by Tad Williams
So this was the ending. After all that he had done, after all the people he had tried to please...well, he had told them he wasn’t up to it, hadn’t he? He had told them he would fail —or if he hadn’t actually told them, they should have known.
The gray man stood over him now, the bright eyes watching Barrick intently. Ueni’ssoh’s tongue flicked out, lizardlike, to touch his dry lips. “There is something...Yes, you have something. I feel it now. Something...powerful. Things begin to make more sense.”
Barrick snarled at him, but it was hard to make words, at least any words that mattered. Then he remembered.
The mirror. Gyir’s mirror, the sacred trust of Lady Yasammez! Barrick could feel it against his breast in the pocket of his shirt. He could not let this hairless, corpselike thing take it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about...”
“Silence.” The gray man reached out a bony hand that paused just above Barrick’s chest. The Longskulls and hairy-pelted guards crowded around their master, staring down like the demons in a temple fresco. “Give it to me.”
Barrick tried to deny him again, but although the gray man was not touching him, he could feel a force tugging at the mirror under his shirt. An intense agony blossomed in his chest, as though the mirror had sunk roots into his skin and bones, as though it would not be pulled away without tearing the greater part of Barrick away as well. He shrieked, but the gray man did not even flinch; except for those moonstone eyes, Ueni’ssoh might have been carved stone.
Barrick gripped the mirror through his shirt, but a curious weakness was already starting to spread through him. What use resisting? This creature, this gray demon, was stronger than he could ever hope to be—so much stronger... “No!” He knew that voice in his head. It was not his own but the gray man’s. “I won’t...!”
A smile curved the stony lips. The pull on the mirror seemed as though it would yank Barrick’s entire body inside out. Ueni’ssoh was kneeling above him, hand held a foot above Barrick’s breast. “But you will, sunlander—of course you will. And when I have this secret thing in my hand, I will know why One-Eye was so interested in you...”
“You can’t...!” But they were nothing but gasped words. He could not resist the gray man’s power. He would lose the mirror and lose everything.
“Stop fighting,” said the Dreamless. His teeth were clenched, and Barrick suddenly realized that beads of sweat had formed on Ueni’ssoh’s ashy forehead.
But I’m not fighting, Barrick thought. I wouldn’t know how, not against something like him. Still, something was resisting the gray man’s power—something was holding the Dreamless at bay.
A great heat suddenly filled Barrick. It was the mirror itself, blossoming with power even as Ueni’ssoh tried to make it his. A light flared around them, warm and almost as brilliant as the sun itself, so strong that Barrick himself screamed out, though it caused him no pain. As the light burst forth all the guards screeched and fell back, waving their clawed hands before their eyes. A moment later the light fell back on itself, but Barrick could still feel it even so, a tingling like sparks all over his skin. Someone else was howling now, too. Like a spider that had caught a huge, murderous wasp in its fragile web, it was now Ueni’ssoh who was trying to break contact—Barrick could feel the gray man’s mounting terror, could almost smell it, or hear it like a shrill noise—but the mirror or whatever empowered it would not let the Dreamless go.
“No!” the gray man shrieked and tried to stand up, but something invisible had clutched him and he contorted and thrashed like a living fish dropped on a hot stone. His eyes bulged, and his muscles writhed beneath the parchment skin, knotting and coiling. A moment later great black flowers of blood appeared on his face and neck and hands. The bestial guards, still howling in pain at the light that had blinded them, began stumbling away in all directions, tearing at each other in their haste to escape the growing incandescence that pulsated between Barrick’s breast and Ueni’ssoh’s still outstretched hand.
Then the gray man caught fire.
Ueni’ssoh jerked upright, shrieking and jigging, as the glow spread up his arm and into his chest. His eyes began to burn out of their sockets. His gaping mouth vomited flame. The guards fled barking out of the wide anteroom, back into the darkened corridors of the mine.
When Barrick looked again the gray man was nothing but a hissing, twitching, blackening shape. The boy turned away in horror and disgust, crawling over the arrow-riddled corpse of his Drow guide in his desperation to get out into the daylight.
Outside, he looked down the narrow valley beyond the base of the steps, bewildered. Was he really free? What had happened? Had he destroyed the gray man somehow? He didn’t think so—it had been the mirror, defending itself. But it had done nothing until the gray man had tried to take it. Would it have let Barrick be killed if the gray man had left the mirror itself alone? He didn’t know, and he certainly didn’t want to do anything to find out.
He broke off the protruding arrowhead and pulled the arrow out of his boot, which was slippery from the blood of his slashed ankle, then he limped down the steps and onto the open ground—the end of the long road they had traveled as prisoners to come to this terrible place, however many days or even months ago that had been. Only a little more walking, however painful, and he would be out of reach of the mine’s guardians, if any were minded to follow him.
Feeble as it was, the half-light still seemed strong to him after his days in underground darkness, and so at first Barrick did not notice the trembling of some of the huge statues in front of him until one of them swayed and then fell over, landing with a shuddering crash that almost knocked him off his feet. Two more statues toppled as the soil erupted before him in great crumbling chunks. A massive shape thrust itself up out of the earth and into the daylight.
At first Barrick thought in weary horror that it was some unimaginably large spider from the depths, all hair and malformed, corpse-colored limbs and gleaming, dripping fluids. But its appendages stuck out in unexpected directions, some shattered and peeling, all smoking and oozing like melted candlewax, as though the thing were some terrible combination of sea urchin or jellyfish and butchered animal. Then he finally saw the raw face hanging between two of the limbs, oozing with the glowing golden ichor that ran through it instead of blood. The horror that had cut off his escape still had a few tendrils of singed beard around the broken-toothed maw, and that single huge, mad eye.
“You wretched little ball of shit.” The demigod’s lower jaw was shattered, drooling a liquid that looked like molten metal, and so Jikuyin’s physical voice was an unrecognizable gurgle. The words were only in his head, but so powerful despite the demigod’s countless injuries that Barrick stumbled and almost sank to his knees.
“Thought I was dead, didn’t you? But we immortals aren’t so easy to kill...!”
Barrick staggered to one side, praying he could dodge around the huge, crippled thing, but despite all his terrible wounds the demigod moved with devastating speed, scuttling crablike on his broken limbs to block the boy’s escape.
“Not so fast, man-child. Your blood will open the god’s house and I will be made whole again. This is only an inconvenience.”
Barrick’s head seemed too heavy to hold up any longer. He could not get past the thing and he certainly couldn’t outfight it. He could not go back, either. He was done.
Unless... Barrick Eddon reached into his shirt and pulled out the mirror. For a moment he felt it warm in his hand, felt its power begin to bloom again as it had when the gray man had tried to take it, but Jikuyin held up a splayed, shattered hand—Barrick thought it must be a hand—and the burgeoning flare of light suddenly died.
“Whatever it is,” Jikuyin told him, “it is a lesser power than mine, mortal boy.” His single, bloodshot eye no longer had the means to show expression—the meat of his face was too ravaged for that—but Barrick could tell the demigod was pleased and even amused. Barrick knew also that what Jikuyin said
was true—the mirror was now cold and inert. “After all, the blood of the great gods runs in my veins...!”
Something dropped down out of the sky, covering the demigod’s face for a moment like a living black shadow. Jikuyin let out a screech of startled pain that ripped through Barrick’s brain and knocked him to his knees. When he managed to climb back onto his feet, Barrick saw that the black shape was gone and that the spidery demigod was moaning and rubbing at his face. When he took his limbs away, the place where Jikuyin’s single remaining eye had been was now a welling crater of radiant gold.
Blind...! He’s blind! Barrick knew he had only one chance: while the monster shrieked and thrashed his tattered arms in fury, Barrick put his head down and ran at stumbling speed straight toward him, then veered wide, diving and rolling just beneath the grasping talons of a gold-dripping hand the size of a wagon wheel.
The giant sensed that he had missed his quarry and let out a rasping, wordless bellow that shook the very hills around them, so that stones came tumbling down out of the heights. Barrick did not stop to look, but ran as fast as his exhausted muscles could carry him, gasping for breath with every step. The god’s cries of rage dwindled behind until at last they were only a distant noise like thunder.
He had finally staggered far enough to feel safe. He dropped onto his hands and knees, straining for breath. A black shape plummeted down out of the air, its wide wings brushing him as it landed. It took a few hopping steps and then leaped up onto a rock to regard him with a bright eye. Barrick had never thought he would be so pleased to see the horrid creature.
“Skurn—is that you?”
“Where be my other master?”
It took a moment for Barrick to realize what the bird was asking. “Vansen. He...he fell. Down in the mine. He’s not coming out.”
The raven regarded him carefully. “Saved you, I did. Poked that big one’s eye right through, did. Was that Jack Chain?”
Barrick nodded, too tired to speak.
“Then I be the mightiest raven what ever lived, be’nt I?” The bird appeared to consider this, walking back and forth along the top of the stone, clucking a bit. “Skurn the Mighty. Pecked out a god’s eye.”
“Demigod.” Barrick rolled onto his back. He had better be far enough away now, because he couldn’t move another step.
Skurn leaned back his head. His throat pumped, swallowing. “Mmmm,” he said. “God’s eye. Slurpsome. Wishet I’d got the whole thing.”
Barrick stared at the bird for a moment, then began to laugh, a ragged, painful bray that went on and on until he began to choke.
When the boy had his breath again and was sitting up, a thought came to him. “Tell me, you horrible creature, do you know where Qul-na-Qar is? The House of the People?”
The raven regarded him. “What be in this plan for me?
Didn’t save me like my master did—fact be, I saved you.” He preened. “Fact. Skurn the Mighty.”
“If you’ll help me take this...if you’ll help me get to Qul-naQar, I’ll make sure you never have to hunt for food the rest of your life. In fact, I’ll bring you fresh kills on a plate, every day.”
“True?” The raven hopped a few times, fluttered up, and settled. “Bargain, then. If you be trustworthy.”
Despite feeling as empty as a forgotten scarecrow, Barrick could still muster a little irritated pride. “I am a prince—the son of a king.”
Skurn made a snorting noise. “Oh, aye, that makes a difference.” He thought, blinking his dark eyes slowly. “But you were my master’s friend. So—partners.”
“Partners. By the gods, who would have thought?” Barrick crawled into the bushes, not caring where he lay his head. “Let me know if anyone comes to kill me, will you?”
He did not wait to hear the raven’s reply, because sleep was already pulling him down into dark places deeper than any mineshaft.
Vansen kept on because there was nothing else he could do, putting one foot in front of the other, trudging forward along the endless pale span through black nothing. There were times that he paused to rest, but he never did it for long, because each time he would begin to worry that he might somehow get himself turned around, that he would confuse the two indistinguishable directions and by accident set off back in the direction he had come. At other times he entertained the amusing notion that instead of a curving span across an abyss, he was walking on the outside of a great ring floating in darkness, that it had no beginning or end, and that he, Ferras Vansen, sentenced for crimes about which he was not quite certain (although he could judge himself guilty of much) would walk it forever, undying, an endless sentence.
But could the gods really be so cruel? And even if they were, why did he still feel tired, as a living man might feel?
And what was it about the gods that pricked at him? Why were they weighing so heavily on his thoughts? Every time he tried to remember how he had come to this place, what had seemed solid fell apart in his grasp, like fog. He could not remember where he had been before this—in fact, he could remember almost nothing that had happened since he threw himself against the guards in the demigod’s underground fortress. He seemed to recall a city, and something about his father, but surely those were dreams, since his father had been dead for years.
But if those had been dreams, then what was this place? Where was he? Who or what had set him on this unending track?
What if he just stepped off this pointless, endless bridge, he wondered, and let himself fall? Could whatever happened —death or an equally pointless, endless plunge—really be so much worse? It was something to keep in reserve, he decided—a door. It might turn out to be the only door that could lead him out of this dreadful emptiness.
Ferras Vansen had no answers, but being able to ask questions at least kept him from going mad.
It was as though he had blinked, but the moment of his eyes being shut had lasted for a year instead of an instant. When he noticed what had happened, everything had changed.
The abyss was gone, the infinite, eternal black faded in some strange way to a much more tangible darkness, that of ordinary shadow. Something that felt like stone still lay beneath his feet, but flat, not curved, and he had the distinct sense of being surrounded by something other than the dreadfully familiar void.
He stopped, surprised and more than a little frightened— after so long, any change was terrifying. He dropped to his knees and sniffed the cold stone, pressed his forehead against it. It felt real. It felt different, which was even more important.
He stood up and to his immense surprise the darkness itself began to recede, or rather the light came and dissolved it: brightness flooded in, the light of actual, homely torches, and he could see walls around him, stone walls that had been decorously carved. He followed the lines of the ceiling up and discovered, to his horror, an immense shape looking back down at him, black and ominous. But it was only a statue, a huge image of Kernios, and although Vansen was startled when he looked down and saw the same statue staring up at him from beneath his feet, he grasped a moment later that he stood on some kind of looking-glass stone, a vast mirror which reflected the pit so intricately carved in the ceiling overhead, as well as great Kernios looking down, or up, from its depths.
Staring up and then down made him dizzy. Vansen almost fell, but caught himself. Where was he? Was this some deep place in the earth beneath the demigod’s mine? He had fallen through the god’s open gateway—was this the heart of the god’s sanctuary? But it seemed too...ordinary, somehow. The carving was beautiful, the statue of Kernios awe-inspiring, but they did not seem otherworldly.
He caught himself when he almost toppled again, forced himself to breathe. He was weary beyond belief. He was alive. The one was proof of the other, and the solid room around him was more proof that he had survived, no matter where he might be. Across from him was a massive doorway. He went to it and tested it. Despite its heaviness, it swung open at a touch.
The room on the other side was
full of small figures— waiting for him, Vansen thought at first, but when he saw the startled look on the little men’s faces he knew that was not true. Servants of Kernios, perhaps? But there had also been tiny men like this in Jikuyin’s mines. Vansen held up his hands, wondering if they could speak any language he knew. “Can...you...understand...me?”
“What in the name of the Earth Elders were you doing in the Council Chamber, stranger?” one of the little men asked him, frowning. “You’re not allowed in there.” His eyes grew wide with alarm and he turned and scuttled out the far door. The rest of the little men followed him, looking back fearfully as they fled, as though Vansen were some kind of dangerous beast.
He stared after them and a chill traversed his spine from tailbone to skull and back. Not only was it his tongue the little man had spoken, it had been a perfect Southmarch accent. What was happening? What kind of trick was being played on him?
Vansen stood for a long time letting his heart slow, staring around the wide room and trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but almost afraid to find out. At last the door of the large chamber opened and a group of the little men, this time carrying shovels and picks and other weapons, came cautiously toward him across the shiny stone floor. Vansen lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, but his attention was caught by the stout man who came with them—a normal man, someone Vansen’s own height. There was something oddly familiar about his face... “I know you, sir,” he said as the big man and his child-sized army approached. “You are...gods save me, you are Chaven, the royal family’s physician.”
“So you say,” the man said. He did not look the type to be leading any armed band, even one this size. “But I do not admit it. You are trespassing here, you know. What are you doing in the Funderling’s guildhall?”