“Not going in, us hopes,” croaked Skurn, tucking his wings. “Not into a Night Man house.”
“What else am I going to do? At least I might learn something about where Crooked’s Hall might be. Maybe I’ll even get something to eat that won’t have too many legs.”
“As you wishes, then.” The raven leaped up onto the rail of the slowly rocking boat and turned his back on Barrick. “Stay out here, us will. Not for us, a nasty mazy place like that.”
Like much of what Barrick had seen of the city of Sleep, the house of Qu’arus was as intricate as the interior of a seashell, a succession of mostly windowless hallways, the stone walls sometimes rough, sometimes smooth, but always damp. Moss grew on the gray stone and in certain corners water dripped to the floor to be carried away down shallow sluices, but the moss also grew on white marble statues of incredible delicacy, and the water gurgled down hallways next to sumptuous carpets that bore tangled yet beautiful designs in stark black and white. He could see all of this only because of the small, pearlescent green hemispheres set low in the walls and along some of the passageway floors, which Barrick assumed at first were some kind of luminous stones, but soon realized were actually mushrooms.
He caught up with the servants carrying Qu’arus’ body in the main hallway. The house was unpleasant, the near-silence disturbing, and the darkness oppressive. Had it not been for the changes the Sleepers had somehow made in him he would have been beside himself with unease—nothing could make him like this house: after only moments inside it he wanted badly to get out again. Still, he knew almost nothing of the city outside, let alone where he needed to go. What was it the Sleepers had told him?
“There is only one way you can reach the House of the People and the blind king before it is too late—you must find Crooked’s roads, which will fold your path before you so that you may step between the world’s walls. You must find the hall in Sleep that bears his name.”
Pick had not heard of a place called Crooked’s Hall, but perhaps some of the other servants might know of it. He hoped so—Barrick couldn’t imagine interrupting the mourning of the stony-faced lady of the house to ask directions.
In the past he might have despaired, but now he felt the new strength in his crippled arm, the way it moved without pain. He thought,
Anything is possible. I am a story now, like Anglin the Islander, and no one can say what the ending will be—not even these unsleeping monstrosities . . .
“Come with me!” Pick had turned away from the others and was tugging on Barrick’s arm. “We’ll go to the servant quarters. You will be less obvious there.”
“Less obvious? I thought they were used to Sunlanders.”
Pick hurried him down a spiraling hallway. “Things are . . . strange here. Different than I expected.”
“The master of the house is dead. What did you think to find, a celebration? ”
They coiled around and down, passing through a garden of pale fronds, dozens of plants that looked as though they should grow at the bottom of a stream. It might have been the light of the mushrooms, but nothing in the house seemed to have any color.
“In here,” said Pick, opening a heavy wooden door and hurrying Barrick through into a huge, low-ceilinged room. The air had a curious, sour stench, but for the first time in Sleep he found himself in something like natural light—the red and yellow flicker of a large fire burning at the center of a wide stone expanse surrounded by what looked like an empty moat. Confined by this stone ditch, draped over logs and perched on piles of stones, were a dozen or more huge black lizards, each the size of a hunting hound.
“By the Three, I thought you said servants’ quarters!”
Pick pulled at his arm again. “We share the fire. The Dreamless do not care for too much warmth and light. See?”
At the far side of the wide chamber something close to a dozen man-shaped figures sat huddled together in the shadows. Like his guide, they all wore clothes made of rags and patches, and for the first time Barrick realized that Pick did not dress that way by choice: the human servants had clearly been given household rags and had made their own clothes from them. Despite the stinking heat of the room he felt a chill. “I thought you said Qu’arus valued his Sunlanders.”
“He did! No other Dreamless will even have them.”
Barrick whirled on the tattered man. “You told me our kind were common here.”
Pick looked frightened. “In the house of Qu’arus, we are.”
“You lied to me.”
“I . . . I did not tell you all the truth. I was afraid to return alone.” He lowered his voice. “Please, don’t be angry with me, friend.”
Barrick could only stare at the man in astonishment. He wanted to strike the miserable creature, but reminded himself that things could have been much worse: at least he had happened onto perhaps the one house in all Sleep where he could enter without being murdered.
One of the figures along the wall stirred. “Who’s that with you, Beck? ”
Barrick raised an eyebrow. “Beck? So you did not even tell me your true name?”
“ ‘Pick’ is how Master says it—that is what he calls me. I did not lie.”
“Who have you brought?” the man in the corner asked again. “Come where we can see you.”
The man apparently called Beck made his way over to the others. As they whispered among themselves, Barrick shook his head and followed. The other sunlanders sat on loose straw, which they had piled together in one place to make a sort of nest. Except for the one who was talking with Beck, the rest looked as though they were half asleep, their eyes empty, their faces slack; a few looked up incuriously as Barrick approached but the rest did not even raise their eyes.
“Ah, the water flows thinner now, I see,” said the bearded man beside Beck. He looked Barrick up and down from beneath long, straggling brows. “And the birds fly farther.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Barrick demanded, settling down into the straw. The stranger had a long, wispy gray beard and the lines in his face looked as deep as if they had been carved with a knife in soft wood.
“That the gods see all.” The old man nodded briskly. “All they see will be.”
“Finlae used to be a priest,” Beck said. “He knows a lot of things.”
“I know too much,” Finlae said. “That is why the gods shot an arrow into my brain to set my thoughts on fire. Because I saw their tricks and sang the stories for the people. I warned them. But they laughed and threw stones and bones. Stones and bones!”
Barrick shook his head. Small wonder that Beck had lied to bring him back—the company of this old madman must become rather unfulfilling after a while. He looked at the other servants—or slaves, to put the right name on it—and saw little in the way of intelligence in their staring eyes. If they had been bred like cattle, as Beck had suggested, then the breeder had done his work well. They seemed as stupidly placid as any barn full of milkers.
“Where is Marwin?” Beck asked.
Finlae shook his head. “Carrying jugs and jars up from the cellar. All day the lady was weeping, but only I could hear it. And now they prepare the feast. To send the master’s soul to the other side on tears and smoke.” He turned and fixed Barrick with his weirdly bright eyes. “You have traveled sleeping to the between. He will travel sleepless to the beyond.”
Barrick let his head ease back against the wall and closed his eyes. All he wanted to do was rest, perhaps sleep for a few hours, and then leave this den of madmen behind. Nothing here would help him—certainly not Beck or the demented old creature named Finlae.
He came struggling up out of the darkness when he felt a touch on his face—his hand, his injured hand, shot up and grabbed. Somebody—Beck, he realized, it was Beck—whimpered with pain.
“Don’t . . . hurt me.”
“Why did you touch me?”
“I . . . I know you.”
He opened his eyes wide. Beck was cowering down on the straw. Old Finlae had fallen asleep. “What are you talking about? Of course you know me—I came here with you.”
“I know you . . . from before. What is your name?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why should I tell you?”
“I know you! I have seen you before. We have . . . I think we have met. In . . . in the
before
. . .”
He realized he was still squeezing Beck’s fingers in his own, hard enough that the other man was grimacing in pain. He let go. “In the before? You mean before you came here?” It was possible, he supposed. It was not as though he had been unknown in the world on the other side of the Shadowline. And what harm was there in admitting it now? “My name is Barrick. Barrick Eddon. Do you still think you know me?”
A look of nothing less than gratitude swept across the other man’s face. “By the gods, yes! I remember! You are . . . you are the prince! By the Three, yes, you are the prince!”
“Not so loud! Yes, I am.” But it was strange—he did not feel much like it. In the past, for all his unhappiness, he had never doubted that he was the son of a king. Now it seemed to be someone else’s life, a story he had heard but never lived himself.
“You and your sister . . .” Beck flapped his hands in excitement. “You spoke to me. You asked me questions. After the first time . . .” His face fell. “After the first time I saw the Twilight folk.”
“If you say so.” Barrick had no recollection of the man.
“Do you truly not remember? My name . . .” he paused, squinting. Clearly he had not summoned the memory in some time. “My name is Raemon Beck.”
The name meant nothing to him, but Barrick liked it better that way: he wanted no more reminders of the past. He could remember quite a bit from what Beck called “the before”—names, faces—but the memories were distant and curiously flat, with little feeling attached to them, like the diminished ache of a very old wound. Even thoughts of his sister, which seemed as though they should mean more, seemed instead to be something that had been stored so long it had lost all savor. And Barrick was more than content to leave things that way.
“What are those creatures?” he asked suddenly, pointing at the black lizards, which lay clustered around the flames in the center of their pit like Kernios’ slaves in the underworld. “Why are they here?”
“Salamanders—fire lizards. They are Master’s pets. He likes . . . he liked to feed them.”
Better than he fed you, I’ll wager,
Barrick thought but did not say.
Raemon Beck had more questions about how the prince had crossed the Shadowline, but Barrick would not be drawn into idle talk and eventually Beck gave up; soon the only sound was the crackling of the fire and old Finlae’s thin snoring.
In his dream—for it must be a dream, he realized, even though he did not remember falling asleep—the lizard’s eyes were as bright as the flames around it. The black-armored creature sat not beside the fire but
in
it, crouched in a split log that burned and blackened in the depths of the blaze.
“Who are you that comes here without Tile or Pool?”
it asked him in a voice like music.
“I am a prince, son of a king,” he told the creature.
“No, you are an ant, son of another ant,”
the salamander lazily informed him.
“An insect with the gift of a little power coursing in your veins, but still an insect for all that. Hurrying here and there, soon to die. Perhaps you will see my return. That will be a glory that might lend your small life some meaning.”
He wanted to curse this cruel, arrogant creature, but the lizard’s stare held him prisoner, as helpless as if he truly were the small, creeping thing it had named him. His heart felt cold in his chest. “What are you?”
“I am and I always was. Names do not matter to my kind. We know who we are. It is only your kind, with blinkered senses and swift lives, who insist on the tyranny of names. But no matter what your wise ones believe, you cannot command something simply by naming it.”
“If we matter so little, why are you talking to me?”
“Because you are a curiosity, and although I do not have long to wait now, I have been forced to remain idle for longer than I would like. I am bored, and even a crawling ant can provide amusement.”
Its tail whipped a little from side to side, knocking up a spray of sparks. The crackling of the fire seemed to be getting louder—Barrick could barely hear the last of the salamander’s words.
“I would kill you if I could,” he told the creature.
The laugh was as beautiful as the voice, singing and silvery.
“Can you kill the darkness? Can you destroy the solid earth or murder a flame? Ah, you entertain me most graciously . . .”
But now the noise of the blaze had become as loud as someone else speaking—no, more than one person. The fire spoke with several voices, the tongues of reddish light leaping up and enveloping the black lizard completely.
“ . . . When a poor man is trying to sleep,” one of the voices said. “Burbling and bubbling.”
“Shut your mouth, Finlae,” Beck said.
“But why would they want to do that?” said a voice Barrick hadn’t heard before. “They do no harm . . .”
Barrick opened his eyes. Raemon Beck and ancient Finlae were talking to a third man, a large fellow with his hair chopped in uneven swathes like hastily-cut hay.
“You misheard,” Beck told the newcomer, then saw Barrick sitting up. “This is Marwin.”
“I
knew
someone named Marwin,” the big man said slowly. He had an accent a little like what Barrick had heard of Qu’arus. “That’s all I said. Could be it was me, but I can’t remember.”
“Exactly,” Beck said. “Your memory is bad and your ears aren’t much better, so you must have been mistaken about what you heard just now.”
The new man turned to Barrick. “I’m not. Mistook, that is. They were talking about them lizards—Master’s sons and Master’s brother, they were talking to the mistress. ‘Then get rid of them,’ she says. ‘I can’t stand the way they smell or the way they talk.’ Then the menfolk went to get clubs and spears.”