled with a thousand candles and others had no candles or lamps at all, the light was much the same in all of them-that muted, watery, inconstant glow. Traveling through Qul-na-Qar was a little like swimming, Barrick thought.
No, he decided a moment later, it was more like dreaming. Like dreaming with his eyes wide open.
But of all the unusual feelings that swept through him as he walked this first time in the House of the People, the strangest was that Barrick Eddon felt as if he had at last, after a lifetime of exile, come home.
At last, just when he was beginning to stumble from weariness, his guide showed him into a small, dark room that was built to a more human scale than many of the others, a sort of retiring chamber with polished wooden chairs of smooth and simple (but still undeniably alien) shape. Its walls were filled with niches like a beehive. Each of these small compartments held what looked like a single statue carved from shiny stone or cast in metal, but Barrick saw nothing familiar in any of their shapes; he thought they looked chance-made, like slops left over from the construction of more sensible objects, lovingly collected from the forge floor and displayed here.
Harsar pointed to a bed, a simple thing in a simple wooden frame. "You may rest. The king will see you when he is ready. I will bring you food and drink."
Before Barrick could ask any questions, his guide had turned and walked out the door, his strange little troop leaping and capering around him.
At another time he might have explored the room, so homey and yet so strange, but he did not have the strength to stay upright another moment. He stretched himself on the bed and sank into its welcome softness like a shivering man climbing into a hot bath. Within a few moments sleep came and claimed him.
When he woke Barrick at first lay quietly, trying to remember where he was. His dreams had been subdued and sweetly peaceful, like distant music. He rolled over and sat up before he realized he was not alone in the room.
A man sat in a tall-backed chair a short distance away-at least he looked like a man, but of course he was not, Barrick realized, not in this place. The stranger's long, lank white hair was pulled close to his head by the blindfold over his eyes. He wore no other emblems, no crown or scepter or medallion of state on his breast-in fact his gray clothes were as tattered as Raemon Beck's patchwork had been-but something in his posture and solemnity told Barrick who this was.
Have you rested? The blind king's words sounded in Barrick's head, tuneful as water splashing in a pool. Here, Harsar has left food for you.
Barrick had already smelled the enticing scent of the bread and was scrambling off the bed. A plate filled with many lovely things was waiting on a small table-a round loaf, a pot of honey, fat purple grapes and other small fruits he did not recognize, as well as a wedge of pale, creamy cheese. He had already begun stuffing himself-everything tasted glorious after a diet of mostly roots and sour berries-when he suddenly wondered if it had been meant to share.
No, the king said when Barrick began to ask. I scarcely eat at all these days-it would be like throwing an entire pine trunk onto a few dying coals and expecting it to burn. The king let out a small laugh that Barrick actually heard with his ears, a gust wintery as snow tossed by a breeze, then did not speak again until Barrick had gobbled even the rind of the cheese and was wiping the plate with the last bit of bread.
So, he said. I am Ynnir din'at sen-Qin. Welcome to the House of the People, Barrick Eddon.
Barrick realized that he had never bowed or made any kind of obeisance to this strange, impressive figure, but instead had thought only of filling his stomach. Wiping his sticky fingers on his clothing, he lowered himself to his knees. "Thank you. I saw you in my dreams, your Majesty."
Such titles are not for me. And those my own people use would not be appropriate to you. Call me Ynnir.
"I… I couldn't." And it was true. It would be like calling his own father by his first name, to his face.
The king smiled again, a ghost of amusement. Then you may call me "Lord," I suppose, as Harsar does. You have slept and eaten. One thing remains before our duties as hosts are complete.
"What do you mean?"
If you step into the next chamber, you will find hot water and a tub. It does not take any great power of observation to know you have not bathed in some time. The king lifted his slender fingers, gesturing. Go. I will wait here. I am still weary and we have far to walk.
Barrick found the door set in the far wall and was just about to open it when he remembered something.
"By the gods, I almost forgot!" He hesitated, wondering if he had blasphemed by mentioning the gods in this place, but the king seemed not to notice. "I have brought something for you, Lord, a gift from Gyir Storm Lantern-something very important…!"
Ynnir raised his hand again. I know. And you will complete your task, child of men-but not this moment. We have waited so long that another hour will mean nothing. Go and wash the dust of the road from yourself.
The chamber beyond the door was not like anything Barrick had seen before, steamy and windowless but lit by glowing amber stones set into the wall. A stone tub full of water sat in the center of a floor of dark tile, and when he tested the water with his hand it was gloriously hot. He shucked off his ancient, tattered clothes for the first time in longer than he could remember and almost leaped in.
When he climbed out again some time later even his bones and blood seemed to glow with renewed warmth. He was startled to discover that his ruined clothes were gone and that other garments had been left in their place. How had that happened? Barrick was certain no one had come in or out of the room while he had bathed. He held up the new clothing to inspect it before putting it on-breeches and a long shirt of some silky pale material and slippers of soft leather, all beautiful but simply made.
As he left the bathing room he realized that if such fine things were freely available for strangers, the king's own tattered raiment was even more inexplicable.
Ynnir still waited in the same place, his chin on his chest as if he slept. It was doubtless a trick of the place's strange lights, but Barrick thought he saw a lavender glow flickering above the king's head, faint as foxfire.
As Barrick approached Ynnir stirred and the glow vanished, if it had been there at all.
Come with me now, the king told Barrick, turning his blind face toward him. It is time to set our feet to the narrowing way, as my people say.
Ynnir rose from his chair. He was taller than Barrick had expected, taller than most men, but his obvious natural grace was inhibited by what Barrick realized after a moment must be age or weariness, because he swayed for a moment and had to reach out and steady himself on the back of his chair.
Somehow blind Ynnir knew what Barrick was seeing and what he was thinking. Yes, I am weary. I thought I had lost you in the Between, and I expended much strength helping you find your way here-strength I could ill afford. But none of that matters now. We have waited long enough. Now we must go to the Deathwatch Chamber.
As he walked with the tall king Barrick finally began to see some of the great castle's other inhabitants. It was hard to make out anything for certain in the dark, dreamy halls-the figures moved too quickly, or were visible only for instants before fading back into obscurity again, and what little of them he saw was often more confusing than if he had seen only shadows-but it was clear now that the castle was occupied.
"How many of your people live here, Lord?" he asked.
Ynnir walked a few more slow paces before answering. He lifted a hand and brought fingers and thumbs together as though holding something small. Most have gone with Yasammez, but we were already far fewer than once lived here. A few stayed to serve me and to serve Qul-na-Qar itself, and some like the tenders of the Deep Library would never leave-could never leave. There are others like that, too-you saw Harsar's sons…
"Sons? " For a moment Barrick didn't know what the blind king meant. Then he thought of the grotesque little monstrosities that had scampered around the servant's feet. "Those things?"
The First Gift does not always yield helpful changes, said the king, explaining nothing. But all the children of the Gift are nurtured. He made another gesture that had the resignation of a sigh. All together I would suppose there are fewer than two thousand of my people left in all these many, many rooms…
Barrick was distracted by the view from the hallway's high windows-his first clear view of what lay outside the halls. Qul-na-Qar stretched across the visible distance, a forest of towers in dozens of shades of shiny black stone that seemed to stretched on and on toward the horizon until the edges disappeared in mist. The spires themselves were a hundred different shapes and heights, but all seemed built to the same idea, simple shapes repeated over and over again until in aggregate they became somber starbursts of complex black and dark gray.
"Only a thousand or two… in all this?" Barrick was astonished-Tessis or Hierosol alone must be able to count a hundred times that number.
Most of them have gone to war, Ynnir told him. Against your people, to be precise. I doubt any of those will return. The bitterness of Yasammez is too old, too deep…
The name, and the sudden memory of the frightening, awesome woman in black, made Barrick stop and fumble in his shirt. "I have it…!" he said, trying to pull it free. "The mirror…"
Ynnir held up a thin hand. I know. I can feel it like a burning brand. And that is what we are going to do-use it to restore the heat of the Fireflower. But do not give it to me yet.
Thoughts were cascading through Barrick's mind, the newest dislodging the previous ones before he had a chance to examine them. "Why are we… why are you…?" He paused, confused: for a moment, he had forgotten who he was-even what he was. "Why are the Qar at war with Southmarch? "
Because your family destroyed my family, the king answered with no discernible malice. Although it could also be said that our family is destroying itself. Now please be silent, child. We have reached the antechamber.
Before Barrick could even begin to make sense of what the tattered king had just said, he found himself stepping out of the dim but almost ordinary light of the passage and into a room that seemed carved from raw stone, with long streamers of pale rock stretching between ceiling and floor like cobwebs-this despite the fact that they were in the midst of the great palace. "What is this place?" he asked.
The king raised a hand. No questions for now, child of men. I must go ahead of you and tend to the rituals alone-the Celebrants especially do not much like mortals. In any case, you are not yet ready to see such things-not with your own eyes and thoughts. Stay here and I will come back for you.
The king stepped into a dark place along the wall and was gone. Barrick took a few steps forward to examine the spot Ynnir had disappeared. Was it a doorway? It looked like nothing but a shadow.
He waited in the stony chamber for what seemed like a terribly long time, listening to the quiet, empty voices that were everywhere in this place. The king had all but called him a murderer, or at least called his family murderers, yet he had treated Barrick like a welcome guest. How could that be? And the mirror that he had carried so far and through so many dangers-why hadn't the king simply taken it from him? If humans were Ynnir's enemies, why did he continue to trust Barrick with a prize for which the warrior Gyir had sacrificed his life?
Confusion and boredom at last overcame patience. Barrick went back to the place the king had disappeared and stood, listening, but heard nothing: if it was an open doorway then only silence was on the other side. He put out his arm and felt it go chill for a moment, but nothing impeded it, so he stepped forward himself into the cold shadow.
For an instant-just an instant-it was like falling into the doorway at Crooked's Hall again and he was terrified that he had done something fatally stupid. Then the light warmed to swirling gray and he could make out a white shape, fluttering and ragged, surrounded by a whirl of shadows like a man beset by angry birds. The white figure was Ynnir, who had his hands raised in the air and his mouth open, as though he were calling for help, or… or singing. The black shapes whirled and darted. Barrick caught a snatch of the wailing, otherworldly melody before he realized some of the flitting shadows had left the king and were moving toward him instead. Heart hammering, he stepped back into the cold darkness once more, retreating into the empty stone chamber; by the time he had reached it he was shivering and covered with clammy sweat.
You must bow to Zsan-san-sis, Ynnir told him when he returned. If he had noticed Barrick's intrusion he had not mentioned it. He is much older than me, at least in one sense, and his loyalty to the Fireflower is unquestioned. The king laid a cold hand on Barrick's shoulder and guided him toward the dark door.
The room on the far side seemed different this time, not a confusion of grays but a shadowy depth, the only source of light a yellow-green glow on the far side of the chamber. As the king led him forward Barrick realized with a shock that the glow came from inside the hood of a dark, robed figure waiting there like a statue. Then the hooded head lifted and for a moment Barrick caught a glimpse of stark, silvery features-a mask, Barrick thought, it must be some kind of mask-that leaked green light from nostrils, eyes, and mouth. The thing raised its arm toward them as if in greeting, and for a moment a six-pointed green star of light bloomed at the end of its sleeve.
"This is Zsan-san-sis," said Ynnir, needlessly.
Barrick bowed as low as he could. It was much preferable to having to look again into that weird, sickly gleam.
Words were spoken, or at least Barrick thought he heard whispers, not words but hisses and quiet bubblings. Then the glowing, hooded thing seemed to fold up into itself and disappear. The walls dissolved around them, then the king led him forward once more into a place whose walls and floor and ceiling were covered with faint but constantly moving specks of colored light, so that the darkness seemed lit by a thousand minute candles.
Despite the dazzle of it all, Barrick's eye was drawn immediately to the figure at the center of the small, low-ceilinged room, a woman stretched on an oval bed as if asleep. At first he thought by her paleness and stillness that she was a statue, but as the king led him nearer Barrick's heart grew heavy and cold. She must be dead, this dark-haired woman with her strangely angular features, and his own arrival too late after all. The figure was a corpse, a beautiful, stern corpse, a queen lying in state.
"I am so sorry, Lord…" He took the mirror from its leather bag and held it out to the blind king.
She still lives. The king's thoughts were soft as snowfall. His long fingers closed on the mirror and he held it up before his face as though he examined it with his blind eyes through the strip of cloth that covered them. A small frown crossed his face.
Something is wrong, he said quietly. Something is missing.
Barrick's insides went cold. "My lord?"
The king sighed. I expected more, manchild, even with the Artificer so close to his ending. Still, it does not matter. This age of the world comes down to what we hold here, whatever essence he has given us. We have no other choice but to use it and pray the flaw is not too great.
The blind king breathed on the mirror and then laid it against the queen's breast.
For a stretching moment nothing seemed to change. The chamber's inconstant light flickered silently; the very air seemed drawn tight like a held breath. Then the queen's face contorted in what seemed a grimace of pain and she gasped as she pulled in air. Her eyes-black eyes, startlingly dark and deep-sprang open for a moment and her gaze slid from Barrick to Ynnir, where it rested. Then, like a drowning swimmer who has come to the surface for one last breath before surrendering forever, she seemed to fall back. Her eyes fluttered and slid closed once more; her hand, which had moved toward her breast as if to touch the mirror, fell back on the bed.
Barrick felt as if he might weep, but the pain was too cold, too stony for tears. He had failed. Why had he or anyone else thought it might end differently?
The king bowed his head and for long moments knelt in silence beside the queen. Then he reached out a hand that shook only a little and lifted the mirror from her bosom. He held it up as if to examine it, then, shockingly, tossed away the thing that first Gyir, then Barrick had carried for so long. As it clattered across the room the walls erupted into movement, and for the first time Barrick saw that the gleaming scales that covered walls and ceiling were shimmering beetles, each wingcase flashing rainbows like a puddle of oil.
It has given her a few more hours, perhaps days, but there was not enough of our ancestor in the mirror to wake her, Ynnir said heavily. There is only one way left to me. Come, child of men. I must tell you of true and terrible things, then you must make a decision no creature of your race has ever been asked to make.
Whether the gods were always here, or whether they came to these lands from somewhere else entirely, we cannot know. Even Ynnir's thoughts came slowly, as if with great effort.
The two of them had returned to the room where Barrick had slept, and Barrick realized for the first time that with all these miles of castle to choose from, the humble little chamber was the king's own retiring room.
They say they always existed. Ynnir paused to drink from a cup of water, a strangely ordinary thing to do. None of us were alive so we cannot dispute what they say…
"The gods say they always existed?" Barrick was not sure that he had understood Ynnir.
That is what they told our ancestors. In fact, that is what Crooked himself, the father of my line, told the first generation of the Fireflower, although even Crooked could not have known for certain. He was born here, of course, during the Godwar.
Born here? What did the king mean, Barrick wondered. And why was Ynnir bothering to tell him all this if the mirror had failed-if Barrick himself had failed?
But whatever their birth, their source, the king went on, the gods were already here when the Firstborn arrived.
"The Firstborn-is that what you call your ancestors?"
And yours, child. Because once we were all the same people-the Firstborn. But one part of that race had the First Gift-the Changing, as some called it. The part that would become our people came from a trick of nature and our blood that allowed us many different shapes, many ways of living and being, while the rest of our Firstborn fellows-those were your people-were immutable in their bones and skin. So as time passed the two tribes began to grow apart until they were quite separate, my people and yours, and in some cases did not even remember their shared root. But shared it was, and is-that is why some of us, especially of my family, look so much like your kind. We have changed, but mostly on the inside. On the outside we have kept much of our original seeming.
Barrick thought he understood, at least enough to nod-but what astounding sacrilege the Trigonate church back home would name it!
Forgive me for sending this all to you on the wings of thought, Ynnir said, but it tires me less than speaking the way your kind does. He sighed. By the time that the Moonlord and Pale Daughter ran away together to his great house, beginning the Godwar, our two peoples were no longer separated simply by the First Gift. Most of your ancestors were in the southern continent, living near Mount Xandos, worshipping Thunderer and his brothers. Most of my people had settled here in the north around Moonlord's stronghold, and as a result, when Moonlord and his kin were besieged by the Thunderer's clan, we took the side of Moonlord and Whitefire…
"Moonlord, Pale Daughter… I… I don't know who these people are, Lord…" Barrick said.
Not people-gods. And you know them well, just not by our names. Call them Khors and Zoria, then, and Zoria's father Perin the Thunderer, who angrily laid siege to the lovers' moon-castle. So Khors called for help from his brother and sister, Zmeos and Zuriyal, who came to his defense. My people cast their lot with them, and even those of my ancestors who were far away came to join them here.
For a long moment, as Ynnir sat gathering his thoughts, Barrick did not understand the meaning of what he had heard. "Hold, please, my lord. Your ancestors came… here?"
Yes, this place is far older than my people, Ynnir said. The castle in which you sit, or rather the castle that lies beneath and behind the castle in which you sit, was once the domain of the god of the moon himself, Khors Silvergleam. When next you see the walls and the tall, proud towers, look not to the black stone we have built with, but look for the gleam of the moonstone beneath. A careful eye will see it.
Barrick could only stare around him. This strange castle-was it truly Everfrost, the dark fortress of all the stories?
Even the most ignorant of your people knows how that battle ended, although they do not know all the reasons, Ynnir continued. Khors was killed, his brother and sister banished from the earth. His wife-Perin's daughter, Zoria-escaped and wandered lost until at last she was found by Perin's brother Kernios, the dark master of the earth. He took her into his house and made her his wife-whether she wished it or not.
But she had a child during the war, of course-clever Kupilas, fathered by the Moonlord-and as he grew his gift for making things was such that although they mocked him and treated him brutally, Perin and the other Xandian gods took Kupilas back with them so they could have his skills at their service. He made many wonderful things for them…
"Like Earthstar, the spear of Kernios," said Barrick, remembering Skurn's tale.
Yes, and that particular weapon was both Crooked's glory and his doom, Ynnir said. But we do not speak of that yet. Still, the doom of the Fireflower-that which overwhelms us even now-was built in the ruins of the Godwar. Crooked escaped his captors at last. He traveled the world, teaching both your people and mine, learning more than any other man or god ever learned about the art of making things. And during those years he also learned how to walk the roads of the Void.
Barrick nodded, remembering another of the raven's strange stories. "His great-grandmother's roads."
Yes. And so he came at last and lived for a while among my people, here in the ruins of the moon-castle, and while he lived among us he fell in love with one of my ancestors, the maiden Summu. Those were days when gods and mortals shared the earth, and even had children together. But unlike most of his kind, Crooked-Kupilas-did not leave his offspring with only tales as a legacy. Summu had three children, two girls and one boy, and all of them were born with the gift we call the Fireflower. When Kupilas had gone on to fulfill his great and terrible destiny, it was discovered that his offspring were not as others of their tribe-life ran stronger in them. One of those children was Yasammez, the great dark lady you have met, who has lived all the ages since then, a life almost as long as that granted the gods themselves. Her brother and sister, Ayann and Yasudra, used the gift in a different way, although they did not at first know they had any gift to give. Although they lived no longer than those of our families usually do, a span that can be counted in a few centuries, their gift was not granted to them, but to their offspring.
Summu had been of the highest blood of our kind, so her eldest boy and girl, as was the tradition then and now, were married to each other to keep the line pure and strong. But these two, Ayann and Yasudra, passed the Fireflower along to their own children, and the gift it bestowed was that when Ayann and Yasudra were dead and their children ruled the People, their children had the parents' essence in them-not just their spirit or their blood, but their living essence and all their memories. The children then birthed children of their own, Ayann and Yasudra's grandchildren, and one day those two married and received the wisdom and thoughts of both their parents and grandparents. So it has gone ever since, the king and queen of our people each passing down all that he or she is to the next born. We are a living Deep Library, and so we have what we need to guard our children through the pain of the Long Defeat. The king nodded slowly. You do not know what that means, do you, manchild? We call it the Long Defeat because we Qar are too few ever to contest our once-cousins the mortal men for ownership of this world, so we know it is our fate to diminish and eventually be supplanted by your folk-although, again, I speak too simply of complicated things.
But here is where we come to the hard truths.
The Fireflower runs forever in Yassamez because she has not shared it. She has never taken one of her own blood for a lover, so she has not diminished the gift. Some say it is because she is selfish. Others call it the opposite, a sacrifice-they say she has accepted a painfully long life so that she may watch over the generations of her brother and sister's bloodline. But whatever the truth, Yasammez is what she is.
Those of us who received the Fireflower from our parents, and must pass it along in turn to our own offspring, have a more complicated path to walk. For one thing, each passing of the Fireflower, each passing of the memories of all the previous generations to the next, takes great strength. We cannot find such strength in ourselves alone-the cost is too great. There is only one place we can go to gain it. To Crooked himself-or rather, to the last trace of him remaining in this world.
This ultimate trace of the god stands beneath the castle your people call Southmarch, but which was once a doorway into the home of the Earthlord Kernios. It is the last true vestige of the terrible old days when all the gods walked the earth.
Most of your folk do not even know of it, but some who live in the depths beneath the castle do. They call it the Shining Man.
"I haven't… I do not know it, Lord."
But the drows of your family's castle do. They have worshipped and protected it for years without every knowing what it truly was.
"Drows? "
He waved his hand. You call them "Funderlings," I think. It matters not, because now we are at the crux of things.
For years the place you call Southmarch was occupied by men-warlords and petty nobles ruled it at the behest of other kings, and although we of the People's ruling family could not come there openly, we knew other ways to reach the Shining Man and gain the strength we needed to keep the Firef lower alive in our blood. My sister Saqri and I made the pilgrimage in the days of the empire in Syan. Our grandparents had been there when Hierosol ruled mankind. But then came the plague years and the humans drove us out of all their lands-lands which had been ours once, but in which we were now interlopers, objects of fear and hatred-and the most painful loss of all was the place you call Southmarch, where Crooked waited in the depths for us. We fought to keep our way to him open but were defeated, in large part by your ancestor Anglin, and forced to fall back to our lands in the north, where humans seldom walked.
Thus, when Saqri and I began to sicken with age, we could not pass the Fireflower to our son and daughter. A century went by and our plight became desperate. Yassamez, the elder sister of our entire line, counseled that we should make war on mankind to win back the castle, but I feared that we would lose such a contest and things would only be worse. My wife sided with our ancestress. For a long time our family was locked in dispute, until all of Qul-na-Qar was riven by it. At last, hiding their thoughts from their mother and from me, my son Janniya and his sister Sanasu set out themselves for Southmarch with only a small troop of household guards and retainers.
They were captured, though, and brought before Kellick, Anglin's heir, the ruler of the March Kingdom. Your ancestor Kellick saw Sanasu, my beautiful Sanasu… Here Ynnir stopped, and although his face did not change, the cessation of his quiet, calm thoughts in Barrick's head was as shocking as if the king had burst into tears… And he wanted her for his own, he continued at last. A mortal man coveted the one who would have become immortal queen of her entire people! And he took her, as a wolf takes a graceful deer, little caring what beauty is destroyed as long as his appetites are slaked…
This time the pause was more deliberate. Barrick, in a sort of helpless dream, watched the king's pale face harden into something even stonier than before.
He took her. Janniya, her brother, her intended-my son!-fought for her, but Kellick Eddon had many men. Janniya was… killed. Sanasu was taken. The Fireflower could not be passed to the son and daughter. The end of the people was at hand.
Queen Sanasu…! Barrick thought of her picture in the portrait hall, a face he knew well, strange, haunted eyes, fiery hair, and pale skin. But she… was married to the king of Southmarch! Could she truly have been one of the Qar?
In the wake of that terrible day, the king resumed, Yassamez and others of course brought war to the humans, and for a while even recaptured the place where Crooked had destroyed the last of the gods, but Kellick took my daughter Sanasu and retreated farther into the domains of men until he could find enough allies to fight back. While we owned the castle again, Saqri and I did what we could to strengthen our inner flames, but we knew that without heirs we only delayed the inevitable. Eventually the humans overwhelmed us and forced us back out again, slaughtering so many of our folk that we gave a great deal of our remaining strength to creating the Mantle, a cloak of twilight that would discourage men from following us into our lands. And so we have lived these last years.
Now the queen and I are both dying. I have loaned her what strength I could while we waited to see how this… he lifted up the mirror… gamble called the Pact of the Glass played out. But it is not enough. She will not wake again. Unless I give her what little I have left of myself. Unless I give her my life.
Barrick sat, shocked. "You would have to give your life for her? But that wouldn't help anything."
In any other situation that would be true, but the ways of the Fireflower are complicated and subtle. There might yet be a way to stave off the inevitable end of our line-at least for a little while longer. Perhaps that is what Yasammez thought when she sent you to me. I would like to think she had some intention other than to mock me.
"I… I don't understand, my lord."
Of course not-how could you? Your people have hidden the truth of what happened. But still, at times in your young life you must have wondered, perhaps sensed that something was… wrong…
Barrick was beginning to feel a chill now, as if fever was rolling through him. "Wrong with me? Are you talking about me?"
You, your father, and anyone else who has ever carried the painful, confusing legacy of the Fireflower as it burns in human veins. Yes, my child, I am talking about you. You are a descendant of my daughter, Sanasu, and the blood runs strong in you. In a way, you are my grandson.
Barrick stared at him. His heart was pounding so swiftly that he felt dizzy. "I'm… one of the Twilight People?"
No, you are less than that… and also more. You have the blood of the Highest in you, but to this hour it has brought you only sorrow. Now, however, it might make you the last hope of our ancient people-but only if you make a great sacrifice. You can let me pass the Fireflower itself along to you.
Barrick could not make sense of it. He stared. The king's calm face looked just as it had looked an hour earlier, before he had said these things which turned all the world upside down. "You… you want to give this Fireflower to… to me? "
To keep the queen alive a little longer, I will need to lend her my last strength. If I can pass the Fireflower along to you-and it may not be possible-that legacy at least will survive. But even if you survive it, Barrick Eddon, you will never be remotely the same again.
"But if you do that, what… what will happen to you?"
For the first time in a long while, Ynnir smiled-a thin, weary tightening of the lips. Oh, child, of course I will die.