by Tad Williams
"What in the name of all the gods is happening here?" Briony said, staring wide-eyed. "How could she see? And why should she run that way, headlong into the dark?"
"I… I know her," Chert said. "I know that girl."
Briony was on the move again, hurrying down the path once more. "What do you mean? That was no Funderling-she was almost as tall as me!"
"I have met her-spoken to her. Her name is Willow. She is touched, I think, but she once led me to one of the Qar…"
"Willow? I know that girl, too. Captain Vansen brought her back from the western country-she had been lost behind the Shadowline, he said." She sped her pace a little. "But why would she be hurrying down into the deeps without even a word? And how can she see to run in the darkness?"
Chert couldn't answer. He didn't know why the girl was there. He didn't even know why he was still there himself.
This time they did not hear her until the last moment, when the girl called Willow burst out of the shadows in front of them, hurrying back toward Chert and the princess as though they had only now become visible to her. "Save him! They will hurt him! Please, they are too much for him!" She threw herself down in front of Briony without any care for her own body and wrapped her arms around the princess' booted ankles. "Save him-my Kayyin!"
"Wh-what? Who..?" Briony stammered, but the girl was already scrambling back onto her feet. She grabbed the princess' arm and tried to tug her forward.
"Come! Oh, come! The creatures of fire and wind will kill him!"
Briony allowed herself to be pulled forward into the dark. Chert hastened after them. He could hear the sound of voices before them, one more or less human but others that gusted and whistled like the wind.
They stumbled out into a place where the path widened and saw what at first looked like a tall, slender man in the grip of some terrible palsy, arms flailing above his head and body swaying like a sapling in a fierce breeze-but it was shadows he fought with, Chert saw a moment later, shadows who clutched at him with hands like torn, flapping curtains.
"Help him!" the girl screamed.
Briony only hesitated for a moment, then raced toward the strange struggle with a dagger in each hand. Chert could only stare, wondering again what had happened to the young girl he had seen at the funeral. When had she become this thing of rope and steel?
But it doesn't matter-those dark things will kill her. Then Chert, too, was running, waving his torch and trying to force a frightening bellow out of his pinched throat but not succeeding.
The half-elf was wrapped in a ragged mass of darkness that leaked light like a hooded lantern. As Briony approached, one of the creatures detached itself from Kayyin and floated toward her, billowing like a cloaked man in a high wind. Only its eyes had color, glinting like green garnets.
"Those are old blades you carry," it said as it neared her. The voice seemed to sigh from every corner of the darkness beyond Chert's torch. "Metal of a tumbled star. They have even wounded some of us in the past, and it is not easy to spite us." The eyes flared briefly. "But wounding is not destroying-and you are no mighty warrior, girl."
Briony had not stopped to listen, but was keeping her two blades before her as she moved in a broad arc, trying to draw the thing away from Kayyin and the other black shapes. "What you say is that you can be hurt, demon." Her voice was tight but surprisingly steady. "That is all I needed to hear. I just killed my vilest enemy with my own hands, so come, then-let's see who ends up the better!"
Briony crossed the knives in a quick flick as she lunged, like a single great pair of scissors. The apparition rippled away from her like smoke, then flowed back again and hooked at her with a ragged claw. Chert swung his torch at the thing's arm, but the brand only passed through; the shapeless thing turned toward him and the darkness of its face seemed to fill his eyes. Chert was thrown backward. He cracked his head against the wall on one side of the path. The torch flew from his fingers and bounced toward the edge, landing a pace short; the flames rippled and nearly died, then flared up again.
Chert tried to rise, but it was not only the unsteady flames that made things before him tilt and spin. His head felt like it was full of bees, and his legs had no feeling at all. Earth Elders, he thought, I can't die, not like this, not at the edge of someone else's fight and away from Opal…
The flapping, flickering thing that had spoken before swirled around Briony like mist, then slid just out of reach again when she swung her blades, as if it mocked her.
"Come close enough for me to kill you, you coward!" she said, her breath coming in gasps. "Queen Saqri swore that your kind would be our allies!"
"Saqri does not speak for us-and a mortal cannot kill an Elemental," the thing said in a gleeful tone. "I am Shadow's Cauldron and my doom is written down in the Book for long after you will be dust. Besides, I only sought to amuse myself until our task could be completed. Sisters? Have you taken our prize back from the thief?"
The other shadows lay stretched over the half-Qar Kayyin like black blankets, but at the sound of Shadow's Cauldron's voice they fluttered up into the air. Balanced in the overlap of their two darknesses was a large stone that gleamed yellow and roiled like muddy water. "We have it," they declared, and it was their thoughts Briony understood, not their words.
"Yasammez is his mother," one of the Elementals cried. "She must have told him of the Egg!"
"No," said the other. "He saw it in her thoughts."
"Take it, then," cried the one called Shadow's Cauldron. "How he learned of it does not matter!" The Elemental waved a ragged appendage and Briony was flung down, her knives clattering from her hands. Shadow's Cauldron then blew away like mist and re-formed a heartbeat later in midair above the abyss, flapping now like some great, fire-eyed bat. "Now take the Egg and drop it onto hard stone, sisters. Crack it open and let death spill out for all these warm, fleshy creatures!"
All the shadowy shapes flew up into the heights so quickly that they might have been blown there by a howling wind. Only the gleam of their watching eyes and the sickly sheen of the Egg showed Chert where they hovered.
"The bodiless thoughts of the Deep Library helped us create this, but they did not have the courage to use it! Neither did Yasammez-in the end she died as much a coward as even Ynnir the Traitor. But we are different-we are the Guard of Elementals!" The calm certainty in the thing's hissing voice grabbed at Chert's innards like an icy hand. "We have nurtured it in our darkest garden and made it even more potent than Yasammez could have dreamed."
"The Egg must not be broken," croaked a weak voice. Kayyin crawled shakily onto his feet, so close Chert could almost have touched him. "When the fevers hatch out they will not just destroy what is in the castle but will creep up and down the earth for years to come, until there is nothing left that breathes," the half-fairy said.
"Yes!" crowed Shadow's Cauldron. "Our children will dance beneath the moon, with all the empty lands and seas to themselves…!" Its voice rose like a shrieking gale. "Cast the Egg down, sisters, and scour this sullied earth clean again…!"
"Those are my prisoners." Of all those in the cavern, dead or still clinging to life, the autarch alone looked as though he had walked in from somewhere else. Sulepis was free of burns and only lightly touched with ash, his golden armor gleaming with the reflected light of the flames all around. The autarch's falcon-crested helmet had been pushed high on his perspiring brow and his eyes bulged with an insane fury that Vansen had never seen before in any man. "And this boat is mine, too. What have you put there, dog-what else have you stolen from me? Ah, it is another Eddon, the fire-haired one. More ancient blood to be spilled, then, yes, more blood." Although his knife pushed ever harder against Vansen's neck, the autarch scarcely seemed to notice him. "Surely I can find another of Heaven's prisoners-another sleeping god who will bargain for his freedom and rid me of this turbulent, treacherous Trickster," Sulepis said. "No, the gods are not yet done with me-I will repay them for this slight. Who do they think they are?" His
eyes turned back to Vansen. "I am the Golden One! I am the Living Sun!"
Vansen had to speak through clenched teeth. He fully expected these would be his last words. "You… are… only… another… fool."
"What?" The autarch leaned down, pressing a little harder on the knife, spreading his knees to hold down Vansen's shoulders and stop his struggling. "What are you? One of the Southmarch peasants?"
"I would rather…" Vansen's voice was barely a whisper; the autarch leaned closer. "I would rather be… the lowliest sheepherder in Southmarch… than you in your golden armor…" Vansen had not been struggling at all, but reaching for a stone; he grabbed it and smashed it as hard as he could against the autarch's gleaming falcon helmet.
Vansen had little strength left. The blow was only hard enough to surprise the Xixian god-king, but it allowed Vansen to throw him off. He did his best to crawl away, but Sulepis was on him in moments, stabbing with his blade so that Vansen could only throw out his hands to grab his enemy's arms. He did his best to keep the blade from his unprotected face and neck, but Ferras Vansen was weary beyond description and wounded in several places; Sulepis was taller, well-muscled, and rested. Vansen managed to roll on the autarch's wrist, forcing him to let go of his curved sword, but that was the guard captain's only victory. As they struggled, the autarch quickly overpowered him again and clambered atop Vansen's chest, then fastened his long, strong fingers around the northerner's throat and began to squeeze.
The blackness gathered and spread before his eyes. Vansen could hear nothing but the roaring in his ears, see nothing but the blur of the autarch's mad face, all eyes and bared teeth. Then a great flame seemed to fill the sky above them both, as though the glaring, blazing sun itself had fallen down into this deep place beneath the earth. An instant later, the weight of the autarch was lifted from Vansen's chest. He coughed, struggling painfully for the air that had been denied him.
When he could look up again, he saw the tiny golden figure of the autarch dangling from the blazing white fingers of Zosim, whose vast, youthful face wore a smile of triumph.
"And with Crooked's daughter dealt with," the god purred in a deep rumble like an approaching storm, "That leaves only you, my little summoner."
Sulepis struggled until the straps of his armor broke. He tumbled free, but as Vansen watched, the monstrous Zosim snatched him out of the air like a man catching a fly. "no, I shall not lose you so easily," the god said. "After all, I owe you something. You intended to command me as if I were one of your slaves." He laughed and the sound rolled and pounded through the massive cavern. He lifted the autarch until the struggling, shiny figure was just before his eyes. "I see you wear the Sun Lord's hawk on your brow, little mortal creature.How he would laugh to see that! But I like the idea.yes, you shall be… my crest!"
And so saying, Zosim put his thumb in the middle of the autarch's breast to hold him, then tore off first one of his arms then the other, letting them fall to the ground. Then, as the autarch's thin shrieks filled the cavern, and his blood spurted and streamed over Zosim's hand, the god yanked off the Xixian's long legs as well. The autarch's mindless cries of agony rose until it seemed the very stars in the sky might be screaming in the invisible heights. The god lifted the autarch's writhing, limbless torso and head to his mighty forehead and affixed it there, so that the bloody golden lump seemed almost grown into the f lesh… then it burst into flames. Sulepis still lived, burning but unconsumed, and screeching helplessly as he struggled against the god's flesh that now held him fast. Ferras Vansen could only lie gasping in the muck, half-mad with all he had seen.
"Now you will go where I go, little king, see what I see… for a while." Zosim turned and stalked away across the island, each step making the ground shake as he headed toward the shore and waded into the Silver up to his marble thighs. With every step, the god seemed to glow brighter, hotter, and the flames that danced on his skin burned higher. By the time he had reached the far side of the Sea in the Depths, he blazed so brightly it was hard to see the form of the god within the fires.
Zosim reached up a massive hand and clutched at the cavern's stone wall. The rock smoked and cracked and crumbled outward. He reached up and made another handhold higher up, then dug his foot into the wall. The god was no longer even remotely human, but only a titanic manlike shape of almost pure fire. From such a distance Vansen could see nothing of the autarch, but he thought he could still hear thin screams through the roaring of the flame.
"And so I return!" the god proclaimed, then began to mount the sheer cliff of smoking, melting stone, climbing steadily toward the surface.
44
The Screaming Stars "… And so Kernios summoned the Orphan's shade, and said that if anyone in bleak Kerniou would weep for him, he could go… Zoria gave him hands of oak wood so he could play his flute."
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
See what they have done.
Barrick stirred, tried to open his eyes, but could not. The blackness simply was. I can't see anything!
You must see with the eyes of the Fireflower. Ynnir's voice. This is the last time I can speak to you, I fear-it is harder and harder…
Barrick began to move toward something-not light, but a lessening of the shadow, a shape that seemed to create itself by its resistance to the darkness. It stood calmly before him, waiting, its antlers a tangle that seemed to have no ending.
Am I dying now, too?
Not yet. The great stag lowered its head for a moment as if to crop at the grass. But no one-not even the gods, it seems-will outlast the Book. And this will be one of its strangest pages… Suddenly, the beast lifted its head as though it heard something. Come. Follow me. See what they have done…!
The stag sprang away, and although Barrick could discern nothing of the ground on which it ran, it had the sound of a real place, of grass and leaves and twigs beneath the stag's hooves. Barrick sprang after it.
What who have done? he called.
The short-lived ones. Your kind-tall and small. See? See how they have found a way through the darkness…!
The two of them raced now through a black emptiness shot by streams of fire. The bursts of flame shot out, one after another, great blossoms of burning force that rolled and gleamed, spreading out in spumes of hot wind, until the very earth trembled and began to come apart.
What is this, Lord?
The mortals have unleashed fire to battle a fire god, Ynnir said as they watched the conflagration grow and spread, watched the stone splinter and the earth collapse. Crooked's Fire, it is called. Do you see? The strength of Fire is the strength of Time itself, that ravages all things, but here the ravages of fiery Time have been shrunk to a single point, a moment of destruction that we now see in all its magnificence. Behold! With nothing but powdered earth the mortals have made flame and broken the earth apart.
But why? Do they think to crush the Trickster and his flame?
Oh, no. They have a greater plan. They have called up the fire to crumble the earth, and when the earth crumbles-now, see!
And then, as the stones of Midlan's Mount broke and fell, as burst after burst of fire collapsed first one wall of the Funderling Mysteries then the next, the sea at last broke in.
The Water Lord may sleep, but he is still mighty! cried Ynnir. What can destroy the fires of the Trickster god? The deep waters, manchild-the deep, cold waters of the great ocean…!
The great burning god had scarcely climbed up the stone chimney and out of Ferras Vansen's sight when a roar like thunder rolled down out of the monstrous opening in the cavern's ceiling. For an instant Vansen thought it was the god shouting his rage and triumph again, his voice made even greater by the echoes of the great vertical tunnel, but this time the very earth shook as well, the rounded stones of the island slipping and bouncing and tumbling all around him.
Vansen struggled onto his hands and knees and then raised himself painfully to his feet. Stones were tu
mbling from the cavern's walls now, only pebbles at first, but chunks of rock as big as his head quickly followed, and then others larger still. A boulder the size of a goods wagon crashed down out of the heights into the Sea in the Depths and sent up a silver fountain as high as the castle outwall.
Somewhere, the gods must be laughing at us, Ferras Vansen thought. Zosim the Trickster will climb to the surface while we mortals who remain behind will be crushed by falling stones, helpless to escape.
The rumble grew louder. The ground shook harder. Vansen staggered as the island swayed beneath him like a rope bridge, but at last he reached Prince Barrick. He hoped the tremor would end soon, but instead the earth throbbed on and on-harder now if anything, as though he stood jouncing on the skin of a beaten drum. At the same time, the air around him was growing heavier and tighter, pressing on his eyes and making his ears ring.
"Highness! Barrick! I'm not… strong enough… to carry you…! Wake up!"
Vansen dragged the prince a few steps toward the boat, but he could barely keep upright and his arms were numb. He felt Barrick stir a little beneath his hands.
"What…?"
"It collapses around us, Highness-the entire cavern is falling down. Perhaps if we can reach one of the tunnels…"
Barrick fought his way out of Vansen's grip. "No!" He rolled over, then began to crawl across the stones, clumsy as a tortoise. "No, the… the boat. We must… get into the boat."
"Highness, that is madness," cried Vansen. "It will never protect us-some of the stones are big as houses…!"
"Vansen, I do not… command you as a prince, I… beg you as a friend. Get into the boat!"
Barrick clambered up over the bundled reeds and into the boat with what looked like the last of his strength, then lay stretched between King Olin and the black-haired girl, as pale and motionless as if his heart had stopped. Vansen crawled in beside him.
"No matter what happens, hold them," Barrick said, his eyes closed and his face as pale as his dead brother's had been on the night of his murder. "Hold my father tightly and do not let his body go. He deserves… to come home…"