Where is she? he suddenly wondered. In the castle, perhaps under siege? There’s no chance that Gyir’s people would have beaten us so badly and then fust stopped in the fields outside the city ... He felt a moment of terror, worse than anything he had felt for himself, at the idea of Princess Briony being threatened by monstrous creatures like these, perhaps a prisoner herself. He could not let the thought run free in his head—it was too horrible. Perhaps sin-fled, along with her advisers. Wherever she is, Perin grant she is safe. And who was it the princess herself had sworn by so often? Zoria—Perin’s merciful daughter. He had never thought to pray to the virgin deity before, but now he did his best to summon the memory of her kind, pale face. Yes, blessed Zoria, put your hand on her and keep her from harm.
Does Briony ever think of us? Of course, she must think of her brother all the time—but does she think of me at all? Does she even remember my name?
He forced such foolishness away. If there was anything more pitiable lhan mooning after an unobtainable princess, a young woman as high above him as the gods were above humanity, it was mooning white they were captives in the Twilight Lands, being marched toward the Three Brothers only knew what doom.
You think too much, Terras Vansen. That’s what old Murray told you, and he was right.
The sprawling avenue of broken stones and gigantic leaning statues had become even more desolate as they marched on, most of the plinths empty, the stones themselves few and far between, as though scavengers had carried them away. Even the trees had been cleared here; the valley floor, sloping up on either side, seemed as stubbly as the face of an unshaved corpse.
Vansen was also becoming more and more aware of a smell beyond that of the smoke, a strong, sulphurous odor that seemed to lie over the valley like a fog. The worst of it came from holes in the ground on either side of the road, and Vansen could not help wondering what could be under the ground that stank so badly.
“Mines,” said Barrick when Vansen voiced his question out loud. “Gyir said these are the first mines his people built, a long time ago, although the digging here began even earlier. They go down into the ground for miles.”
“What did they mine here?”
“That’s all I know.” Barrick gestured with his good arm toward the faceless fairy. Gyir’s eyes were almost closed, as though he slept on his feet. “He’s still not talking.”
The road, which Vansen thought must once have been the path of an ancient streambed, began to rise as the valley floor rose. Even as they climbed the smoke remained thick in the air, turning the cheerless vista of tree stumps and broken stones into something even more dispiriting, if such was possible. They were nearing the far end of the valley, and even though the road continued to mount upward, it became clear that unless it ended in a ladder half a mile tall it would never climb high enough to take them over the jagged face of rock that hemmed the valley.
Barrick looked up at the looming peak in dismay. “There’s nowhere to go. Perhaps we’re not to be slaves after all. Perhaps they’re just going to kill us here.”
“It seems a long way to march us simply to do that, Highness,” Vansen reassured him. “Likely there is some secret pass ahead—a path through the heights.” But he also wondered, and fear began to poison him again. Soon they would be pressed against the stony cliffs with nowhere to go, the Longskulls hemming them in with sharp spears .. .
If others had not been trudging through the growing dark ahead of him, Vansen would have tripped on the first impossibly wide, high step. As the prisoners in front clambered up, Vansen followed, turning to help the prince climb despite Barrick’s fiercely resentful looks. One massive step ran into the next, one wearying climb after another.
“It’s ... a ... cursed . . . staircase,” Barrick said, fighting for breath. They had been marching without a rest for hours, and each step was a formidable obstacle. “Like the one in front of the great temple back home—but monstrously big.” He fell silent except for his ragged breathing as he labored up two more steps behind Vansen. All around him the other prisoners were struggling at least as badly—some were simply too short to get up without help. The Longskulls clambered in and out of the procession, jabbing with their sticks and making irritated honking noises. “Gyir says that this is it,” Barrick reported at last.
“This is what, exactly?”
“Greatdeeps. The entrance to the ancient mine.” Barrick closed his eyes for a moment, listening to that silent voice. “He says we must hold hands, because to get separated here might be worse than death.”
“A cheery thought,” said Vansen as lightly as he could, but his own heart was like a stone. They continued up the great staircase, which seemed wider than the Lantern Broad in Tessis. At the top yawned a great doorway, high as a many-storied house. Compared to the twilight in the valley and on the stairs, its interior was dark as night.
“There will be a fight here, mark my words,” Vansen whispered to Barrick. It felt strangely natural to hold the boy’s hand, as though this topsyturvy land had given him back one of his younger brothers. “No creature would let itself be driven into that without a struggle.”
But there was no struggle, or at least not much of one. As the prisoners bunched in the doorway, some moaning and slumping to the ground, some actively trying to turn back, the Longskulls charged. They had been prepared, and now they leaped up the stairs and onto the landing as a unified force, shoving, kicking, poking, and even biting until all those who could do so clambered to their feet and staggered through the door. Many were trampled, and as Vansen let himself and Barrick be drawn into the darkness, he wondered if in the long run those lying bloody and crushed on the top step might not be the lucky ones.
“Should we have tried to get away?” Barrick whispered. “Before they shoved us in here?”
“No, not unless your Gyir says we must. We do know wh.at is inside but we might find a better chance for escape later on.” Vansen wished he believed that himself.
They allowed themselves to be dragged along in the river of captive creatures, out of the initial darkness into sloping, timbered tunnels lit Willi torches, then down, down into the heart of the mountain.
He did not notice it at first, but after a short time of trudging through the dank, hot corridors Vansen began to realize that some of the other prisoners were disappearing. The group in which they traveled was perhaps half the size now that it had been when they had first been driven through the great doors, and as he watched he saw two of the Longskulls roughly separate a group of perhaps a dozen captives—it was hard to tell in the flickering shadows, because the prisoners were of so many odd sizes and shapes—and drive them away down a cross corridor. He whispered this to Barrick, and saw the prince’s eyes widen in alarm.
“Is that because they mean something different for us? To kill us instead of making us slaves?”
“I think it’s more likely that they haven’t seen many of our kind before,” Vansen reassured him. “These LongskuU things don’t seem the types to act without orders. They may want someone to tell them where we should be put.” He didn’t really want to talk—it was hard enough trying to keep some idea in his mind of what turns they’d taken, where they might be in relation to the original doorway. If there was a chance later for escape, he did not want to run blindly.
Soon there were only a few prisoners left beside themselves, a more or less manlike creature with wings like a dragonfly, taller than Vansen although much more slender, a pair of goblins with bright red skin, and one of the wizened mock-Funderlings—a Drow. This last walked just in front of Vansen, which gave him more chance to look at it the little manlike creature than he might have wanted: it had a huge, lopsided head, a stumpy body, and hands that were almost twice as big as Vansen’s, although the creature itself was far less than half his size.
The remaining Longskulls hurried the last prisoners along. Vansen had to trot, no easy feat with heavy shackles on his wrists, and also to help the prince when the boy
stumbled, which was often. The pain in the prince’s withered arm from the restraints must be great, Vansen knew, although Barrick refused to mention it: it took no physician’s eye to see the boy’s pale skin, his creased, wincing eyes, or to interpret the Silence that had fallen over him in the last hour.
They reached a wide place in the corridor where several other passages branched out. The guards forced them down one of those branches, and within just a few more paces they emerged into a large open space where they stopped before another massive doorway, this one guarded by lowering apelike things that might have been Followers, but grown to the size of men and dressed in dusty, mismatched bits of armor. The Longskulls gabbled at these sentries, then stepped forward and used their spears to tap on the door, which despite their deferential touch made a hollow, brazen clang with each knock. The door slowly swung open and the quietly honking guards shoved the prisoners inside.
Behind the door lay the most demented place Vansen had ever seen, a cavern as large as the interior of the Trigon Temple in Southmarch, but furnished by a madman. Broken bits and pieces of the statues that had once lined the valley stood all around the immense space—here half a warrior crouching in the middle of the cracked floor, there a single granite hand the size of a donkey-cart. Moss and little threadlike vines grew patchily on the sculptures, and in many places on the rough-hewn walls and floor as well, and the air was damp with mist from an actual waterfall that poured from a hole high on one side of the cavern and followed a splashing course downward over stone blocks to fill a great pool that took up half of the vast room.
Across the pool from the doorway stood another huge statue of a headless, seated warrior, tall as a castle wall. Enthroned on this stone warrior’s lap, with various creatures kneeling or lying at his feet like a living carpet, sat the biggest man—the biggest living thing—Vansen had ever seen. Two, no, three times the height of a normal man he loomed, massive and muscular as a blacksmith, and if it had not been so absolutely clear that this monstrosity was alive, Vansen would never for an instant have believed him anything but a statue. His hair was curly and hung to his shoulders, his beard to his waist, and he was as beautiful as any of the stone gods’ statues, as if he too had been carved by some master sculptor, except that one side of his gigantic face was a crumpled ruin, one eye gone and the skin of cheek and forehead a puckered crater in which his disarranged teeth could be seen like loose pearls in a jewelry box.
Somewhere deep beneath them, something boomed like a monstrous drumbeat, a concussion that punched at Vansen’s ears and made the entire rocky chamber shudder ever so briefly, but no one in the room even seemed to notice.
Chains of all sizes and thicknesses hung around the terrible god-tiling’s waist and dangled from his neck and shoulders, so that if he wore some other garment it could not be seen at all. Hundreds of strange, round objects hung from the chains. As his eyes became used to the light, Vansen realized that every one of the hanging things was a severed head, some only naked skulls or mummified leather, some fresh, with ragged necks still dripping-heads of men, of fairies, even animals, heads of all descriptions.
The full childhood memory came back to Vansen suddenly, the taunt of older boys to scare the younger ones—“Jack-in-Irons! Jack-in-Irons he coming from the great deeps to catch you! He’ll take your head!”
Jack in Irons. Jack Chain. He was real.
The apparition raised an arm big as a tree trunk, chains swaying and clanking, the heads dangling like charms on a lady’s bracelet. The bastard god grinned and his beautiful face seemed almost to split open as he displayed teeth as large as plates, as cracked and broken as the ruined stones.
“I AM JIKUYIN!” he roared, his voice so loud and so painful that Vansen fell to his knees and then slumped down to his belly with his hands over his ears in a fruitless attempt to protect himself from the deafening noise. It was not until the giant spoke again that Ferras Vansen realized he was hearing the words not with his ears, but echoing inside his mind.
All ordinary thought disappeared in the skull-thunder that followed.
“WELCOME, MORTALS—AH, AND ONE OF THE HIGH ONES, TOO, I SEE. WELCOME TO THE UNDERWORLD. I PROMISE I WILL GIVE YOU A USEFUL DEATH, AND AFTERWARD I MAY EVEN SHOW YOU THE MATCHLESS HONOR OF WEARING YOUR SMALL BUT SHAPELY HEADS!”
18. Questions with No Answers
So then in that great battle matchless Nushash at last pulled the sun itself down from the sky and hurled it full into the face of Zhafaris, the old
Emperor Twilight, whose beard caught fire. He was burned into ashes, and that, my children, was the end of his evil rule.
Nushash and his brother Xosh scattered the ashes in the desert of Night.
Then, in his generosity, Nushash invited his three half brothers to join him in building a new city of the gods on Mount Xandos. Argal the Thunderer and the others thanked him and swore fealty, but already they were planning to betray him and take the throne of the gods for themselves.
—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
ALTHOUGH SHE COULD NOT HAVE SAID exactly why,
Pelaya found herself spending more time in the garden than had been her habit, even on days like today when the weather was less than ideal, with heavy gray skies and a biting wind from the sea. It was partly because her father Count Perivos had been so busy lately, busier than she’d ever seen him, with no time at all to give to his children. Sometimes he stayed so late examining the city’s defenses that he even slept in the Documents Chamber and only came home to change his clothes. But much of her interest in the garden was simply her interest in the prisoner Olin—King Olin, however he might mockingly disclaim his title. On the occasions that he and Pelaya met each other she always enjoyed talking to him, although it was never quite as strange and exciting’as-it had been the first time, when he had been a complete stranger and her companions had watched with horror as she introduced herself to him, as though she had decided to leap off the city walls and swim to Xand.
Still, she enjoyed the grown-up way their conversations made her feel, and he seemed to enjoy them too, although he was always disappointed by how little news she could give him about his homeland. She knew that one of his sons had died, and his daughter and other son were missing, and that his country was in some kind of war. Sometimes when Olin spoke about his children he seemed to be hiding feelings so strong that it seemed he would burst into tears, but then only moments later he would be so coldly composed she wondered if she had imagined it. He was a strange man even for a king, very changeable, unfailingly polite but sometimes a little frightening to a girl like Pelaya, whose own father was, for all his intelligence, a simpler sort of man. She sometimes thought Olin Eddon’s true feelings were as painfully imprisoned as he was himself.
He was not allowed into the garden very often, only a few days in every tennight. Pelaya thought that unkind of the Lord Protector. She wondered if she dared speak to her father about it—he was steward of the entire stronghold, after all—but although there was nothing illicit in the friendship with the northern king, she didn’t want to draw attention to it. Count Perivos was a serious man; he didn’t think much of things that had no purpose and she doubted he’d ever understand the harmless attraction Olin’s company held for her. Her father had doubtless heard something about the odd friendship, but so far he hadn’t said anything to her about it, perhaps reassured by Teloni, who had decided the whole thing was a boring lark of Pelaya’s and had stopped fussing at her about it. It was probably best to leave things that way, Pelaya decided, and not tempt the gods.
She was pleased to find that King Olin was out in the garden today, looking across the walls from atop a jutting ornamental stone not far from the bench, the one place a person could climb high enough see between the towers of the stronghold over all the Kulloan Strait. He sat cross-legged on the stone with his chin propped on his hands, more like a boy than a grown man, let alone a monarch. She stood by the base of the stone waiting for him to realize
she was there.
“Ah, good Mistress Akuanis,” he said with a smile. “You honor me with your company again. I was just sitting here wondering if a man could fash—
ion wings like a gull’s out of wood ami leathers, perhaps, although I sus pec t each feather would have to be tied in place separately, which would make lor a great deal of work—and so fly like a bird.”
She frowned. “Why would someone want to do that?”
“Why?” He smiled. “I suppose the freedom of a gull on the wind has more meaning to me just now than to you.” He clambered down, landing lightly. “I muse, only—I see the birds fly and my mind begins to wander. I beg you not to tell your father of my interest in flight. I might lose the gift of this time in the garden.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said earnestly.
“Ah. You are kind.” He nodded, the subject concluded. “And how are you today, Mistress? Have the gods treated you well since I saw you last?”