by Tad Williams
“Ah,” said Olin. “So as I suspected, it has nothing at all to do with anything but your own mad schemes.”
The autarch looked at him almost sadly. “I am not greedy, Olin, whatever you think. When I have the power of the gods at my service I will not need to quibble over this castle or that castle. I will rebuild the heavenly palaces of Mount Xandos itself!”
Olin and Vash could only stare in amazement and horror, although of course the Paramount Minister did his best to hide his feelings.
A good part of an hour had passed as they sat motionless in the middle of the coast road. Olin had fallen into silence and the autarch seemed more interested in drinking wine and dandling one of his young female servants while he whispered in her ear. Vash was using the delay to look through his records—he would be hideously busy the moment they reached the place to make camp—when one of the autarch’s generals came to the platform and asked for a word with him. After an exchange in which the general did not raise his voice above a whisper, the autarch sent him away. For a moment he was silent, then he began to laugh.
“What is it, Golden One?” Vash asked. “Is everything well?”
“Never better,” said the autarch. “This will be even easier than I planned.” He waved his gold-tipped fingers and the platform lurched into movement once more, the slaves carrying it groaning quietly as they began to walk. “You will see.”
It was some time before Vash learned what his master meant. As they reached a bend in the road the slaves got up and pulled back the curtains, giving Vash a moment of panicky vulnerability, but a moment later he saw why they had done it.
On the coast side of Brenn’s Bay, the mainland city of Southmarch was deserted. Much of it had been burned, or was still burning, but the smoke and the dancing flames gave the scene its only movement. There was not a living creature in sight anywhere nearby, and even the castle across the water looked empty, although Vash did not doubt that plenty of Olin’s countrymen lurked inside, sharpening their weapons to shed Xixian blood.
“See?” the autarch said in triumph. “The shore is ours—the Qar have gone. They had no wish to be caught between our army and the bay. They have given up their claim to the Shining Man!”
Vash was distracted by a noise behind him, but the autarch paid it no attention. Sulepis was gazing over the scene with obvious satisfaction, as though this were not Olin’s long-lost home but his own.
The noise, Pinimmon Vash realized after a moment, was King Olin praying as he stared out across the water toward the silent castle.
39
Another Bend in the River of Time
“Some claim that the Qar are immortal, others that their lives are only of greater length than those of mortal men. But which of these things is true, or what happens to fairies when they die, no man can say.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand,” prepared by Finn Teodoros for his lordship Avin Brone, Count of Landsend
ALL HIS LIFE Barrick Eddon had prayed the things that made him different from others, his crippled arm, his night-terrors and storms of inexplicable grief, all the terrible legacy of his father’s madness, would prove to have some meaning—that the truth of him was something more than simply a botched and meaningless life. Now his prayer had been answered and it terrified him.
I didn’t save the queen. What if I fail with the king’s Fireflower, too? What if it will not have me?
He stood on the balcony of the king’s retiring room. A shower had just passed over the castle; the towers and pitched roofs jutted like tombstones in a crowded cemetery, dozens of different shades of damp, shiny black. In the short time since he had come the skies over Qul-na-Qar had always been wet, shifting back and forth between mist, drizzle, and downpour as though the ancient stronghold were a ship sailing through the storms.
Still, there was something peaceful about the place, and not just its near emptiness: the seemingly endless maze of halls had the quiet air of a graveyard, but one in which the ghosts had been dead too long to trouble the living. He knew things lurked in the shadows that should have terrified him, but instead he felt at home in this god’s house full of uncanny strangers. In fact, it was odd just how little he missed anything that had been his before—his home in the sunlands, his sister, the dark-haired girl in his dreams. They all seemed very distant now. Was there anything worth going back for?
Barrick grew impatient at last with the shimmer of wet roofs and his own circling thoughts. He left the room and made his way down a steep stairway of cracked white stone and out into the covered colonnade beside a dripping, empty garden. Even the strange plants seemed muted in color, their greens almost gray, their blossoms so pale that their pinks and yellows could only be seen from nearby, as though the rain had leached most of their color. From down here the castle’s many towers looked less like cemetery stones and more like the complexity of nature, full of abstract, repeating shapes—pillars and bars and chevrons of the sort human nobles used as heraldic symbols to mark their family name, but which were repeated here in endless patterns like the scales of a snake. The profusion of these basic shapes both lulled and confused the eye, and after walking for a while Barrick found even his thoughts growing weary.
Why have you given me a choice, Ynnir? he thought. I’ve never chosen well . . .
As if coming to answer him, a swirl of rustling leaves blew around the corner then eddied back as the king in his tattered robes stepped into the colonnade in front of Barrick, appearing from nowhere as though he had walked out of a fold in the air.
I can no longer bear to hear the weeping of the Celebrants, Ynnir told him, his thoughts fluttering to Barrick like the leaves falling on the path, so I have brought my sister—my beloved—out of the Deathwatch Chamber. Whatever you choose, Barrick Eddon, I must give her my strength soon if I am to preserve her life. I sense that the Artificer has failed at last. My own strength is fading. Soon the gift of the glass will fail Saqri too and it will no longer matter what we do.
Walk with me.
Barrick accompanied the tall king in silence as they made their way out of the wet garden and back into the echoing halls. As they walked, some of Ynnir’s servants came whispering out of the shadows, creatures of many different shapes and sizes who fell in behind them and followed at a respectful distance. The strange faces peering at him made Barrick uncomfortable, but only because he knew they belonged here and he didn’t.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “I don’t know what will happen.”
If you did, you would only be making a selection, not a choice. Ynnir stopped and turned to him. Here, child. Let me show you something. He reached up to the rag covering his eyes, touched it delicately with his long fingers. As the years of my life passed and our people’s plight became more and more grim, I turned farther and farther inward in search of anything that might save us. I lived almost every moment with my ancestors, with the Fireflower and the Deep Library, and traveled in my thoughts to places that have no names you would understand. I dove so deeply into what might be and what had been that I lost sight of what was before me. A century passed before I noticed that my wife, my beloved sister, was dying. He undid the knot at the back of the blindfold, let the piece of cloth slide free. His eyes were white as milk. Eventually I lost my sight in truth. I have not seen my beloved’s face except in memory for longer than I can remember. I will never know your face, boy, except for how you look in the minds of others. All from trying to know all that will happen. All from trying not to make any mistakes.
“I don’t . . . I don’t think I understand.”
One of our oracles tells us, ‘Rain falls, dew rises. Between is mist. Between is all that is.’ Let that be your answer, manchild. Do not brood too much over what went before or worry too much over what is to come. Between those two is everything that matters—all that is.
Ynnir knotted his blindfold again and walked on. Barrick hurried after him, then accompanied the king in
silence for a long while, thinking.
“Could you do this even if I didn’t want you to?” he asked at last. “Could you force it on me?”
I do not understand. Could I force you to take the Fireflower?
“Yes. Could you give the Fireflower to me if I didn’t want it?”
What a strange question. Ynnir seemed tired: he was even more slow in his movements than he had been in the first hours of Barrick’s arrival. I cannot imagine such a thing—why would I do that?
“Because you need to do it for your people to survive! Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
If you take the Fireflower, Barrick Eddon, that does not mean my people themselves will survive—only what they have learned.
“But could you force it on me?”
Ynnir shook his head. It . . . I do not . . . I am sorry, child, but thoughts colored by your language will not carry the meaning. The Fireflower is our greatest gift, the thing that Crooked gave us that sets us apart from all others. Those who will carry it wait our whole lives for it, and we gain it only when our mothers or fathers are dying. Then, when we have it, we spend the rest of our lives contriving to pass it along to our heirs, the children of our bodies. To force you to take it—I cannot find the words to explain, but it is just not possible to my mind. Either you will accept it, and then we will see what comes, or you will not, and my people will continue to an end that no longer contains the Fireflower. And thus roll the days of the Great Defeat unto Time’s sleep. He stopped. We have reached the hall where Saqri waits.
The huge, dark doors were open. The king stepped through and Barrick went with him, but none of the creatures following them crossed the threshold. The hall was lit with many lights, but it was the darkness that lingered beneath the carved beams despite candles and lamps that made the strongest impression on Barrick—the darkness and the mirrors.
On either side of the hall, stretching so far that Barrick thought he must have fallen into a dream as he walked, the walls were lined with oval reflecting glasses in countless sizes, with as many different frames as there were mirrors. In each both light and shadow made a home, and in each they produced something different, so that Barrick felt he was seeing not reflections but windows which, though set closely side by side, opened into a thousand different places. He was confused and overwhelmed—but there was something more. “I have . . . I have been here before.”
Ynnir shook his head, but did not reply for a moment. When he did, his voice sounded weaker than it ever had. You have not been here, child. No mortal has . . .
“Then I dreamed it. But I know I’ve seen it—the mirrors, the lights ...” He frowned. “But it was full of shapes, and at the end of the hall . . . at the end of the hall ...”
It had all been so overwhelming that until this moment he had not noticed the figure at the hall’s far end. Now he and the king seemed to move toward her through a shimmer like that of the most blazing summer’s day, though the hall itself was cool and even a little drafty. When they had come near enough, Barrick saw that the queen had been set in one of two stone chairs, her body slumped like a corpse; the other throne was empty. It seemed macabre for the king to have left her this way, both odd and disrespectful. He felt an urge to go and lift her upright, to hold her in a position that befitted a creature of such singular, helpless elegance.
“Why is she . . . my lord?”
Ynnir had stopped and lowered himself to his knees. At first Barrick had thought he was making some ritual gesture of respect or mourning, but now he realized that the king was fighting for breath. Barrick scrambled forward and tried to help him rise but the king was too long-boned and his weakness was too great. At last Barrick just crouched with his arms around him, astounded to feel actual muscle and bone beneath the ragged clothes. The king, for all his weird majesty, was only flesh after all, and he was dying.
The world, the shadowlands, even the mirrored hall shrank away in Barrick’s mind and disappeared. There was nothing now but the king and himself and his choice. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve decided, and I say . . . yes.”
The king’s breathing eased. Still, you must be certain, Ynnir told him at last. Such a thing has never happened—receiving the Fireflower might kill you. And if it does cross to you, nothing will remove it from you but death. You will be a living memorial, haunted by the memories of all my kingly ancestors, until your last moment upon the earth.
Now it was Barrick’s turn to struggle for breath. “I understand,” he was finally able to say. “I am certain.”
Ynnir shook his head sadly. No, my son, you do not understand. Even I cannot fully understand what Crooked gave us, and I have lived with it all my long life. The king climbed to his feet, but when Barrick would have risen too, Ynnir shook his head and gestured for him to stay sitting on the floor. But that was what had to be, and this is all as it must be too—Saqri, myself, you, and the threads of foolish choice and strange accident that bound our families together.
“What do I have to do?” Fear swept over Barrick, not of the pain the Fireflower might bring him, but that he would fail Ynnir, that he would not be strong enough to receive what was given.
Nothing. An unusual glow filled the room, purple as the last evening light. A moment later Barrick realized that the glimmer was not so widespread as he had thought, but coming from very close—it surrounded Ynnir’s head like a mist around a mountain. The tall king bent down and took Barrick’s head between his hands, then pressed cool, dry lips against the young man’s forehead just above and between his eyes. For a moment Barrick thought that the soft light had somehow seeped inside of him, because everything around him—Ynnir, the dusty mirrors, the ceiling beams carved like hanging boughs heavy with leaves and berries—had taken on that same violet glow.
“What?” He blinked. A bell was sounding—it must be a bell, it was so loud, so deep! “What do I ...” The bell sounded again—but it could not be a bell, he realized, because it was silent. Still, he felt its tolling shiver down into his bones.
Sleep, child, Ynnir said, still holding his head. It has already begun . . .
And then Barrick could hear nothing except the slow sounding of his own thoughts, his heart beating as loud and strong as icy waters pulsing through the veins of a mountain, a pain like freezing fire, and his skull quivering with each echoing beat . . . beat . . . beat . . .
At last, exhausted from struggling, pierced by an infinite moment of agony, he fell away into a place of darkness and silence.
The hairless, manlike creature stood looking down at him, shadows cast by the flickering lamps swimming across his face. No, it was not just one creature, it was more, many more, all slightly transparent.
Something whispered to him then, a voice without sound, tickling at his thoughts: Harsar so faithful servant but never to be completely trusted the Stone Circle have lost too much in the Great Defeat . . .
Now the voice in his thoughts trailed away and the figure before him became only one shape again—the king’s servant, Harsar. For a long, dizzy moment Barrick could not make sense of anything. What had happened? Where was he?
“Still in the Hall of Mirrors,” Harsar answered him, though Barrick had not spoken. He could see the servant’s mouth move, could hear Harsar’s carefully uninflected voice in his ears, but he heard it in his thoughts as well, and what it said there was subtly different. “The First Stone sleeps. The Daughter of the First Flower asks for you.”
The soundless whisper blew through him again: Success she lives but we are fruitless we cast our seed on the wind just as we roll the bones. It was nothing as simple as a voice in his head, but . . . an idea, quiet as grass stretching toward the sun. Barrick tried to sit up. Why was he lying on the ground? Why did his head feel like a sack overfilled with gravel and threatening to rip its seams, while all these thoughts words ideas sounds smells crackled in his head like pine knots bursting in a fire? He lifted his hands to his head to keep his skull from breaking open. After a moment the sens
ation faded, although his head still felt disturbingly full and the world around him seemed tenanted by ghosts of itself, as though he watched everything through poorly made glass.
“Come forward,” Harsar said. “The Daughter of the First Flower ...”
Saqri, Sister, Wife, Granddaughter, Descendant . . . the silent voices in his head murmured.
“ . . . is waiting for you.”
In the Place of Narrowing. The Crossroads Hall. Beneath the thorn boughs, as in the First Days, when the People were young . . .
Barrick’s head felt like a beehive—it was all he could do not to raise his hands and swat at the swarming thoughts. “But what about the king . . . where is Ynnir?”
“The Son of the First Stone is in the Hall of Leavetaking,” he said out loud.
... Has passed to the Heart of the Dance of Change, his thoughts said.
“Come,” he said aloud. “She will take you to him.”
Barrick could not speak anymore: it was all he could do to follow Harsar up the aisle while the new thoughts swirled like dust flecks in a windstorm—names, moments, glimmers that felt like memories, but were memories of things he could not remember seeing and did not entirely recognize. And with all these flecks of meaning bedeviling him, there was more: everything in the hall—the benches, the mirrors on the walls, the swirling tiled designs on the floor—seemed to have a kind of glow, a shine of realness unlike anything he’d experienced before. Even the most familiar objects of his own childhood had never seemed as much a part of him as the beams above his head, the dark, ancient wood shaped into prickly holly leaves and sinuous vines. Everything had a texture and shape that could not be ignored; everything had a story. And like everything else in Qul-na-Qar, the hall itself was a story, a great story of the People.
Then he saw her, waiting in her shimmering white robes.
Just the sight of her crashed onto Barrick like an ocean wave, battering all his senses, submerging his mind in memories he had never had before—a forest full of red leaves, a smooth shoulder, pale as ivory, her upright form on a gray horse with snow dappling her cloak.