by Tad Williams
"I am going on," he told her. "Follow me if you can-if you wish-and I'll lead you out of here."
And then, with the startled Fireflower chorus crying its anguish until his head echoed, Barrick again began to walk.
The voices gradually fell silent, but more from surprise than despair. Barrick felt his fear ease a little. Qinnitan must be following.
Now was the hardest time. He pushed his way through tangled branches that clawed and tore, and forded streams as cold and black as the river in which he had found her. He made his way down a long, dangerous slope into a valley where he saw lights twinkling in the dark, but when he got there, the place was empty but for a field of leaning stones.
Dozens of times he stopped himself from looking back. The Fireflower voices were almost completely silent now, but he felt certain he would know if Qinnitan fell away from him, whether they told him or not. Hadn't they found each other time after time in their dreams? Hadn't he found her here as well, on the very border of death's inescapable kingdom?
Then at last she did stop-he felt her warmth diminish. He stopped, too, and it took all his strength to keep looking forward.
"We're almost there," he told her. "Only a little farther. Don't fear!" But it was not her courage that had deserted her, he suddenly realized, but her strength.
They had been walking through a valley of high cliffs and deep darkness; now he moved slowly ahead, groping along the side of the path until he found what seemed like a crevice in the rocky wall.
"Come," he called to her. "Follow me inside. You can rest here and be safe from any… hunting things."
He made his way into a narrow space scarcely his own height and only a little wider and longer than he was, but he heard her moving behind him, and his heart once again grew light. He lowered himself to the cold ground, and when she reached him he opened his arms so that she could curl herself into his embrace like an ailing child. He could smell her now, a scent he had never known before but which seemed utterly familiar. He could even hear her breathing in his ear, fretful at first but slowing as she let sleep (or whatever passed for sleep in this nameless place) claim her.
Soon Barrick felt himself sliding away as well, and wondered whether he would wake again in this world or any other.
He didn't understand at first what was happening. He had been deep in an unremembered dream, but now he was awake in darkness. Something was wrapped around him. He reached out and found her face, let his fingers trail across her cheek to her mouth.
"Barrick?" she asked, startling him.
"Qinnitan! Yes, it's me. Can you really hear me?"
She did not answer for a moment. "Yes. But you seem far away. Why do you seem so far away when I can feel you next to me? Where are we?"
He didn't really know-even the Fireflower voices could not tell him exactly where he was. He also did not want to frighten her, because if he lost her now, it would be forever. "On our way home."
She touched his face. "Can you see me? I can't see anything."
Barrick was taking no chances-he kept his eyes tight-closed, even in utter blackness. "No, I can't see you, but that's only because we're in a dark place. Do you remember anything?"
"I remember you." She pushed herself close against him. She was taller than he would have guessed, her head just beneath his chin while her legs curled around his legs and her body pressed against him chest to chest and belly to belly. He had forgotten what it felt like to hold somebody, to be held. "And I remember the fire," she said. "Something burning. Something big."
Barrick remembered those terrible last hours in the deeps below the castle very well, but he had no urge to talk about it. Who knew if the god of lies was even dead? What if Zosim now roamed these dark places, too? "Don't think about it," he told her. "Think about leaving this place. Think about coming with me."
"But I'm so tired." She said not as someone asking for help, but as a matter of fact. "I can scarcely hold you."
"Actually, you seem to be doing that quite well." Unexpected joy bubbled up inside him. "You're holding me very tightly."
"Because I don't want to lose you in the dark. Do you realize how long I've waited to hold you… to touch you…?" She tensed a little. "I am sorry. You must think I'm terrible. What kind of girl would say such things?"
"The right kind." He was afraid to speak now, fearful of anything that might end this moment. "You didn't recognize me before," he said. "When I found you in the river. Do you remember?"
"I don't remember anything except waking up here," she said. "Will you kiss me?"
"Kiss you…?"
"No man has ever done that. I don't think we need to be able to see, do you?"
His heart felt as though it would burst in his chest. "No. No, I don't think we need to be able to see to do that."
Barrick marveled at how he could feel everything so completely, the warmth of her skin, the sweetness of her breath, the downy hairs of her cheek and the tickling softness of her eyelashes… even the wetness of her tears.
"Why are you crying?"
"Because I never thought this would happen-I prayed for it but I didn't believe the gods would let it happen. And I don't want it to end," she said. "But it is going to end, isn't it? You and I will never be together."
"No!" But at that moment he could not make himself lie. "I don't know, Qinnitan, truly I don't. Don't ask me to say more than that."
"I won't." But her cheeks were still wet. She pushed herself so close against him that she seemed to be trying to push herself into him as well, as though their separated flesh could somehow be blended into one body, their hearts into one pulse. "Kiss me again, Barrick. If we cannot be together, let's make a memory that neither death nor fire can take away. Stay here with me. Make love with me."
He kissed her again, as she asked. The darkness might have hidden them from other eyes, but it revealed far more to them than light would have, and the hours fled like minutes.
When he awoke again, Barrick was alone. Terrified, he scrambled out of the bower they had made for themselves with nothing more than the bliss of being together at last. At the last moment he remembered to close his eyes and thus escaped a more certain doom. "Qinnitan!" he called. "Where are you? Come back!"
At last he heard her voice, as if from a distance: "I'm here, Barrick. But you must go."
"What do you mean? You have to come with me!"
"I cannot." She sounded sad but certain. "I don't have the strength to cross back over. I know where I am now, Barrick, and I know what is possible. You have brought me as near to the lands of the living as you can. Now you must continue on your own."
"No! I'll never leave you! I will stay here with you…!"
"You will not," she said calmly. "We would have a little time, but then we would both have to cross the river and who knows what would happen after that?"
"But I won't give you up to death. I won't."
"You are too fearful. I will be able to remain here, close to the lands of the living-our love has made that certain. What we made together is strong, my sweet Barrick, like a great stone set deep in the ground. I can cling to it for at least a little while." She reached out then-he felt her fingers on his face, warmer now, as though some life had flowed back into them. "Go back now. I sense you had something planned-perhaps it will still save us."
He tried not to sound bitter. "It will save others. You will suffer from it, as I have."
She laughed, an astounding noise to hear in this place. "Then I will suffer, Barrick, and be grateful for it. What sort of life do you think I had before this? I would rather a hundred times the suffering if I also have your love."
He didn't even need to think. "You have it. You have it always."
"Then go, and trust that."
Never before had he felt so uncertain of anything. But never before had he known anything for which he was so willing to fight. Trusting, though-that was harder than fighting. "Wait for me, Qinnitan, my sweet voice, my dear one. Promise me
that no matter how long it seems, no matter how impossible that I am still coming… that you will wait for me."
And then he turned and hurried toward the land of the waking and the living. Unkind Fate denied him even a last look back.
Barrick knelt beside Saqri. He could not bear to look at Qinnitan's face only a short distance away, so still, so much like death. "I have brought her as close as I can. Can you find her?"
Saqri's eyes were half open, a trapped creature breathing its last desperate breaths. I… cannot… see… anything… beyond this…
"Then let me help." He ignored his own bone-deep weariness to bend over. He lifted Saqri's dry, cold hand and placed it on Qinnitan's brow. A slight constriction of the muscles around Saqri's eyes was the only sign that she still survived. At last, her voice came, a murmur, a defeated sigh…
I cannot find her…
Barrick set his own hand on top of the Queen of the Fay's, then closed his eyes and let himself tumble down into the darkness he had just escaped. The Fireflower voices cried out in sudden terror:
Too weak, manchild! You are too weak…
You will die, too. You, Saqri, and the girl. Everything gone…!
Do not risk it!
But Barrick could do nothing else. Without Qinnitan, he would become something ugly-a cold, raging shadow of himself, a living ghost haunting his own life. Better to go now if he could not save her, to leap into the fire and make a quick ending.
Down, down Barrick Eddon fell. He could sense Saqri beside him, a white, winged shape diving beside him as though falling out of the clouds at the end of a long journey. The dark lands rose up and then rushed past as they skimmed over them, acres of silent forest and silvery meadows threaded with shining black streams. He led her as best he could, but it was not easy-her freedom returned and her crippled mortal body left behind, Saqri wanted to soar.
It was only as he realized he had reached the valley again that Barrick remembered he dared not look at Qinnitan, that like the Orphan, his eyes upon her would break the spell, and the black lands would claim her forever. He shut his eyes tightly, or dreamed that he did, but now he had to go blindly through a land far bigger than any earthly country. How could he find her? He reached outward, thinking that surely in this cold world she must be the only warm thing, the only thing that lived and cared…
I am here. The voice was faint as a cricket in a thunderstorm. I am waiting.
He turned toward her, letting the darkness shape itself as it would. He could only follow. He could only trust.
When he found her, he kissed her, his tight-shut eyes hot with tears. "Saqri!" he called. "She is here! Qinnitan… the one who also carries some of Crooked's blood!"
The great shape dropped out of the sky like a white storm, wings cracking.
"Has he asked you, womanchild? Has he warned you what it will mean if you take the Fireflower?" Saqri asked in a voice like solemn music. "Will you take this terrible burden onto yourself?"
"Yes." In that moment Qinnitan seemed to know all that she needed to know. "I will."
"She still cannot return, Barrick Eddon, even with the Fireflower," Saqri warned him. "In your world she will still sleep, even as I once did. She may never wake."
"I will find a way to wake her." He reached out to find his Qinnitan. He could feel the ripple and blaze of the Fireflower all around them, as if Saqri breathed cold fire. "If it takes me a lifetime, still I will do it. Do you hear me? I will wake you."
Qinnitan lifted his hand to her lips. "I wait for no man to save me-even you, beloved. I will find a way to wake myself."
Saqri laughed. "Well said, child-you may be a worthy successor after all. Take the Fireflower, Qinnitan, daughter of Cheshret and Tusiya. You and Barrick will hold all that remains of my family's long, painful legacy. May the Book record a new future for both our kinds."
And then it was done and Saqri was gone.
Barrick awoke slowly, as weak and sore as if he had been beaten. All around him the Qar were in active mourning, singing as they prepared Saqri's body. He crawled to where Qinnitan lay ignored beside her and rested his head on the girl's delicate chest to hear the slow but reassuring sound of her heartbeat. As he sat up he saw a faint silvery glimmer above her brow and the Fireflower inside him vibrated in sympathy like a plucked string. When he dragged himself to his feet, he was so unsteady that even the calmest of the attendants looked at him worriedly. "Fit a wagon to carry Queen Saqri's body," he said. "We will take her back to Qul-na-Qar so that she can lie with her ancestors, and so that her remaining subjects can mourn her as she deserves."
"And the other?" asked one of the healers. "The girl?"
"Dress her in bridal raiment," he said. "She is alive, although she sleeps. She, too, will go to Qul-na-Qar. See how the Fireflower glows in her? She is what remains of Saqri and all her grandmothers. Take care of her. Make her… make her comfortable." For a moment he could barely speak. "She is my love."
49
Two Boats "Filled with despair, the goddess went to her father Perin and her uncle Erivor and begged them to intervene… But the other two brothers agreed that the Earthlord was within his rights, and that the Orphan could not live again because Zoria had failed to bring him out."
-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"
This has become a city of broken stone and silk tents-beauty amid the ruins. And what beauty…! Ferras Vansen did not particularly like the new and unfamiliar, but he had already fallen out of the world he knew. There was no turning back-the impossible had become his lifeblood, and it seemed to froth inside him like sea foam. Did she mean what she said? Of course she did, you foolish man, and showed you with her lips and arms that she meant it! But would it make any difference when set against the hard facts of the world?
"Perin's Hammer, Dab, why are there no archers on the walls?" His good mood blew away in a moment, chased by fear. The responsibility of protecting Briony seemed almost impossibly large. "What do you expect the men up there to do if the Xixians play some trick? Spit on them? This is the life of the king's only daughter in our hands!"
"The archers are on the way, Captain Vansen," Dawley assured him. "Ten Kertishmen, good shots every one. They will be there as you ordered."
"I would have been even happier if you'd said 'ten Dalesmen.'" Vansen mopped his brow. He was terrified that something might go wrong, just when a happiness he had never believed possible was in his hands. "Tell me when these bowmen are in place." Vansen looked around. The pavilion that had been built covered much of the spit of land in front of the Basilisk Gate; the road up the rocky slope was all that remained of the near end of the mainland causeway. Vansen didn't really believe the Xixians planned any treachery, not with their own new monarch accompanying them, but Ferras Vansen didn't trust the Xixians not to do something arrogantly stupid. As Donal Murroy had always told him, it was better to be ready than to be sorry.
The day had turned out fine and sunny, with a fresh warm wind off the bay, and the attendants began rolling back the curtains of the pavilion as Briony arrived with the rest of her guards and Prince Eneas, who had brought a small company of his own men-"the Temple Dogs," as he called them. Ferras Vansen thought it a showy name for what was only another group of soldiers, after all. He had never held with the Syannese custom of self-glorying nicknames.
He approached Princess Briony, bowed, and said, "The guards are all in place, Highness. You will be as safe here as men can make you."
To his alarm, she laughed. He looked up, terrified he would see mockery, but the look on her face seemed to be a fond one. "Captain Vansen, we will have to return to the subject of your promotion soon. If you remain with the royal guard, you will drain the resources of the kingdom protecting me. I think I see three pentecounts of soldiers here!"
He felt himself flushing and cursed silently. "Your Highness is the heart of Southmarch. You have come through too much for us to risk losing you now."
"He is right, Princess," said Eneas in his soft midlander accent.
Vansen was doing his best not to hate the man. From everything he had heard, the Syannese prince was not only an honorable man and an admirable soldier but had been a gentleman and true friend to Briony as well; if Vansen had not feared him so much, he would have wished the chance to know him better. But Eneas had every right to marry Briony, while Ferras Vansen, however she might feel about him, had none. Even now, with his heart more firmly hers than ever before, Vansen felt certain she would do the politic thing-in truth, the only sensible thing-and marry the prince of Syan.
And then I will have to leave this place I love, as well as the only woman I desire. He did his best to push away self-pity. But what can be done, after all? I am a soldier, she is my queen-the heights are not meant for such as me. At least I have the sun and the wind back again…
How long had he spent entombed in deathly twilight or under a terrible reach of stone? He had gone so long without open sky and bright sun in the year past that he had forgotten the simple goodness of its warmth on his skin, as well as the bewitching tang of sea air which to a boy of the distant hills still seemed a kind of magic, the stuff of his father's stories.
He must have missed it, Vansen thought. Must have missed the sea when he left it and his home behind. A thought was in his head now, and he had to dig at it carefully to find its true shape. Even more, he must have loved my mother very much to give it up.
"'Ware the ship!" shouted someone from the wall. Vansen turned to see a small, covered boat bobbing toward them over the swells, the oars on each side moving like the legs of a water beetle. It was painted and gilded in the full glory of the Xixian colors, a huge carving of a spread-winged falcon perched on its prow as if trying to lift the entire craft from the water and fly away with it.