When they came out of the darkness at last it was not in martial procession like the Rooftoppers, but in a small group—Yasammez, dark as a crow’s wing, her chief eremite Aesi’uah (the name drifted into Barrick’s thoughts like an echo), and two hulking shapes—
Deep Ettins
, the Fireflower whispered to Barrick, the largest of them no less important a figure than Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps.
For a moment Saqri and her many-times-great-aunt only stood looking at each other, then Saqri stepped toward her and extended her hands to Yasammez. Their fingers met and they both stopped again, but what passed between them was deeper than any embrace. It went on and on, a river of meaning passing silently between them.
Barrick watched, unmoving. Rafe the Skimmer caught his eye and grinned as if this momentous reunion were some kind of surprise the Skimmer youth had arranged all by himself. The giant Hammerfoot’s expression was harder to read, even with the whispers of insight that flooded Barrick’s skull, but it was not hard to see dislike and distrust in the creature’s deep-sunken eyes and sour expression.
Saqri and Yasammez finally stepped away from each other, so Barrick could compare them side-by-side. The family resemblance was unmistakable, but so were the differences: although at first glance neither of them looked to be out of the prime of womanhood, Saqri had a softer, more rounded face. Yasammez had the look of a predator, her nose strong, her cheekbones high and sharp, her eyes tilted up at the outer corners as if she stood in a perpetual wind. Her black armor—she wore every piece except a helmet—added to her dangerous appearance.
Now she looked Barrick up and down. “I could not have believed that the Book could contain such a strange chapter, yet here you are again.” Yasammez spoke aloud, each word like the chime of cold steel. “I had meant only to show Ynnir what the sacred Fireflower had come to in the veins of mortal murderers, but he has bested me again. The Lord of Winds and Thought must be the cleverest coward who ever lived.”
“He is no coward,” Saqri said calmly, “and it is too soon to assess what he has done, but it seems premature to judge his actions.”
“You always had a soft spot for your brother,” Yasammez said. “Even when I told you he would bring destruction on all our line. Can you pretend I was wrong?”
“As I said, it seems too early to judge.” Saqri bowed her head for a moment. “But I would prefer not to argue with you in any case, my great and beloved. Let us see what we have and what we may yet do. Later there will be time to talk of who was right and who was wrong.”
Yasammez could not have made her distaste for this more plain, but still her pale face remained as expressionless as a mask beneath her tangle of dark hair. “Later there may be time only to die,” Yasammez said. “However, that is not the way to greet kin, and not the way I wish to greet you, my only heart.” And without saying anything more she turned and walked away into the shadows. After a moment, Saqri and Barrick followed.
“I’ll just go and tell my folk that it’s all begun, shall I?” Rafe called after them. “Tell them to send folks as like to flap lips to join the war council.”
Barrick didn’t know what to say, and none of the Qar seemed to feel a need to reply.
“Right, so,” said the Skimmer cheerfully. “I’ll get to it, then.”
They were beneath Southmarch—beneath even Funderling Town! Barrick had never suspected there was anything beneath the Funderlings’ underground city except stone. Surely they must be in the very roots of the earth now!
As Barrick sat on cushions on the floor of Yasammez’ tent, with Saqri and the tent’s mistress again locked in deep, silent communication, he could feel the whole history of the place, or at least as much history as was known to the last Qar who walked the same earth as the gods did. He knew that Kernios—Earth Father—had met his end here at the hands of Crooked, the clever god whom mortals called Kupilas. He knew that the cavern in which this tent stood, surrounded by the Qar camp, had once been known as “Glittering Delights,” and had served as the garden of Immon, the gatekeeper, although that version of the cavern was no longer visible (or at least only appeared at extremely irregular intervals.)
Saqri sat up straighter. She had put on something more martial, a less spiny version of the armor Yasammez wore, its cream-colored plates trimmed with different shades of gray and blue. “I do not know why you still keep so much hidden from me,” Saqri said, and the fact that Barrick heard her say it was evidence that she wanted it heard.
“Because you are not yet yourself.” Yasammez’ tone was stern but Barrick’s deepened understanding could also detect a note of unhappy need—almost a plea.
“May I know the subject?” he asked. “Perhaps Lady Yasammez—to whom I am grateful for having my life spared, of course—now thinks I would have been better off as a dead example than as a live prince. But I am here, and for better or worse your Fireflower now burns in my veins—
mine
, Lady. So please, talk to me if you value my goodwill. I grow tired of wondering what’s afoot.”
Saqri actually smiled, although it might have been purely perfunctory. “Wait only a few moments more—talking, in large part for your benefit, Barrick Eddon, is just what we are about to do. . . .”
Even as she said it, folk began filing into the large tent, silent and watchful as deer, although with some the silence was distinctly more threatening. Elementals swathed in runecloths but still leaking radiance, bright-eyed Tricksters, Changers, Stone Circle People (each of whom might have been the twin of little Harsar back in Qul-na-Qar) goblins and drows and Mountain Korbols all entered in groups of two or three and spread themselves along the perimeter of the tent. They were followed by a contingent of Skimmers. Rafe was one of them, and he was carrying the box from his boat. Although the light in the tent was dim, Barrick could see at least a dozen Rooftoppers standing at the rail of the box like passengers on a ship watching for the approaching shore.
But where are the Funderlings?
he wondered.
“Hear me!” a loud, clear voice said from behind them in the ordinary tongue of Southmarch mortals. It was Aesi’uah, Yasammez’s chief eremite, but her mistress did not even look up as the counselor spoke. “On behalf of my lady Yasammez, I bid you lay down your weapons and your feuds—all peaceful folk have safe welcome in this house.” The words echoed in Barrick’s mind, a time-lost traditional greeting, a memory of more warlike days that now seemed to have come again.
“The Autarch Sulepis’ army is outside the castle walls,” Aesi’uah continued. “He has brought machines the world has not seen since the gods’ day, great guns that smash the stone like a hammer. He has bred monsters. He has even bred living children of the Exile to use like beasts, all so that he can raise the god he thinks is Whitefire—Sulepis calls him Nushash—from eternal sleep and force him to wield his matchless strength on the autarch’s behalf.” She bowed her head for a moment. “He has studied and prepared carefully. We believe he has the power to do just what he intends.”
“But how could he command a god even if he could wake one?” said a Skimmer man, standing up. “Egye-var speaks to us through the sisters and the Scale, but we could no more tame him than we could tame the watery ocean itself.”
“The southerner believes he has a way to force the god to do his bidding,” said Saqri, speaking up from her seat beside Yasammez. “The ripples of his exploration—with apologies to Turley Longfingers and his beloved ocean—could be felt in the Deep Library, and even by some of the more sensitive still among the living.” She paused in an odd way, and Barrick suddenly sensed that she spoke of herself—that her own long, long sleep and the dreams that had come with it had not always been peaceful or pleasant. “We do not know how this mortal plans to control a god, but we believe after everything else he has done, it would be foolish to assume he cannot accomplish it.”
“So, if it pleases my fellow monarchs,” little Queen Upsteeplebat called out through her speaking-trumpet, “what is the point of our all being here? The autarch has already plunged down past these halls and is moving in the deeps with his men, forcing his way downward to the Funderlings’ sacred place—to the Shining Man.”
“It is
not
only the Funderlings’ sacred place,” said Saqri. “No matter which gods we chose to follow, he who is prisoned in the Shining Man saved us all from continuing enslavement. Without him, the gods would yet rule us.”
“Would that have been so bad, Mistress?” asked Turley the Skimmer. “Our god speaks often-like to us and it’s done us naught but good.”
“It could be that you misremember what it was like when the sea god could take a more active interest in things,” Saqri said. “But I will grant that he was always the most peaceful of the brothers—his power came not just from his strength but also from his wisdom. In any case, it is not the return of the gods we fear, though it is something worth fearing, as much as the more frightful idea of a mortal madman controlling an immortal’s power.”
Aesi’uah spoke again, relating things Barrick had already heard but with new details which had clearly been learned only recently, like the story of the autarch’s visit to M’Helan’s Rock and conversation with Hendon Tolly, which the Dreamless woman now reported word for word in her calm, clear voice. She, and occasionally Saqri, also spoke of things Barrick had not heard, or had heard only imperfectly, retelling the tale of Crooked and his destruction of the gods in such a way that it seemed almost entirely different from the version the raven Skurn had told him, full of strange details which raised quiet Fireflower echoes in his thoughts.
From time to time the Skimmers and the tiny people called Rooftoppers chimed in as well, and Barrick began to grasp how little he had truly known about his father’s kingdom, especially its capitol, when he lived in Southmarch.
“A question occurs to us,” Queen Upsteeplebat said at last. “Where are the Funderlings? Where are the stonecutters? The children of Egye-Var are here, as are those of us who worship the Lord of the Peak. . . .” She gestured to her Rooftoppers. “But where are the minions of old Karisnovois, King of the Mud and the Rock?”
Aesi’uah turned to look at her mistress, Yasammez, but it was Saqri the queen who spoke instead.
“That is part of the reason we are here,” Saqri told her. “The Funderlings are at this moment far below us, fighting to protect the deep place they call the Mysteries from the autarch and his thousands—the place we call Ancestor’s Blood.”
“What do you mean, fighting? Below us?” Barrick didn’t like the sound of that at all. “We sit here talking when this autarch is already in the depths?”
Yasammez stirred. “Too late to pretend innocence, last bearer,” she told Barrick coldly. “Come out and speak or hold your peace.” After this cryptic remark, she stared at him for a long moment, then lowered her dark, dark eyes once more.
“We would hear the answer that this young man seeks,” said Upsteeplebat. “But first we would know his name.”
It was bizarre for Barrick to realize he could be in a meeting of nearly a hundred souls in his own castle—or at least beneath it—but not be recognized. He bowed toward the tiny, handsome woman. “I am Barrick Eddon, son of King Olin, Majesty. I am a prince . . . now the only prince . . . of Southmarch.”
The murmur of surprise that rose seemed laced with more than a few angry mutters. Most of the latter seemed to be coming from the Skimmers. Turley, their leader, turned to Barrick with a worried look.
“Your pardon that we didn’t recognize you, Prince Barrick. My daughter speaks well of your family—especially your sister, whom she helped leave the castle.”
“My sister? Briony?” It had taken a moment for his sister’s name to come to him. Briony seemed . . .
diminished
now, somehow, her place in his memory and thoughts smaller than it had been in the past, as though a mist had flowed between them. “Is she truly here?”
“She lives,” said Saqri. “But I cannot discover where she is. These days the restlessness of the sleeping gods disrupts all the gifts of Grandmother Void, but what have become most difficult are far-seeing and far-talking.” She spread her hands—
The Sea is Calm.
“Later I will tell you all I know . . . but right now we have more pressing matters than even sisters and brothers.” She looked at Yasammez as though she would say something to her ancestor, but then turned back to the rest of those watching. “The Funderlings and the men who fight with them are far below us in the place they call the Maze, making a stand against Sulepis and all his men and monsters. The hour is fast dying when we can still help them directly. Thus we come to what we think will be the final struggle.”
“But that is why we have joined together,” said Upsteeplebat through her speaking-trumpet. The tent quieted so everyone could hear her. “The Exiles and the Firstborn, the commoners and the high ones of the Fireflower—we have joined together to fight for our home. Why do we waste time talking?” She pulled a tiny streak of silver from a sheath and lifted it high. “I pledge my sword as a token of my people’s willingness to risk their lives in the service of this goal.”
The roar of shrill cheers from the box was drowned out by Turley Longfingers, who rose yet again to say, “All well and good, but why should we? What benefits
our
clans when we could be away before the next tide and find elsewhere to fish and ply our crafts?”
“There is more to a decision to fight with us . . .” Saqri began, but Yasammez abruptly rose to her feet beside her, swift and ominous as a black cloud scudding in from the horizon.
“The water-man is right that this is no fight for his people,” Yassamez declared, “but he is wrong about the reason.” She looked around the room from her thicket of armored spikes, her anger almost visible. Some of the mortals actually cringed as her gaze touched them. “The reason the Skimmers should not fight—that
none
of you should fight—is because there is no point. Victory cannot be snatched from the jaws of this failure because these are the final moments of the Long Defeat. Ancient apologies should be made and accepted by those . . .” she looked directly at Saqri,” . . . who believe in such things. But the rest of you might just as well return to your families to spend your last hours with them. There is no cure for this disease. There is nothing ahead of us but death.” Her long pale fingers rose to the ember-red stone on her breast. “So I declare as holder of the Seal of War.” She said this not in anger, but with calm and horrifying certainty. “Those who ignore me will learn soon enough that I speak the truth.”