by Tad Williams
You are needed.
And suddenly he could see everything, clear as the finest glass, like something Chaven had ground for himself, and time lurched forward again, pulling Barrick as though with a string. A short distance away across the broad, dark space he could see Saqri's red stone glowing, bouncing like a floating spark as she faced a half dozen Xixian soldiers. Six foes, but a hundred queens, a hundred ancestors, were in her, Barrick could feel it. He could sense her hot furies and cold joys as she fought, could even perceive a little of the chorus of battle-queens of which Saqri herself was only a part, a music of thought so complicated and bizarre that he could barely hear it, let alone understand it, even though it filled his head.
"Whitefire!" It came to his thoughts and his lips at the same moment-Whitefire the sun god, the brother of doomed Silvergleam. And Whitefire, the god's sword, carried so long by Yasammez in the defense of the People. It felt right. "Whitefire!" Barrick shouted again, and suddenly saw-no, not just saw, but for a moment truly lived-that god's last doomed charge against the monsters who had killed his brother Silvergleam, his hated rivals and stepbrothers, the Children of Moisture. Barrick hurried forward and the battle surrounded him like roaring water. All the battles surrounded him. A song of war that was many songs and many sounds filled his head, so many voices singing it that he could no longer tell which thoughts were his own, though that did not matter to him. Like a salmon breasting the crash of the river, Barrick Eddon swam into the dark and the blood and all the sounds of death run wild in a small place.
Briony thought she had plumbed the depths of surprise during this year of impossible strangeness, but she had not expected to wake up to find a man smaller than the stub of last night's candle standing beside her head. She gasped and sat up. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the tiny man was no dream.
"I am searching the leader of this lot," he called up to her. "I carry important news for un." He bowed to her. "Beetledown the Bowman am I. Beest tha the princess Briony, good Olin's daughter?"
A hundred different responses came to her lips, but what came out at last was a startled giggle. "Merciful Zoria," she said. "I am. What are you?"
"Telled tha oncet already." She could see his little face frown in irritation, then suddenly go wide-eyed. "Oh, beg pardon, Majestic Highness! Forgive us our rough scout's manner."
Briony really didn't think she could still be sleeping, but couldn't help wondering whether she might have lost her wits somewhere. "You said you're… Beetledown?" She shook her head. "But what are you, Beetledown?" The first light of dawn was creeping past the flap of her tent. She could hear men moving outside, the sound of the day beginning, and could smell the fires that had only recently been lit. In the midst of everything else the smell of burning wood made her stomach twitch with hunger.
"I'll take you to Prince Eneas," she said at last. "These are his men. But I'd better carry you." She stared at him. "How did you get here? Did you simply… drop out of the sky?"
His smile was no bigger than an eyelash, but still quite charming. "After a manner of saying… yes, mum. I came as a courier. My feathersteed waits on a branch."
"Your what where? Feathersteed…?"
He looked at her in surprise. "My bird, Your Heightsome Majesty." He was worried now that she might be making fun of him. "I prefer to fly a flittermouse, in truth, but with the sun up, I left 'em to their sleep and came by pigeon."
"I can promise no more," the tiny man told Prince Eneas and his captains. Beetledown was doing his best to stand still in the platform of Briony's outstretched hand, but every time he shifted his balance it made her palm tickle. "Just that my queen and the queen of the Fay both say to you and your soldiers that if you come to look on the autarch's camp you might see something that will interest you. They advise to come in force."
"Might see something?" Lord Helkis looked at the little man with disgust and something that might have been fear. "Are we so foolish that we are meant to fall for a trap like this? Simply march out to be destroyed on the word of some magical creatures out of a story? This… roof rat?"
"Rooftopper," said Beetledown with affronted dignity. "Your kind know my kind well enough, tall man-used to put out bowls of milk and pieces of bread for us, to ask our favor and blessings on the house."
"The night-elves of your nurse's stories have come to visit us, Miron!" The prince was laughing, but more at his angry lieutenant than at the tiny messenger. "Perhaps you should look to your shoes to see if any of them need mending."
But Lord Helkis was not to be so easily convinced. "Do you not understand, Highness? These are Blue Caps. Speak of the old tales? They are creatures of the twilight, the shadows. We cannot trust them."
"If you remember," Briony pointed out, "that is who this small gentlemen and his friends are fighting. Would we make the same mistake again, attacking allies and helping enemies?"
The tiny man looked puzzled by this. Briony quietly explained what had happened.
"Those must have been Akutrir's lot," he told her. "Lady Porcupine sent them out, but they had not returned when I left," he said. "We did not know you had found each other."
Eneas scowled; he had heard. "We shall speak more of that shame later. For now, we must hear all of what your mistress has to say. Queen Saqri, is it? Is she the one who has terrified the north-the dark lady?"
Beetledown shook his head. "Nay, but un's that Lady Porcupine's daughter-or granddaughter… I am not certain. But dark lady has stepped down and Saqri commands the Qar now, and says that if tha hurry toward the mainland city of Southmarch on the bay shore tha might see something of interest." He turned toward Briony. "You, too, Princess, although the queen didn't speak or send 'ee any message. By the Peak, tha and thy family have been away a long time!"
She nodded. "We have."
"What else can you tell us?" demanded Eneas. "What exactly will we find on the shore of Brenn's Bay, besides a vast camp of Xixian soldiers?"
Beetledown moved a little, trying to keep his balance on Briony's unsteady hand. "I do not know for my personal self, Prince. I tell 'ee only what was given to me to tell-I know nought else. But Queen Saqri sent this message knowing tha wert here when none of the rest of us knew, so I think tha would do well to listen."
Lord Helkis snorted. "A mannekin no bigger than a whisker bids us trust his fairy-mistress. How could that possibly have an unhappy ending?"
"Your mockery is duly noted, Helkis." Eneas frowned at him. "It does not help me decide what to do next."
"Ah, tha minds me of another part of my message," said little Beetledown. "Tha should be on top of the hills above the bay by sundown."
It was only after Barrick had defended himself through a dozen struggles and bloodied his sword several times-first on a fallen Xixian who tried to stab him from the ground, next on another southern soldier surprised to have missed his spear thrust, who did not get a chance to thrust again-that he tumbled out of his exalted state and began to feel like an ordinary mortal prince again. The Qar were now pushing back the autarch's men without much resistance, so he let the battle eddy past him while he leaned against the wall and tried to get air back into his burning lungs. Every muscle in his body throbbed. He remembered every moment of what had happened, but at the same time it seemed so distant that it might have happened to someone else.
Even when I can subdue them, the Fireflower voices are too strong for me to silence for long. But Ynnir's words had given him an idea, a first taste of how it might feel to harness the Fireflower like a battle charger and put all that strength to work.
What can I become, he wondered. What will I become? I understand the speech of the fairies, he thought. My crippled arm is healed. There is nothing of the old Barrick left. It has all been burned clean away.
If Hammerfoot was protecting him, it was in a very distant sort of way. The jut-browed giant was currently somewhere in the middle of the autarch's men, roaring as he used a soldier from the Sanian hills as a club until
he could pick up his ax again, which had become stuck in the shattered carcass of a supply wagon. Barrick's safety did not appear to be uppermost in his mind.
Barrick reached again for the trick of thought that would allow him to muffle the voices and dim the shadows that the Fireflower made in his thoughts-a trick like squinting inside his own head. It was hard to hold it, easy to be distracted, and he knew it would avail him nothing if he were pushed to his limits.
Let it move through you, Ynnir's quiet voice told him. You cannot make it happen. You cannot make it anything. It is.
The Xixians were fighting desperately now, retreating back up the wide tunnel but grudging every step, and even without the benefit of a hundred Qar kings and warriors Barrick would have known why. Many thousand of the autarch's men were camped just above. These troops had undoubtedly sent messengers for reinforcements already. But didn't these fools wonder why? Did they not question why the Qar would attack such a large army and in such a strange way-from beneath?
Perhaps this autarch is too used to having his own way. Or perhaps he has simply underestimated the People.
A huge, one-eyed man with a beard crashed through the Qar just in front of Barrick. The attacker thrust a spear all the way through a slender, pale-skinned Qar warrior so that the creature dangled like a broken puppet, then knocked aside two more with his hide-covered shield before immediately turning on Barrick, who tangled his sword with one of the other Qar's blades and lost it as he tried to spin out of the way. The one-eyed man's spear snapped out and missed Barrick's gut only by the width of a finger or two. The tip scratched its way up the chestplate before slipping past his helmet. Barrick brought his shield up in time to repel a second thrust, but the Xixian giant swung his own shield, big and heavy as a door, and knocked Barrick onto his back.
The Xixian giant grinned as he stood over him, showing teeth and also the places teeth were not. He kicked Barrick's shield out of the way, almost wrenching his arm out of its socket, then lifted his spear up over Barrick's chest.
Things changed so abruptly that for a moment Barrick couldn't tell what was different. Only when blood fountained out of the ruin of the man's neck and splashed down onto him did Barrick realize that the giant's head was gone. Someone had cut it off-no, knocked it off and sent it flying as a child might decapitate a daisy with a stick.
"Time to get up, young master," growled Hammerfoot. "You will miss seeing the Elementals at work, otherwise." The massive lower lip jutted like a granite cliff as he looked Barrick up and down where he lay. "You are covered with blood. Well done."
"Most of it just sprayed on me when you took his head off." Barrick got up slowly, aching as though he had fallen down two flights of stairs. "But I thank you."
Hammerfoot nodded and licked at the red smeared on his fingers. His eyes glinted deep in the black pits on either side of his flat nose. "It was my pleasure."
Briony could not fail to be impressed. All of the Syannese nobles had been given a chance to speak their hearts. Many had felt it was too soon to be going anywhere near the autarch's legions, that it must almost certainly be a trap, however bizarre its methods. Then, when they all had finished, Eneas gave his decision; they would ride. After that they had readied themselves for battle as calmly as if they had not argued against it.
"Nothing can be harmed by listening," her father had always said, and here was proof: the prince's soldiers, especially the sons of proud old Syannese families, wished to be heard. Briony decided there was nothing for a good king (or queen) to fear in letting their subjects speak and even object to the ruler's desire as long as they would join in wholeheartedly afterward, as the Temple Dogs were doing despite not winning the point. Briony sometimes felt that despite all the wisdom her father had shared with her, she had learned more about governing people in the days since she had left Southmarch Castle than in all the years she had lived as a princess of the ruling family.
The sun was just past noon and they were already high up into the coastal hills, making good time. The day was warm and dry, the dust rising around the horses' hooves, and the larks were singing. It seemed unthinkable to Briony that so fair a world could have so much dread in it.
"Tomorrow is Midsummer's Eve," she told Eneas as they watered the horses. "My father said the autarch planned to raise a god. What do you think he meant? What will happen two days from now? The autarch must believe in it, at least. He hasn't even conquered Hierosol, yet he left his siege and sailed all this way."
Eneas was listening to her, but he was also watching every rider who went by, every foot soldier. The prince of Syan had been born to command men, she decided, in a way her father had not been, for all his virtues. Some things about the task of leadership had always filled Olin with dismay or sadness. Kendrick had often teased that, "Father is too kind to be king. He should be in a cave out in the Kracian hills with the other hermits and oracles." Barrick had never thought this was funny, though the idea had sent Briony and Kendrick into gales of laughter, but only now did she understand why. How could that man I spoke to in the dark be the same monster Barrick hates and fears? How was it that after all the years of kindness their father had shown him, her twin only remembered his moments of cruelty, his madness…?
"I cannot tell you what the autarch thinks," said Eneas, breaking her reverie. "But I am afraid."
At first she thought she hadn't heard him correctly. "You are what, Highness?"
"I fear the Autarch of Xis as I fear no other man-as I fear nothing but the ultimate judgment of Heaven." He solemnly made the sign of the Three. "I have fought against him, you remember-or at least his men-and I have heard of his deeds all these last two years as the flotsam of the armies that tried to stand against him landed on the shores of Eion. He is mad as a wounded snake but as clever as Kupilas himself, and has an entire terrified and terrifying empire struggling to fulfill his every whim." He still watched his men file past, but now his handsome face was troubled. "But what are his whims? No one can say, Briony. We can only guess, and wait, and… and fear."
Before she could think of anything to say, Lord Helkis came racing toward them down the forested slope, swinging his charger back and forth between the trees, clearly bearing some kind of important news.
"My good Miron, is all well?" Eneas asked. "No, do not bow, speak to me! Why such haste?"
"Highness, you must come. The forward scouts are calling that the camp is under attack!"
"What camp?" demanded the prince even as Briony's heart leaped into a swifter rhythm.
"The Xixian camp, Highness. The autarch's men! They're under attack!"
"By whom? From where?"
"Come and talk to Weasel and the other scouts," Helkis urged.
Eneas was already clambering into his saddle, not even waiting for help from his groom, as though his coat of chain armor were no more substantial than linen. Briony realized she was staring and hastened to get back into the saddle herself; unlike the prince, she was grateful for the groom who sprang to aid her. "The scouts can talk as we ride," Eneas declared as he pulled on his helmet. "I wish to see this for myself!"
They found a place where they could see down past the last curve of the foothills to the vast Xixian encampment sprawling beside the bay and throughout the city itself, the round tents seeming as numerous as grains of sand. The autarch's men were fighting, that was clear, but with whom seemed considerably less so. After staring through it himself for a few moments, Eneas passed his silver spyglass to Briony. She had to push and pull at the tube for a moment, then suddenly, as if she had flown down upon the scene as swiftly as a hawk, she could clearly see the camp and the fighting.
"Zoria's mercy-some of those are giants!" It was like a dream, seeing what happened so clearly but soundlessly. "That one-I swear it is a monster! Is it some devilry of the autarch that has rebounded on him?"
"I think those are Qar," said Eneas. "We know the fairy folk were here at Southmarch. Those who attacked the merchant wagons had to come
from somewhere."
"But where? I thought they had retreated." Briony could make no sense of this unexpected fairy army, their shields and armor a hundred different colors, their shapes almost as varied. She swung the glass toward the place where the fighting was thickest, along the edge of the camp nearest the rocky hills that came down almost to the shore of Brenn's Bay. "They're coming out of the rocks," she announced. "No, out of the caves! The fairies are coming out of the caves and they're trying to get into the autarch's camp. Some of them have, but most of them can't get past the fighting along the wall." She winced and handed the spyglass back to Eneas. "The fighting is terrible. They are dying by scores at the wall of the camp."
The prince had a strange look in his eyes, a gleam she had not seen before. "Then let us try to give them a moment's help. I suppose it is pointless to ask you to stay behind?"
She laughed despite sudden, breath-stealing fear and nodded her head vigorously because it was taking her a moment to speak. "Pointless!"
Eneas frowned. "So be it. Come, then, and may the gods watch over us all. We chose the wrong side once. Not again!"
At the prince's signal the horns called the assembly. The Temple Dogs who had dismounted scrambled back into their saddles; those who were drinking took a last swallow and wiped their mouths. The horses stamped and capered as Eneas stood in his stirrups.
"Anglin came to save my ancestors!" he shouted, holding his sword high. "Now we will pay back a little of that blood debt! Drive these southern dogs into the sea!" He waved and spurred his horse along the crest, following the scouts down the hill toward the camp. "For Syan and Southmarch!" he cried. "For King Enander and King Olin!"
All Briony had time for was the briefest of prayers…
Kind Zoria, bring us through this danger safely…
… And then she was riding too; they were all riding, plunging down the dry hills with a noise like summer thunder.
The Xixians had been arrogant, Barrick decided: they had not truly expected an attack, and certainly not out of the very depths where the autarch had been using his own huge army like a hammer, pounding away on his outnumbered enemies. His generals had made mistakes and they had also been profligate with the blood of their soldiers, confident they had the numbers to shrug off most mistakes… and they were right. The Xixians were fierce, stubborn foes who still had the fairies grossly outnumbered. The Qar had not reached the surface in their initial surge, and now it was beginning to look like they might never reach it.