Shadowheart (79 page)

Spin, sweep with his sword to catch an enemy’s hamstring, step on the man’s throat as he went down, and then direct the spear thrust of another away with his arm-shield. Barrick found himself shifting deeper and deeper into an unthinking dance, as if he were nothing but a line of heat passing through the cavern in a complicated filigree of motion, like the mark a burning brand swirling through the night air could leave on the eyes for moments after the torch itself had passed. But although he nearly lost himself in the wash of sensation, the rush of memory, and the demanding movements, he could not ignore the fact that as many of the enemy as he killed or disabled, and as many of them as his comrades destroyed, still more were always coming, flowing into the passage from either direction like the immense weight of seawater that must surround the land beyond these stony depths.

Might as well try to kill the sea itself.
Saqri, where are you?

Here, manchild. Behind you and nearer to the southerners who had already passed through the cavern, but now have come back to join the entertainment.
There was a wicked joy to her thoughts he had not sensed before—war agreed with her, it seemed.

He had no idea what she meant.
But what do we do?

We persevere.
It wasn’t words but a feeling, the immensity of Qar suffering and the immensity of Qar stubbornness encapsulated in a single impression of resigned struggle.
But remember, we do not need to defeat all these men; we only need to cross the cavern and enter the far passage. Then we will leave them behind to toil down the tunnels like ants while we drop from the sky upon their leaders!

She’s mad,
Barrick thought as he fought for his life.
This place has driven her mad.
His loneliness, so much a part of him that he seldom noticed it anymore, rose up and threatened to choke him. Only the urging of the Fireflower voices reminded him that life still continued—a life that the two southern soldiers rushing toward him wanted to end.

Shark’s Fin.
Catch the attack on the hilt of his sword. Spin into a two-handed slash, driving one man back long enough for Barrick to get his arm-shield up in the other’s face. Rip with the dagger. Spin and block.

Shaso would have loved this
, he thought.
Hopeless odds. No choice but fight or die. And no time to argue . . .

He let himself step back into the dance again. After all, there was nothing else he could do. Several of the Xixian torches had fallen, and the shadows in the passage were widening, deepening.

Soon enough
, Barrick thought,
we’ll be fighting in utter darkness, like dead men struggling in their graves . . .

It was all Utta could do to hold the frail older woman down. Still in the grip of the dream, Merolanna struggled so determinedly that she almost threw the Zorian Sister across the room.
“No no no no . . . !”
the duchess moaned, slurring her words so that it was more like an animal sound than the voice of a dignified noblewoman.
“Let go they let go . . . !”

“Merolanna!” Utta leaned close to the duchess’ face so the woman could hear her even in the depths of whatever dream had seized her. “Merolanna! You’re having a nightmare! Wake up!”

“Don’t go! You can’t trust . . . he won’t ...” Her voice trailed off. For a moment she sat hunched in the bed, eyes closed as though she listened to some distant but important sound. Utta took the opportunity to pull the coverlet back up over Merolanna’s pale legs. “You can’t . . . !” the old woman said again, but this time with the confused sound of someone beginning to wake.

“All is well.” Utta let go of her and sat up, taking Merolanna’s cold hand in her own. “You have had a bad dream, Duchess. Wake up now and see that everything is well.”

“But it’s not.” Merolanna’s eyes fluttered open. She fixed Utta with a stare that was frightened but not the least bit groggy. “It’s not well. Nothing is well. He is coming for them.”

“He? Coming for . . . ?” Utta shook her head. “It was just a bad dream, dear. I told you. You were kicking like an angry horse.” She raised her hand to the side of her face, which was beginning to ache now. “Throwing your elbows around freely, too.”

“I am sorry.” But Merolanna looked as though Utta’s sore cheek was the last thing on her mind. “It was . . . it was not just a dream. It was too real. The gods sent it to me!”

Utta took a deep breath. “Do you want to tell me?”

“I . . . I’m not sure I can. It was so frightening, that’s what I remember most.”

Utta couldn’t help thinking the duchess actually looked better than she had in weeks; perhaps the excitement of the renewed fighting had actually revived her spirits a bit. Utta had seen it in older women who had seemed ready to die, but responded to conflict—not war, but a struggle of some other kind, family or money troubles. Some people turned their backs at such times and death quickly took them, but others—and perhaps Merolanna was one of them—seemed to come back like a flower saved by unseasonal rain.

“Just try.” Utta was awake now herself.
After midnight,
she thought. Outside, the cannons had finally stopped firing and the shouting had ended, at least until dawn when it would no doubt start again. Midsummer itself would clearly be another holy feast day spoiled by this endless war.

“It was Kerneia,” Merolanna said suddenly, as if she had been thinking about holy days, too. “That was it. It must have been, because the people were in the street, all dressed in black and waving bones. But it was the cart, the great holy cart that frightened me so. It was closed, as it always was, but there was something inside it. Something alive, hidden inside that great black wooden box that sits atop the cart. All up and down the street the ropes were being pulled tight to get the cart moving, but I was the only one that knew something was wrong—that it wasn’t just the god inside, but something worse, something . . . worse.” For a moment, it truly seemed to come back to her and Merolanna’s face twisted in a grimace of fear, but her gaze was distant: she was not seeing Utta or her own bedroom at all. “And all the children . . . there were children in the street! Little ones, I don’t think they even knew what was happening, you know how they are when they’re young. Just . . . excited. And the ropes creaked and the wheels creaked and that big black cart began to roll . . . The Kernios priests were all over the cart, sitting on top of it, hanging off the sides, but none of them saw the children! I was the only one who saw them!” Suddenly her eyes reddened and filled with tears. “I tried to tell them . . . ! I tried to say, ‘No, don’t, there are children in the way,’ but nobody could hear me!”

Now Utta took Merolanna’s other hand, too, and warmed them between hers while the woman snuffled quietly. “There. It’s all well. It was only a dream.”

“But it w-wasn’t . . . !” said Merolanna. “That’s the problem! It was too real, too . . . it wasn’t just a dream.”

“What do you mean, dear?” Utta wanted to go back to bed. In another few hours the fighting would start again, and she would spend another day waiting for a cannonball to collapse their small corner of the residence. She wasn’t even certain who was fighting whom anymore, and it was nearly impossible these days to find anyone who knew any more than she did. “You really should go back to sleep ...”

“It wasn’t a dream, Utta. It was a vision—the sort the oracles have. I know it. The children are in danger.
All
the children. The gods want me to save them!”

It was all Utta could do at this point to keep her temper. It was one thing to humor a sick old woman, or even to be her unpaid companion, another thing entirely to have to sit exhausted at her bedside in the middle of the night and listen to her comparing herself to the Blessed Zoria. “It sounds terrible, dear Merolanna. We’ll certainly talk about it in the morning. The gods know you need some sleep. ...”

And only the gods would be able to say whether the dowager duchess got any. In the early morning, when the return of daylight brought the first crash of gunfire and shouting, Sister Utta awoke to discover that sometime after she herself had fallen asleep again, Merolanna had got up, dressed herself, and vanished from the residence.

It seemed to Barrick he was fighting a hundred battles at once, battles of memory and battles of very present danger all pressed together into one head-splitting mass. He and the Qar survived surge after surge of Xixian troops, which kept pouring inward from either end of the main passage as though a river of soldiers had flooded its banks.

He found the queen resting for a moment, which showed how long they had been fighting. He had never seen the Qar anything but tireless, although he knew from the Fireflower voices that they could indeed grow weary. She was protected by Hammerfoot’s huge son, who had reddish, bumpy skin like crumbled bricks. The Ettin turned at Barrick’s approach and nearly took his head off with a swipe of his rocky hand.

“Peace, Singscrape,” Saqri told him. “It is the manchild.”

“What makes you think I didn’t know that?” asked the giant.

“Why doesn’t Yasammez fight?” Barrick demanded. “And where are the Elementals? They could paint this whole cavern with fire and we’d drive these southern animals out in a moment.”

“The Elementals . . . are not under my control at the moment.”

Shocked as he was, Barrick could also feel a history of discontent and wounded fellowship, but Saqri was hiding her darkest thoughts from him. The Fireflower had fallen almost entirely silent. “And Yasammez . . . ?”

“She is too important to waste here, long before our greatest need. No, I need her strong.”

“But if we can’t get across this passage . . . !”

“We will. I have been waiting for the moment when our foes are most precariously balanced. Even as we speak, a confusion has fallen among the southerners coming down from behind. The Tricksters have distracted them. The Xixian archers in this room have also nearly run out of shafts. We have a short time to do what we must.”

And before Barrick could ask any more questions, Saqri sang out a single high-pitched note. Simultaneously, he could feel her in his thoughts, as did every other Qar creature in that part of the deeps.
“Now strike for the far side!”

From that moment on, Barrick Eddon had no more time to think. The Qar surged forward in what looked at first like a ragged and uncoordinated mass, but by the time the Xandian troops realized that it was very well coordinated indeed, the fairies had stabbed into the southerners on the far side of the cavern like a well-honed spear, with the monstrous Ettins and corpse-white Unforgiven at the forefront, spreading terror. The Xixians did their best to hold, their sergeants shrieking at them to dig in and not give up a step, but no pair or even trio of ordinary men could stand up against one of the Deep Ettins hand to hand, and now the giants were crashing through the Xixian lines together, their massive clubs and axes flailing. With each blow, one or two southerners were smashed to the cavern floor or tossed into the air, helpless as rabbits caught by a mastiff; those who fell were cut down by the Unforgiven or swarmed by the glowing Children of the Emerald Fire, who slit throats as easily as if they murdered oblivious, sleeping men.

Still, it was a near thing. Once the southerners had absorbed the shock of the new attack, they rushed back in from the sides even faster in an attempt to block the opposite passage with their own bodies and thus keep the Qar bottled in the main tunnel.

Barrick was fighting only a few paces behind Saqri now, doing his best to guard the queen’s back. She moved forward in perfect balance, blocking and then attacking with the precision of a temple priest enacting an ancient ritual, and the Fireflower voices inside him rejoiced and yet also fretted to see this queen, who to them was all queens, matching herself against warriors twice her bulk and still succeeding. Barrick could not watch her for longer than a moment or two without risk to his own life, but Saqri moved like a white flame, slipping in and out of the deepest shadows so swiftly and so brightly that at moments he thought he could see her swan form flickering about her.