Shadowrise (79 page)

“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.”

“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.