by Tad Williams
“Then we can use them, too, can’t we? You said that Southmarch is on top of—in front of, whatever you said—the palace of Kernios. That’s what you meant, isn’t it? One of those doors?”
“Any of the roads that served Kernios would be banned to us,” she said. “Even with the dark one deep in his long slumber. It is a good idea, Barrick Manchild, but it will not serve.”
“What am I supposed to do, then, just . . . pray? My people will be killed! And so will the rest of yours!” He threw himself down on the steps of the pavilion at her feet and slapped the stone in frustration. “I used to think the gods didn’t even exist—now you’re telling me they’re blocking my way every direction I turn. And they’re not even awake!”
Saqri raised one eyebrow at this display but did not speak. After a moment she rose and drifted down the steps past him. She raised her hand as she passed, clearly bidding him to follow her.
“Where are we going now?” Barrick asked.
“There is another source of help that remains to us,” she said without slowing.
Barrick scrambled after her as she made her way back across the chiming, singing garden into the timeless halls of Qul-na-Qar.
There was a point at which the stairs they had been descending for so long became a level floor, but he could not quite remember when that happened; there was another point at which the inconstant, watery light of the palace dwindled and at last died, but he could not exactly remember when that had happened, either. Lastly, even the stone floor beneath his feet had ended; now he felt the give of loam beneath his feet, as though they had gone so deep beneath the castle they had left even the foundations behind. In fact, they had been walking in darkness so long now that it seemed no matter what Saqri might claim of the distance, they must have walked most of the way from Qul-na-Qar to Southmarch.
The silence of this endless dark place was of course not truly silent, at least not in Barrick’s teeming skull, but with the help of what Ynnir had told him and the feeling that the blind king himself was not too far away, Barrick was able to rise above the chaotic knowledge of the Fireflower and concentrate on staying close to Saqri, who led him not like a mother leading a child through an unfamiliar place, but like someone leading another family member through a place in which they had both lived their entire lives.
Is it confidence in me she’s showing, or contempt? It did no good to wonder, of course, because they probably meant the same thing to a Qar, somehow. Still, the voices in his head did not feel nearly as alien as they had before. He almost thought he could live with them.
At last, and only because of the deep, awesome darkness through which they had been traveling, he finally saw the light: it was such a faint change that he would never have recognized it otherwise—more the memory of light than light itself. Although it grew steadily stronger as he walked, it was still a hundred paces or more before it even brightened his surroundings enough that he could finally make out the silvery outline of Saqri before him, then another hundred more before he could see the sides of the narrow, dirt-and-stone passage through which they walked, something that looked as if it had been crudely cut from the living earth in a single day’s work.
Where . . . ? he wondered, but felt Saqri’s thoughts settle gently over his, urging him to silence.
Soon enough.
The dim radiance ahead began to grow until it became a pearly cylinder of light, its base round and shiny as a coin. As they grew closer, he saw that the cylinder was a single large beam from a hole in the top of the tunnel, and the circle on the floor was the surface of a circular pool not much larger than a writing table but just wide enough to catch all the beam of light from above. Saqri stopped and he stopped beside her.
The Deep Library, she said.
Barrick had no idea what he was supposed to think. He had heard the name more than a few times from Ynnir. He had supposed it some deep vault in the lower part of the castle, or even a massive hall, filled with old scrolls and decaying volumes, a little (at least in his mind’s eye) like the library in Chaven’s observatory or his father’s rooms in the Tower of Summer.
The queen reached out without warning and took his hand in hers, then lifted her other hand into the light and gestured for him to do the same. Barrick had to take a step forward to reach, and as he did so he could see up the vertical tunnel toward the gleam’s source, a hole in the darkness that seemed impossibly distant, at its center a single point of white light.
Yes, Saqri told him. It is Yah’stah’s Eye, the hopeful star. It always shines above the Deep Library.
Barrick was astonished. But . . . but I haven’t seen a star in months . . . ! The Mantle—the word came to him unbidden, handed up by the Fireflower as if it had been a small object he had dropped—the Mantle covers the whole land . . . !
But the Deep Library does not see the Mantle, Saqri told him. It sees things as they are, or at least as they were. And the Eye is always above it. Now give me your thoughts and your silence.
It takes both of the heirs to the Fireflower to open the Deep Library, the voices told him—or was it Ynnir’s voice somehow braiding all the other voices together into one? That is another reason why losing you or Saqri now would cripple the People forever.
For a long time he only stood, listening to the murmur of the Fireflower, feeling the broad shapes of Saqri’s thoughts as she wove the summons, a chain of questions almost like children’s riddles:
“Who is gone but remains?
Who is without but within?
Who will come back to the place they never left . . . ?”
He began to feel the presences gathering even before he saw the first of the silvery strands start to form in the radiance like bubbles clinging to the weeds in a pond. They came from nowhere—they came from nothing—but by the time they floated in the beam of light, they were something. They lived, at least a little, they thought, they remembered.
“We honor the summoners. We honor Crooked’s House. We honor the Fireflower.” The voices washed through his head like the sound of water dripping in a dark place. As each voice spoke, though it could be heard only inside Barrick’s thoughts, the pond or well at his feet spawned a little circular ripple. Soon the circles were crisscrossing. “Ask us and we shall give you what is in us to give.”
“The House of the People and the Last Hour of the Ancestor no longer share any of Crooked’s Roads,” Saqri said, her silent words seeming to drift up into the beam of light like motes of dust. “How can the distance be crossed? How can the gap be bridged?”
“In the elder days, one of the brightest could ride to the Ancestor in three days—fewer if his mount was not earthbound.”
“Yes,” said Saqri with a touch of asperity in her voice, “and the gods could make scented oils appear from the air then, too, and cause stones to blossom. Those days are gone. The great steeds have broken their traces years ago and fled to far lands. Those who traveled Grandmother Void’s roads can only go where the way is not barred—and the place we wish to go is barred to us.”
It was unutterably strange to stand before the Deep Library, to hear the voices and watch the surface of the pool rippling as if beneath the strike of invisible raindrops. It was different than the way the Fireflower manifested itself in his head, more chaotic and less like the conversation of humans, but with Saqri directing it, it did not pass beyond what he could take in, although he could by no means understand all of it.
“Terrible things are on the wind,” the Deep Library voices murmured. “The forbidding of the old roads, the dying god, the plans of the southern mortal that make even Heaven tremble ...”
“And Yasammez has a Fever Egg,” another voice said in mournful sing-song. “The end must truly be near. Perhaps even the Dark Lady has finally discovered despair.”
“The roads are still there, if only the gods would open a way for you,” moaned another.
“Stop!” Saqri said, and her voice was like a whipcrack. “The gods themselves
are asleep! You know that, because it has been true for half of your existence! And besides, even were they not beyond our reach, with Crooked dying and the rest dreaming, the most powerful of the gods are our enemies! The Three Brothers and all their followers hate us. That is one reason for my great-aunt’s desperation.”
“Then all is lost,” whispered one of the Deep Library; a chorus echoed it, agreeing. The faces formed and disappeared, roiling for their moment of existence like weeds in a swirling river.
“All is lost!” they muttered.
“Almost all,” said one. “Do they hate the mortals, too?”
Saqri abruptly held up her hand.
“May I dismiss them?” she asked. It took Barrick a moment to realize she was asking him. Apparently it took both halves of the Fireflower to dismiss the Deep Library as well as summon it.
He raised his hand into the light and let her do what had to be done.
They walked back in what Barrick assumed was the silence of defeat.
“So what will we do?” he asked at last. “My people—the people of the castle—your people—they will all be killed!”
“If we cannot stop them, I fear you are right.”
He could not believe her calm. “But we can’t stop them. Everyone agrees! We are on the other side of the world and you heard what the Deep Library said—there are no roads left for us to use.”
“Not exactly.” Saqri’s thoughts were quiet, almost hesitant, as though she was still working out the details of some complicated picture in her head. “They said the gods’ roads are still available to us.”
“But the most powerful gods hate the Qar—you said that yourself! So what good would that do?”
“Ah, yes, the gods may hate the Qar,” Saqri said, an invisible shape in the darkness beside him, “but I cannot help wondering how they feel about your folk?”
5
Haunters of the Deeps
“. . . But in those days the Kracian hills were a fierce, lawless place. A clan of bandits came into the valley where Adis and his parents lived while he was out with the flock, and they killed his parents and took what little the family had.”
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
“I AM WEARY AND HEARTSICK,”saidOlin Eddon. “Why must I remain here? I have seen the ships roll in, seen the soldiers in their thousands disembark. Yes, the autarch has ample might to humble my poor country. What purpose does this serve?”
Pinimmon Vash looked up to the deck of this latest, largest supply ship. The chief of the cargo-men waved a signal, letting the paramount minister know that the show was about to start. Other ships were unloading as well—the harbor that had once served mainland Southmarch was now the hub of the autarch’s tent-city along the shore of the bay—but it was this one that was the object of the autarch’s greatest interest.
“It was the Golden One himself who decreed that you must watch from here, King Olin,” Vash said as politely as he could. “That is all you need to know.”
“Why is no one in Southmarch firing on your ships?” Olin’s face was pale and damp with perspiration. “Surely not even Tolly would fail to defend his own castle. What trick has your master played to land here unopposed?”
“Ask the Golden One about such minor matters, King Olin, not me.” Couldn’t the northerner see that all this had nothing to do with Pinimmon Vash himself, that he was only doing what his master required of him? The foreign king was less of a savage than Vash had expected, but his manners were clearly not up to the rigorous standards of a real court. After all, wasn’t having to stand here on the sunny waterfront without even a parasol—where were those cursed slave boys, anyway?—much harder on the older, more delicate Vash?
He became uncomfortably aware that King Olin was staring at him. “Yes?”
“You seem like a civilized man, Lord Vash,” said Olin, weirdly mirroring Vash’s private thoughts. “An intelligent man. How can you do the bidding of someone like the autarch? He has said—if he is not completely mad, of course, if what he plans can actually be done—he has said he intends to bind up the power of a true god so that everything that lives on the earth will be his slaves!”
Vash almost smiled at that, but he had not lost all caution: he quickly looked around to make certain they were alone before answering. “And how is that different from what we have now, King Olin? The Golden One already rules absolutely, so what else can I do but comply? No, your question is naïve, I fear. You might just as easily—and just as fruitfully—ask me why a stone falls to the ground when dropped or why the stars hang shining in the sky. That is how Creation is ordered. Only a fool would give up his life when there is no hope things will ever be otherwise.”
Olin Eddon didn’t appear offended, but neither did he seem convinced. “Then no tyrant in history would ever have been overthrown. The Twelve would not have cast down the dictator Skollas, and Hierosol would have crushed Xis a thousand and more years ago.”
“If the gods willed it, so it would have been,” agreed Vash. “But I see no such truth in the world we inhabit here, today. The autarch rules us, may he live forever—all else is but an airy game of what-might-be.”
Olin continued to stare at him, intently enough that Vash began to feel quite put out. Didn’t this northern upstart realize what an honor was being done to him, having the paramount minister of all Xis as his attendant? “You really should pay attention to the unloading, King Olin. It was the Golden One’s express wish. ...”
Olin ignored him. “Not all southerners are as fatalistic as you, Lord Vash. I know many of your continent who fought back against the autarch—one in particular who became my friend.”
Pinimmon Vash could not help laughing a little. “And what did it gain him? Not much, I imagine.” A thought suddenly came to him. “Hold a moment. Do you talk about the traitor, Shaso dan-Heza? The Tuani general who tried to thwart the rightful claims of Autarch Parnad, the Golden One’s father?”
Now it was Olin’s turn to smile, a wolfish grin deep in his gray-shot beard. “Rightful claims? Now who is being purposefully naïve? Shaso and his people fought Parnad and Parnad’s father, too, and even though I hear a puppet of sorts has been put on the throne in Nyoru, I imagine some in Tuan will continue fighting until one day they drive you Xixians out. The Tuani are no cowards and they clearly do not agree that the autarch’s rule over all the world is inevitable.”
Again, Vash was nettled by this upstart king. “And your friend, the traitor Shaso? This mighty bulwark against tyranny? Where is he today?”
Olin’s expression grew dark. “I do not know. Nor would I tell you if I did, of course.”
“Of course. Now, enough of such contentious matters.” Vash shook back his long sleeves and gestured to the gang ramp leading down from one of the larger cargo ships onto the mainland harbor’s biggest loading dock. “Look. This is what the autarch most particularly wanted you to see.”
Even many of the Xixian sailors on the dock and the soldiers on the beach had wandered over to watch as a group of large, awkward, man-shaped things made their way down the ramp. Each had two arms and two legs, but there the resemblance ended. Their stocky legs and short arms were covered in bony plates, with stiff bristles growing between them and up the creatures’ backs. Their hands looked more like the digging-claws of moles, proportionately large and covered with leathery, warted flesh. But it was their torsos and heads that dragged at the eye: they had strange armored midsections, as if they were upright beetles or tortoises, and these rose up in the front to cover their necks and the bottoms of their heads from below, just as a continuation of their back armor curled down over the tops of their heads, so that all that could be seen of their faces were eyes peering out of the shadows between the unjoined pieces of bony shell, as if they were giant oysters or armored men wearing absurdly large helmets. But for all their defenses, the weird things seemed ill—they halted for no reason, or stumbled as they walked.
One fell and could not rise, legs kicking slowly in the bright sunlight.
“These things ...” Olin said, blinking, “they are monsters. Did you do this to them?”
“Vash did nothing!” said a voice behind them, floating down from above as if a god had spoken. Which, in a way, one had, since the voice was the autarch’s, who was coming toward them across the sand on his ceremonial platform carried by slaves, as though he were himself some breed of giant, many-legged creature. “In fact, these splendid creations were first bred in my great-grandfather Aylan’s day.”
“So madness runs in the blood of your family,” said Olin in disgust.
“Something you and I have in common, eh?” Sulepis grinned. “These creatures were of the Yisti once, who are the same blood as your northern Funderlings, although this breed, the Khau-Yisti, were larger and more savage, wild diggers where their Yisti cousins were almost as civilized as men.” He spoke with the air of one who tries to impart an interesting lesson to a dull student. “My great-grandfather’s breeders captured the wild tribes, took the largest and strongest of them and began to shape them to work the mines of the Xan-Horem Mountains, dangerous places where the earth often collapses. These Khau-Yisti, though, are strong and stolid, and they can dig their own way out after a cave-in—a most thrifty sort of worker to have.” He frowned, watching the creatures struggling down the gangplank. “Traveling does not seem to agree with them, or perhaps it is your chilly northern air. Many died during the voyage, and these do not look to last much longer. ...”
“I’m afraid half of them have died already, Golden One,” Vash said.
“Your people bred these poor creatures like hounds? Just to work in the mines?” Olin seemed surprised, as if he had learned nothing about the Xixian royal family. If Vash had not felt a little nauseated by the sight of the trudging, subhuman Khau-Yisti filing across the sand, he would have been amused by the northern king’s naivety.