by Tad Williams
Barrick wanted to run, wanted it badly, but he could still barely move. The raven had been right-he had been a fool to come here. He finally made his voice work. "Who… who are you?"
"Us?" the sharper, second voice said. "There is no true name we could give ourselves that you would know or understand."
"Tell him," spoke up a third, similar to the others but perhaps older and more frail. "Tell him the truth. We are the Sleepers. We are the rejected, the unwanted. We are those who see and cannot help but see." The voice was like a ghost murmuring at the top of an empty tower. Barrick was shivering hard, but he could not make his limbs work to run away.
"You are frightening the Sunlander child," the first voice said in mild reproach. "He does not understand you."
"I am no child." Barrick did not want these creatures in his head. It was too much like the last moments before the great door of Kernios-the moments in which he had felt Gyir die. "Just let me go."
"He does not understand us," said the weakest of the voices. "All is lost, as I feared. The world has turned too far…"
"Be silent!" said the harsher second voice. "He is an outsider. He is a Sunlander. Blood means nothing beneath the Daystar."
"But all blood is the same color under Silvergleam's light," said the first. "Child, rest easy. We will not harm you."
"You speak only for yourself," said the second voice. "I could burn away his thoughts like dry grass. If he threatens me, I will."
"Now it is you who should be silent, Hikat," said the first voice. "Your anger is unneeded here."
"We are scorned by all the world," said the one called Hikat. "We nestle in the very bones of those who would destroy us as they hover at the edge of wakefulness. My anger is unneeded, Hau? It is you who are useless, with your impossible schemes and dreams."
"When is the child coming?" asked the trembling third voice. "You spoke of a child?"
"The child has already come, Hoorooen," the first voice answered. "He is here."
"Ah." The weak voice let out something that felt like a sigh inside Barrick's head. "I wondered…"
"Why are you doing this to me?" Barrick tried again to turn and leave the domelike cavern but could not make his limbs do his bidding. "Are you all mad? I don't understand anything you're saying, not any of it. Who are you?"
"We are brothers," began Hau, "children of the…"
"Brothers?" This was the one called Hikat. "Fool! You are my mother-and he is your father."
"I had a son, once…" quavered Hoorooen.
The centermost of the three figures slowly stood. Its robes flapped open, and for a moment Barrick saw a glimpse of withered, sexless gray flesh. His heart stuttered and seemed to go cold in his chest; if he could have scrambled away from the firepit he would have. He had seen skin of that stony color on Jikuyin's cruel servant, Ueni'ssoh, but this creature seemed as dry and drawn as a mummified corpse.
"But we are not that one, Barrick Eddon," said Hau as if the boy had spoken these thoughts aloud. "We are not your enemies."
"How do you know my name?" It seemed more than impossible, here at the ends of the earth when he had almost forgotten it himself, and it terrified him. "Tell me, curse you-how do you know my name!"
"He attacks us!" Hikat cried. "We must destroy him…!"
"Who is there?" quailed Hoorooen.
"Peace, brothers. He is only frightened. Sit, Barrick Eddon. Listen to all we have to say."
The thing that kept him from running now helped him to sit beside the fire. The rippling flames made the three figures seem to float before his eyes like something seen in the last moments of waking.
"All of us were born long ago in the city called Sleep," Hau began. "It is true that Hoorooen is the eldest, but that is all that can be said for certain. Even Hikat, the youngest, is so old now that we cannot remember when he came into the world."
"She," said Hikat, but for the first time some of the edge of anger was gone and the voice sounded almost wistful. "For some reason I feel I was a woman."
"It matters not," said Hau kindly. "We are old. We share blood. We were born to the people called the Dreamless, in the city called Sleep, but they cast us out…"
Barrick felt a stirring of fear again. "The Dreamless!"
"Hold until you hear all our story. Not all who walk beneath the darklights of Sleep are as cruel as the one you met, but we are different from all of them. We are the Sleepers."
"They sent us away," said Hoorooen. "I am the only one who remembers. We slept, and that frightened them. We dreamed…"
"Yes," said Hau. "Among the Dreamless, we alone dreamed, and our dreams were no mere fancies but the true flickering of the fire in the void. In our dreams we saw that the gods would fall, and saw that the Dreamless would turn against their masters in Qul-na-Qar. We saw the coming of the mortals into the land. All this we saw and foretold, but our own people did not heed us. They feared us. They drove us out."
"I have never seen the darklights," said Hikat angrily. "My rightful home was stolen from me."
"You saw them," Hau declared. "You just do not remember. We have all lost so much, waited so long…"
"I… I don't understand," said Barrick. "You… you are Dreamless? But I thought the Dreamless never slept…"
"Let me show you." The middle figure threw back its hood. As with the gray man in Greatdeeps, skin as fine and thin as silk clung to his gaunt features, but Hau's skin was also scored with a stitchery of innumerable fine wrinkles, so that he looked as though he were made of cobwebs. The biggest difference, though, was that where Ueni'ssoh's eyes had been unblinking, silvery-blue orbs, the creature who stood before Barrick had only more wrinkles of flesh beneath his brows, his sockets as empty as desert sands.
"You're blind!"
"We do not see as others do," Hau corrected him. "Had we been like our unsleeping brethren we would have been blind indeed. But in our dreams we see more than anyone."
"I am tired of seeing so much," said Hoorooen sadly. "It never makes anyone happy."
"The truth makes no one happy," snapped Hikat. "Because all truth ends in death and darkness."
"Quiet, my loves." Hau lowered himself back to the ground, then reached out to his comrades. After hesitating a moment, they both took the offered hand, so that the Sleepers were joined. Hikat and Hoorooen then extended their own hands on either side of the small fire. Barrick stared at the trio across the flames, not understanding, or not wanting to understand.
"Take our hands," Hau said. "You have come here for a reason."
"I came here because I was lost-because those silkin things were trying to kill me…"
"You came here because you were born," said Hikat, impatient again. The extended hands still waited on either side for Barrick to take them. "Perhaps it began even before that. But you are here and that proves you belong. Nobody comes to the Hill of Two Gods without a reason."
"There is a page for you in the Book of the Fire in the Void, said Hau. Let us read from it."
"Wait! There is another soul reaching out for you," said Hoorooen. "A twinned soul that seeks you."
Briony. That finally decided Barrick-by the gods, how he had missed her! He moved a little closer to the fire so he could reach the two proffered gray hands. The room was not cold but the fire didn't seem to give off any heat, even when he leaned so close, and its flickering light revealed little more than where the deepest shadows lay. Despite a sudden terror far beyond what the situation seemed to offer, he let his hands close on the dry, slippery fingers of Hikat and Hoorooen. A moment later his eyes slid shut without his willing it, and suddenly he was falling-falling! Plunging downward helplessly into darkness, limbs f lailing…
But where were his limbs? Why did he seem to be only a single heavy thought, falling into the void?
He fell. At last, something other than darkness glimmered in the depths below him. For a moment he thought it was some vast, circular sea; a moment later it seemed an ornamental pond of silvery water, w
ith sides of pale stone. Then he saw it for what it was-the mirror he carried for Gyir, but grown to great size. He had only a moment to marvel at this inversion, at the idea that he could fall into something that was even now in his own pocket, and then he plunged through its cold surface and out the other side.
He stopped moving. The mirror, though, still remained, but now it hung before him against a field of utter black, like a picture in the Portrait Hall back in Southmarch, and he could see his own face in it.
No, not his face: the features of the person there had changed somehow without him noticing, sliding like quicksilver into new positions, shifting color like the towers of Southmarch as the morning sun appeared and climbed into the sky. The face that looked back at him was black-haired and dark-skinned, very young but also very worried and pinched with weariness. Despite it all he thought her beautiful. It was her, truly her-he had never seen her so clearly! The face in the mirror was that of the dark-haired girl who had long haunted his dreams.
"You," she said wonderingly-so she could see him, too. "I feared you were gone forever."
"Truly, I nearly was." He could see and understand her better than ever before but their conversation was still much like a dream, with some things not even spoken but still understood and some things incomprehensible even after they had been said. "Who are you? And why… why can I see you now?"
"Does it make you unhappy?" she asked with a touch of amusement. She was younger than he'd thought she would be, still with a hint of childhood in her face, but although her gaze was clever and kind, something in her eyes seemed veiled, the effect of wounds survived but not forgotten. She seemed to be standing only inches away, but at the same time she shimmered and almost vanished as his eye moved, like something seen through thick mist, like something seen in a dream.
It's all a dream. He was suddenly terrified he wouldn't remember this dear, now-familiar face when he was awake again.
Awake? But he could not even remember where he was, let alone whether he could be dreaming. If he was asleep, where did his body lie? How had he come here?
"Tell me your name, spirit-friend?" she asked him. "I should know it, but I don't! Are you nafaz-a ghost? You are so pale. Oh, I hope if you are a ghost, you died happily."
"I'm not dead. I'm… I'm certain I'm not!"
"Then that is even better." She smiled; her teeth gleamed against the darkness of her skin. "And look-all your hair is fiery like my witch streak! How odd dreams are!"
She was right-the streak in her hair was as red as his. It felt like something more than mere kinship. "I don't think I'm a dream, either. Are you asleep?"
She thought about it. "I don't know. I think so. And you?"
"I'm not sure." But as soon as his thoughts began to slide away from the mirror hanging in blackness he began to fear he would never be able to find it again. "Why can we see each other? Why should we?"
"I don't know." Her look turned serious. "But it must mean something. The gods do not give out such gifts for no reason."
That seemed like something he had just heard or thought himself. "What's your name?" But he knew it, didn't he? How could she feel so close, so real, so… important, but still be nameless?
She laughed and he could feel it like a cool breeze across overheated skin. "What's yours?"
"I can't remember."
"Nor can I. It's hard to remember names in dreams. You're… you're just him to me. That pale-skinned boy with red hair. And I'm… well, I'm me."
"The black-haired girl." But it made him sad. "I want to know your name. I need to know it. I need to know that you're real, that you live. I lost the only other person I care about…"
"Your sister," she said, her face suddenly sad; then: "How did I know that?"
"Perhaps I told you. But I don't want to lose you, too. What's your name?"
She stared at him, her lips parted, about to say something, but instead she remained silent for a long moment. The mirror seemed to shrink against the darkness, although he could still see her soft thick eyelashes, her long, narrow nose, even the tiny mole on her upper lip. He was afraid that if he waited in silence too long the mirror would shrink and fall away from him. He almost spoke, but understood suddenly that if she did not think of her name now, if she did not tell him, she never would. He had to trust her.
"I used to be a Hive Priestess," she said at last-slowly, like someone reading from an old, damaged book. "Then I went to live with the other grown women. There were so many women! All together, all scheming and plotting. But worst of all was that we all belonged to… to him. The terrible one. Then I ran away. Oh, gods save me, I do not want to go back to him!"
Again he ached to speak but he knew somehow he should not. She had to find it herself.
"And I will not go back. I will stay free. I will do what I want. I'll die before I let him use me, either as a toy or as a weapon." She paused. "Qinnitan. My name is Qinnitan."
And in that moment he found a sudden strength, something that rooted him despite all the darkness through which he had come, rooted him in his own blood and history and name. "And I am Barrick. Barrick Eddon."
"Then come to me, Barrick Eddon, or I will come to you," Qinnitan said. "Because I am so afraid to be alone…!"
And then the mirror did fall away, spinning into darkness like a silver coin dropped down a well, like a bright shell tumbled back into the ocean, a shooting star vanishing into the endless field of night…
"Qinnitan!" But he was alone now in emptiness. He tried to feel again the strength and certainty that had given him his name, the knowledge of his own living blood, rushing through his veins hot as molten metal…
My blood…
Then he could see it like a river, a red river, stretching away in two directions. One way vanished into an impenetrable, silvery mist. The other way snaked a course back into darkness, but a living darkness full of movement and suggestion. It almost felt as though he could reach out and trace it with a finger, like a line of paint on a map, a line that meant movement, a road, a track, something that would lead him to… to…
Silver flashed, then flashed again, dazzling him. He fell into the hot red river and for a moment was certain it would destroy him, that it would boil away all that he was, even the name he had just recovered.
Barrick, he told himself, and it was as though he stood on the bank and called it out to another part of himself that was drowning in the crimson current. Barrick Eddon. I am Barrick Eddon. Barrick of the River of Blood…
And suddenly another face was there, congealing out of the redness just as the face of the girl had come to him out of blackness. It was a man, half-ancient, half-young, with white streaming hair and a bandage wrapped around his eyes, a face dimly familiar, as if seen once on an old coin.
Come quickly, manchild, the blind man said. Soon it will all be moving too fast to change the course. We are rushing toward darkness. We are hurrying toward the end of all things.
Come soon or you must learn to love nothingness.
And then everything around Barrick fell away into a greater darkness and he was falling too, tumbling once more through the unending black void, empty of all feeling and thoughts, touched only by a harsh, moaning wind and the dying whisper of the blinded man:
… You must learn to love nothingness…
11
Cut and Thrust
"In ancient days Zmeos and his brother Khors stole Perin's daughter, Zoria.The war that followed changed the shape of the earth and even the length of days and nights. Almost all scholars agree that the fairies took the side of Zmeos, the Old Serpent. Because of this, the Trigonate Church still holds the Qar people 'cursed and excommunicate'."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" "
Princess Briony," said Lady Ananka as the servitors cleared away the most recent course, "can you tell me how children are raised in the north?"
A few whispers and quiet anticipatory laughter ran the length of the royal tabl
e. Briony wished her friend was beside her, but Ivgenia had been assigned to one of the lesser tables at the other end of the hall and she might as well have been in another country.
"I'm sorry, Baroness, but I did not hear your question."
"How are children raised in the north?" the king's mistress asked. "Are they allowed to run wild there, as the Marchfolk allow their sheep and other animals to do?"
Briony smiled carefully. "Not all our animals run wild, Lady, but for those who live in areas where grass grows freely it only makes sense to take advantage of the bounty the gods provide."
"But it is the children I am interested in, dear," said Ananka with acid sweetness. "For instance, I was told that you were taught to fight with a sword and shield. Most exciting, I am sure, but to us it seems a little… uncivilized. I hope I do not offend."
Briony did her best to keep smiling, but it was growing harder. She had not expected the assault to begin quite so early in the evening-they had only finished the soup-but no one could stop this except the king, and Enander seemed much more interested in his wine and the conversation of an attractive woman on his other side.
It is like one of Shaso's knife exercises, Briony told herself. Combined with playing one of Finn's invented parts. If I could do both of those, I can achieve this, too. "How could you possibly offend, Lady?" Briony asked the king's mistress, letting no hint of irony into her words. "When you and His Majesty have so kindly given me a place here, as well as the priceless gift of your friendship?"
"Of course," said Ananka slowly, as if reassessing her strategy. Another flurry of whispers ran around the table. Those who had been deliberately ignoring Briony for social reasons were now regarding her openly, able at last to indulge their curiosity. "But I inquire because there is something else I wanted to ask. Something that I hoped you could… help me understand."
Whatever happens, do not be drawn into a battle, Briony told herself. She has the high ground here and all the other advantages. "Of course, Lady Ananka."