Even seated, the thing looked down on them. As Vansen approached, the bright, surprisingly small eyes watched unblinkingly.
“Antimony,” Vansen said quietly, “ask Browncoal to tell this creature that we come in peace to speak with the dark lady ...”
“You shall not need Master Kronyuul,” the giant said in a voice like stone dragged over stone. “As you see, I speak your tongue. The Lady Yasammez likes her generals to know our enemies well.” His chuckle sounded like a hammer pounding slate. He rose, towering far above even his tallest guards. “I am Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps, war-chief of the ettins. You are assassins.”
“No!” Vansen took a step back. “We come to parley ...”
“Why should she parley with you? We will sweep you all away in days, both above and below the ground, and you know it. You come in desperation, hoping to kill our general. Do not worry! You will have your chance . . . but only if you kill me first.”
“What?” Vansen took another step back. “Don’t you understand? We come to parley!”
“Here, take up your weapon,” Hammerfoot said. “Give him back his ax. I shall have none.” One of the drows staggered forward with the Funderling ax. Vansen took it, in part out of pity for the creature who had carried the heavy thing some distance, but he did not lift it.
“I will not fight you,” he told the giant.
“Come, even you Sunlanders are not such cowards, are you?” Hammerfoot rumbled, leaning forward until his immense, cracked-leather face was no higher than Vansen’s own. “I will even let you strike first. Are you still afraid? Your ancestors were not so hesitant at Qul-Girah, where they killed my grandfather with buckets of burning pitch. Does only water run in the veins of their descendants?”
From childhood, and even after, when he became a soldier, Vansen’s quiet calm and slowness to anger had often been mistaken for cowardice. Only his captain Donal Murroy had recognized the fire that burned inside, that Ferras Vansen was a man who would put up with nearly any provocation to avoid a meaningless fight, but would battle like a cornered animal when there was no other choice. Still, Vansen felt hot shame rush through him at Hammerfoot’s taunts and the harsh laughter of those Qar who could understsand what the giant said.
“Take me to the dark lady,” Vansen said again.
“Your path is through me,” Hammerfoot said. “Is it because you have left your armor behind?” The ettin peeled off his giant chestplate and let it drop to the cavern floor with a noise like a temple gong. “Come, Sunlander, come and die—or are you completely without honor?”
“Captain!” It was Antimony’s voice, fearful to the breaking point.
Everything in Ferras Vansen strained to take up the ax, to wipe the smirk off that great, leering face in a cascade of red—or whatever color a giant bled. He lifted the weapon, weighed it in his hands. Hammerfoot spread his massive arms to show he would not block the blow.
Vansen dropped the ax to the floor of the cavern. “I will not fight. If you will not take me to your mistress then you may as well kill me. I ask you only to let the Funderling monk return. Your Browncoal will tell you he came in good faith and only to translate.”
“I make no bargains with sunlanders ...” snarled Hammerfoot, raising his tree-stump fist over Vansen’s head.
“Do not kill him, Deep Delver,” a new voice called, icy as an Eimene wind. “Not yet.”
“Elders protect us,” Antimony murmured.
“Lady Yasammez!” Hammerfoot sounded surprised.
Vansen turned to see a small procession stepping down off the spiral track and onto the cavern floor. Leading it was someone he had never seen before but nevertheless recognized instantly. She was taller than Vansen himself and caparisoned in black plate armor. A long white sword, unsheathed and thrust through her belt as though it were merely a spare dagger, seemed to glow with a subtle light of its own. But it was the woman’s face that arrested him, stony as a ritual mask, hard as a figure carved atop a tomb. At first Vansen saw nothing alive in that face at all but the eyes, brilliant as slashes of fire. Then the fiery gaze narrowed and the thin lips curved in a mirthless smile and he saw that it was indeed a face, but one without kindness or sympathy.
“So many visitors today,” she said. “And all unwanted.” She came closer. Even when he closed his eyes Vansen could feel her nearness like the approach of a winter storm. Beside him, Antimony let out a noise that might have been a whimper. “I suppose you hope to convince me that we should band together against the common foe.”
Vansen blinked. Was she talking about Hendon Tolly? “I . . . I’m not ...” It was hard to look at her, but it was also hard to look away. He felt like a moth circling a candle flame, hopelessly drawn and yet knowing the mere touch of it would scorch him to ashes. “I do not know what you mean, Lady.”
“Then the world spins more strangely than even I thought,” she said. “This small delegation here has come to inform me that the human creature known as the Autarch of Xis will soon enter the bay with a force of ships and men.”
Vansen stared, seeing for the first time that it was not only armed guards who accompanied the Lady Yasammez: looking cowed and fearful beside her stood three hairless, long-armed folk.
“Skimmers!” Vansen was utterly surprised. “Are you from Southmarch?” he asked, but the hairless men only looked away as if he had said something shameful. Vansen turned back to the dark lady. “The Autarch of Xis is the most powerful man on the two continents. Why would he come here?” Vansen looked around. Even in this moment of ultimate danger, he could not help marveling at how the world he had known had been so thoroughly shattered and rearranged into
this
—fairy warriors, giants, Funderlings . . . and now, apparently, the monster of Xand was joining this mad Zosimia festival. “He has the greatest army in the world,” he said loudly, as much for Yasammez’ supporters as the dark lady herself. “Even the terrible Lady Porcupine cannot defeat him. Not without help ...”
“Fool.”
Her voice snapped like a drover’s whip. “Do you think that just because my folk will soon stand between two human armies I must sue for peace?” She glared around the chamber as though daring any of her minions to speak. Clearly, from their blank faces and downcast eyes, none of them even contemplated it. “I would rather die in the mud of the Hither Shore than make another pact with treacherous mortals!” She turned to the giant ettin. “This prattle is meaningless, Hammerfoot. Go on about your sport. Kill them quickly or slowly, as you choose.”
Antimony cried out in fear, but Vansen took a step toward her, crying “Wait!” In an instant a dozen Qar bows were drawn and aimed at him. He stopped, realizing he could easily be killed before saying what he needed to say. “You spoke before of a pact, Lady Yassamez. I know of another one—the Pact of the Glass!”
She looked at him, her expression unfathomable. “Why should I care? It has ended—the Son of the First Stone’s gambit has failed. There is nothing now not even this southern wizardling on his way here with all his warriors . . . that can prevent me burning this house of treachery to its foundations.”
“But the Pact of the Glass hasn’t ended!”
It might have been some trick of the shadows and the flickering torches, but for a moment Ferras Vansen thought he saw the dark lady become bigger, saw her silhouette grow and become spiny as a black thistle. “How dare you speak thus to me!” she cried, and he could feel the raging words clamoring in his head. He fell to his knees, clutching at his skull, almost weeping from the pain. “
My father is dead!
Kupilas the Artificer is dead! Despite imprisonment and solitude and pain you could not even imagine, he kept this world safe for century upon century . . . but now he is dead. Do you think I will bandy any more words with creatures like you—the destroyers of my family? Let this mortal autarch come! He will find nothing waiting for him but ruins. In my father’s name and memory, and in the memory of all the lives you mortals have stolen from us, no living thing shall survive here and the gods will sleep on in exile forever!”
But as she turned away again Vansen dragged himself up onto his knees and reached toward her. His head was throbbing, and blood dripped from his nose and into his mouth, so that he tasted salt.
“Kill me if you wish, Lady Yassamez,” he called, “but hear me first! I knew Gyir Storm Lantern. We traveled together behind the Shadowline. He was . . . he was my friend.”
She spun and took two long steps back toward him, hand on the hilt of the white sword. “Gyir is dead.” The words landed cold as hailstones. “And he was no mortal’s friend. That is
not possible
.”
“I am more sorry to hear of his death than you know. I was there in Greatdeeps with him in his last hour, and if we were not friends we were certainly allies.”
The reptilian gaze fixed him. “I doubt that. But what does it matter anyway, little man? He failed me. Gyir is dead, and in a moment you will be too.”
“You may be wrong, Lady. I think there is a chance that despite his death Gyir may yet succeed, and if he does, it will be because of a gift you sent to the king of the Qar—a gift named Barrick Eddon, prince of Southmarch.”
Her hand curled more tightly around the sword’s hilt. She was close enough, Vansen realized, to decapitate him with one swing. He bowed his head, resigned to whatever would happen next. “Gyir did not fail you, Lady, and if he died, it was doing your bidding. The pact could yet succeed.”
He waited for the blow but it did not come.
“You will tell me all you know about Gyir Storm Lantern,” she said at last. “You will live that long, at least.”
37
Under a Bone-white Moon
“The Qar’s
Book of Regret
is not their only written record. It is said that they also have a collection of oracles called the
Bonefall
that has been kept since early times. Both are said to be part of some larger book or story or song called “The Fire in the Void”, but no scholar, not even Ximander, can say for certain what that is.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
B
RIONY COULD NOT STOP marveling at the size of the Syannese camp. She had expected a group of men waiting on horseback, perhaps as many as a pentecount of soldiers camped beside the Royal Highway. Instead, after reaching the road and riding on through the rain for perhaps an hour Briony and her captors reached a muddy meadow full of tents—hundreds of them, she felt sure, an entire military encampment crowded with foot soldiers, mounted knights, and their attendants. As they turned to look at her, curiosity plain in even the sternest faces, her stomach clenched. Would they execute her? Surely not—not simply for running away! But she couldn’t get Lady Ananka’s cold-eyed stare out of her head. Briony had learned early that when you were a king’s daughter people might hate you without ever knowing you.
“Remember, you are not quite real in their eyes,”
her father had often said.
“You are a mirror in which people, especially your own subjects, see what they wish to see. If they are happy then they will see you in that light. If they are unhappy they will see you as their persecutor. And if a demon is in them they will see you as something to be destroyed.”
If the gods only touched people in dreams, as Lisiya had said, then could they sow lies there as well as truth? Had an evil god set Ananka and the king of Syan against her?
Listen to me!
she chided herself.
Isn’t it bad enough that I take pride in the number of soldiers sent to shackle me and drag me back to Tessis? Now I flatter myself that the gods oppose me as well. Stupid, prideful woman!
But whatever happened, she would give no one the satisfaction of seeing an Eddon weep and beg for mercy. Not even if she went to the headsman’s block.
When they reached a large pavilion near the center of the camp the captain dismounted and helped her from the saddle with silent and ungracious efficiency. Now that she could see the emblem on his surcoat more clearly she saw that the red hound was almost skeletal, its ribs showing so clearly that they resembled a lady’s comb. It sent a shiver across her skin.
The captain steered her past the sentries outside the pavilion. Once inside, he squeezed her arm hard enough to make her wince to stop her. At the center of the room several more soldiers, all in armor, were bent over a bed covered in maps. Nobody seemed to have noticed the visitors.
“Your pardon, Highness . . . ?” the captain said at last, clearly unwilling to wait to share his good news and receive his praise. “I have found her—the northern princess—and made her prisoner.”
The tallest of the armored men turned and his eyes widened. It was Eneas, the king of Syan’s son. “Briony . . . Princess!” An instant later he turned on the captain. “You have done what? What did you say, Linas—made her
prisoner?
”
“As you ordered, Highness, I found her and captured her.” But the captain’s voice, so firm and proud only a moment before, now sounded less certain. “You see, I have brought her . . . brought her to you ...”
Eneas scowled and came toward them. “Fool. When did I ever say ‘make her a prisoner’? I said
find
her.” He extended his hands to Briony, then to her astonishment dropped to one knee before her. “I crave your pardon, Princess, please. I have confused my own soldiers and that is nobody’s mistake but mine.” He turned to the man who had brought her in. “Be glad you did not put her in irons, Captain Linas, or I might have had you whipped. This is a noblewoman and we have already treated her dreadfully.”
“My . . . my apologies, Princess,” the captain stammered. “I had no idea . . . I have wronged you ...”
She did not like the man but she did not want to see him whipped. Or at least not too badly. “Of course, you are forgiven.”
“Go now and tell the others to call off the search.” He watched as the chastened captain hurried out of the tent, then turned to the other armored men, who were watching with amused interest. “Lord Helkis, you and the others may leave me. I would speak to the princess alone.” He thought about it. “No, stay. I do not want this poor woman’s reputation any further besmirched—she has suffered enough at the hands of my family, and quite unfairly.”