“I am sorry to keep you waiting, Princess.” As Eneas emerged from the back of the scriptorium Briony had a momentary view of a legion of beetle-black scribing priests sitting side by side at the long tables, hard at work. “And even more sorry to keep you waiting at such an unhappy time. There is no way I can express my sorrow and shame that such things should happen in my father’s court—and twice! Please, how is the Lady e’Doursos?”
“She will live, thank the gods, that is what the physician told me . . . but she will be a long while getting better.” Briony fought back tears for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few hours. She was so tired she felt as though she were made from frail glass. “It was a near thing. I sat up with her all the night as she passed in and out of her fever. I thought many times we would lose her, but it seems the sharpened piece of the clasp only barely pierced her, or it might have been the poison was weak.” Briony still could not guess who had tried to murder her this time. Surely Jenkin Crowel had been frightened out of trying such tricks again, but if it hadn’t been the Tollys’ envoy then who could be behind it?
“We must praise the Three Brothers for that blessed bit of good fortune, then.” Eneas offered Briony his arm. “Will you walk with me? I am mightily tired of the sound of pens scratching. I have been sending letters to every garrison between here and Hierosol about the autarch’s attack. A damnable amount of work.” He colored a little. “Not that I had to do all the copying myself, thank the gods!” He was speaking swiftly now, as though afraid to let silence fall. “I must get one of those writing machines the pamphleteers and poets use—or stamping machine, I suppose it should be called, for they work by stamping out letters and words as a royal seal stamps signs into wax. It would certainly speed the giving of orders to our field commanders . . .” He shook his head. “Listen to me, prattling on when you have just survived an attack on your life!”
“An attack that harmed me not at all.”
He frowned. “You say that as though you wish it had succeeded.”
Briony shook her head, although even such small movements felt nearly beyond her strength. “I don’t wish that, Prince Eneas, of course I don’t. But I feel terrible that others should suffer on my behalf.”
“You are an admirable woman, Briony Eddon. I promise that I will do everything I can to keep you safe. I will send more of my guards. There are no more loyal men in all Syan.”
“I’m sure of that, Highness,” she said. “But even the finest soldiers are scant protection against poison.”
He seemed more upset than Briony was herself. “Still, we must do
something
. This is an outrage, Princess—a deadly insult to my father’s name and throne. Here in our own court!” He turned then, stopping them in the middle of the path, and took her right hand in both of his. “And it is especially disheartening to me, Briony Eddon, because I hold you in such high regard. There is nothing I would not do for you.”
She blinked. His hands were warm. He had taken his gloves off.
“Surely you are not surprised.” The prince looked troubled. “Was I so foolish as to be completely wrong when I supposed you might also have some feelings for me?”
Briony held her breath for a moment. She had been working toward this moment for weeks, but now she was confused. Eneas
was
admirable, kind, and clever. Everyone knew he was brave. And, as she looked at him now, she saw his strong, even features and knew that although he was no godlike beauty, any woman would be glad to have him even were he not the prince and heir of mighty Syan. But he was. And she needed his position and his power desperately to save her people, her family’s throne. So why did she suddenly feel confounded and tongue-tied?
“I have struck you silent, Princess. You are not the type to be silent in the presence of men. I fear that I have offended you in some way.”
“No. No, your Royal Highness—Prince Eneas—you have done me great honor.” For a moment her imposture and the truth of her heart were so close she could not tell one from the other. “I think a great deal of you. I think you are the most admirable man in this whole great kingdom . . .”
He gently tugged his hand away from her, disguising his unhappiness a little by pushing his dark hair back from his forehead. “ ‘But,’ you are about to say. But there is someone else to whom your heart has already been given—maybe your troth even plighted in the temple.”
“No!” But it wasn’t completely untrue—she
did
have feelings for someone else, as confusing and inappropriate and even ridiculous as those feelings might be. But that person could not save her kingdom. Eneas could—if any human agency could perform such a task. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that . . . I cannot let myself have feelings for anyone, even someone like you, though you are the dream of any sensible woman. I cannot.” She tried to pull away, caught in the moment like a leaf scudding on the wind.
“But why?” Eneas would not let her go. He was strong. He would be masterful for anyone, she sensed—especially any woman—who wanted to be mastered. “Why can’t you let your heart lead you?”
She had planned just such a moment—imagined it almost gleefully, as a hunter might dream of the moment the stag stood exposed and unaware on a hillside, breast vulnerable to the killing shaft. Now that it had come, though, it filled her with unease. How could she take advantage of a good man this way, even to save her family’s throne? How could she pretend to love him just to gain his help?
Even worse, what if she was not pretending?
“I . . . I must think,” she said. “I had not expected anything like this. I had hoped to find allies here in your father’s court against my family’s enemies, the usurping Tollys. I had not expected to f ind . . . someone I could care for. I must think.” She looked off across the ordered rows of the garden. Distant figures acted out their own dramas, too far away to be recognized—each of them, herself included, as helpless in their actions as characters created out of air and smoke by Nevin Hewney or Finn Teodoros, ideas committed to paper and performed for the price of a night’s food and lodging. How had she come to such a strange pass? Was she the player or the thing being played?
“Of course,” Eneas said at last. The prince could not disguise the heaviness of his words. “ ’Of course I will give you time, my lady. You must be true to yourself.”
She should have slept like the dead that night, but instead she rolled and tossed through more nightmares of tunnels collapsing and dirt always beneath her fingers. This time there was no silvery shape to lead her, and the longer the dreams went on the farther down into choking darkness she went.
At last she found herself in a deep place, so deep that she understood somehow she had dug out on the other side of the world, that what lay beyond the small patch of ground on which she stood was the empty blackness of a sky with no stars, a blackness into which a single misstep could send her tumbling forever. And there, at the center of that dark otherness, she found her brother.
He was pale, senseless, as he had been before. He lay stretched before her as Kendrick had lain while the servants prepared him for burial, but Barrick was not dead. She did not know how she knew it, but she did.
The three shapes that crouched over him were no servants or funerary priests but something else entirely—dark, eyeless shadows singing wordless songs as they moved their hands above him. Then one of them lifted Barrick’s crippled arm up to the emptiness of its face and her brother began to fade.
Tears,
one of the shapes whispered, and the echo was swallowed by the damp, dark earth all around.
Spittle,
said another.
Blood,
said a third.
She tried to call to her twin, to wake him and warn him about what these terrible specters were doing, but she could not. She felt the change spreading through Barrick like flame, a train of fire from his arm to his head and heart that was also a spreading, burning agony through her own body. She tried to throw herself forward, but some invisible hand held her back.
Barrick!
Her cries seemed all but silent.
Barrick! Come back! Don’t let them take you!
And at the last, just before the thing of cobweb shadows that had been her brother grew too dim to see, Barrick opened his eyes and looked at her. His stare was empty, utterly dead and empty.
She woke up choking on her own tears, feeling as though the most important part of her had been cut out with a dull knife. For long moments she could only lie on her bed sobbing helplessly.
Barrick . . .
Would she truly never see him again? The dream had felt so terrible, so final. Had something happened to him—something bad? Was he . . . ?
“Oh, gods, no . . . !” she moaned.
Briony dragged herself up. She could not even bear to think of the possibility. These dreams—the nightmares—they were stalking her as though she were their prey. Would she never sleep again without seeing some parade of horror? So tired that she could barely set one foot in front of the other, she stumbled to the chest she had brought with her from her time with the players, the locked box with the clothes she had worn and the few small objects she had picked up on her journey south.
Briony opened the lid and began digging through it, scattering the boy’s breeches she had worn and the pamphlets that had been handed to her, not even knowing what she sought until her fingers closed on it and she felt the fragile bird’s skull and the tiny dry flowers.
Lisiya’s charm in her hands, she crawled back across her dark chamber and into bed. She held the charm tightly to her breast and tried not to think of the dream-Barrick’s dead eyes. One of the maids whimpered a little in her sleep, and that was the last thing she remembered before the dark took her again.
She was in the forest once more, but this time she could see the thing she had been chasing so long. It was a fox, black on the underside but tipped all over its back with silver, and silver on its tail and sharp face as well. As it sped away it looked back at her, teeth bared in a grin that might have been fatigue but seemed more like mockery. Except for a thin ring of orange, the creature’s eyes were as black as its belly.
The fox leaped over the roots effortlessly, but even in her dream Briony could not move with such liquid ease. She must have stumbled, for she found herself falling forward, the trees suddenly turned into whirling torrents of black. For a moment she thought she was back in the terrible, crumbling earth, but then she passed through that spinning darkness into a forest glade. The silvery fox had stopped running and now crouched with its back to her in front of an ancient tumbled altar of stone.
Briony staggered up and fell to her knees. Things seemed curiously painful for a dream: she could feel twigs and rocks digging into her skin.
“Who . . . who are you?” she gasped.
The beast turned. This time there was no question: its grin was one of mockery and disgust. The fox shook its head. “I said it before and I’ll say it again—I fear for the breed.”
The little animal hopped lightly up onto the ruined altar and lowered its muzzle to sniff. Thunder rumbled distantly. “Look at this,” the fox said, and there was something familiar in the creature’s voice that cut through the fog of Briony’s dreaming thoughts. “Is this what people think of me, that my sacred places are left untended even
here?
Even in the dreamlands?”
“Lisiya?” Briony whispered. “Is that you?” But as soon as she said the name she knew it was true.
The fox turned; a moment later the black and silver beast had vanished and the old woman sat upon the altar, her gnarled bare feet dangling as if she were a child. “Lisiya Melana of the Silver Glade, do you mean?” she said with more than a trace of irritation. “Bad enough you summon a goddess and then fail to meet her, but to forget her name as well . . . !”
“But . . . but I did not summon you.”
“You most certainly did, child. Three nights running, although I could barely hear you the first few times. Weak as a newborn kitling’s, your voice was, but finally tonight I could hear you well enough to find you.” Thunder boomed again above the forest, as though mirroring Lisiya’s irritation.
Briony could not shake off the feeling that she was misunderstanding something. “I . . . I dreamed of you—or at least of chasing you. Through the forest. And through tunnels in the earth. But I did not see you before, only your . . . tail.”
Lisiya levered herself off the edge of the altar and dropped to the ground; Briony almost cringed, afraid the demigoddess’ bony old legs would snap like twigs. It was strange to feel so awake and yet to know she was dreaming! Other than a light-headed feeling such as came upon her when she had more wine than she should, she felt quite ordinary.
“Come along, child. I suppose it doesn’t matter why you summoned me. In your heart you must have known you needed my help.” Briony followed the demigoddess past the altar, out of the clearing, and into the trees. Thunder boomed again and a faint shimmer of lightning lit the sky overhead. “Restless,” Lisiya commented, but did not explain.
In many ways the journey through the forest was as dreamlike to Briony as the pursuit of Barrick through the crumbling earth, but it was maddeningly ordinary as well. She could feel every step, every breath, even a moment of discomfort when she scraped her arm against the trunk of an oak tree.
“Where are we?” she asked at last.
“At the moment? Or in some larger sense?” Lisiya was laboring along at a good pace and Briony had to hurry to keep up. “We are very close here to the lands of the dreaming gods—all the old gods that Crooked sent to sleep. Your kind call him Kupilas, of course. Even we didn’t always call him Crooked—that came after the three brothers and their clan tortured him. When Crooked was born he was named Brightshine—a son made by the dawn and the moonlight—you can guess why he was thought a beautiful child. No wonder he hated his uncles so much for what they did to him, let alone the tricks and cruelties and even murder they performed on the rest of his family.”