Who . . . are . . . you . . . ?
It came to him as a whisper—no, less than a whisper, it came like the sound of a flower unfolding on the far side of a meadow. Still, in the midst of such utter emptiness, it was a glorious sound, glad as trumpets.
Who’s there? Is that you, Storm Lantern? But he knew that the fairy’s words could never feel like that in his mind, each one as cool, gentle and precise as water dripping from a leaf after the rains had stopped. It was a woman speaking, he could feel it, but that still didn’t seem quite right: the touch seemed even too light for that. And then he knew. It was the dark-haired girl, the one who had watched over his other dreams.
Who are you? he asked the emptiness. He was still falling, but the movement seemed different now, no longer plunging toward something but sailing outward. Do I know you?
Who am I? She was silent for a time, as if the question surprised her. I... I don’t know. Who are you?
A silly question, he thought at first, but found he had no easy answer. / have a name, he insisted, I just can’t think of it right now.
So do I, she told him, still no more than a ghostly voice. And I can’t think of mine, either. How strange . . . !
Do you know where we are?
He could feel the negation even before he caught the word-thoughts. No. Lost, I think. We’re lost. For the first time he recognized the sadness in her voice and knew he was not the only one who was afraid. He wanted to help her, although he could not help himself or even say what it was that troubled him. All he knew was that he was falling endlessly outward through nothing, and that it was a blessing beyond price to have someone to share it with.
/ want to see you, he said suddenly. Like before.
Before?
You were watching me. That was you, wasn’t it? Those things were chasing me, and the halls were on fire . . .
That was yon. It was not a question, but almost a sweet note of satisfaction. I was afraid for you.
I want to see you.
But who are you? she demanded.
/ don’t know! When he grew angry her presence became fainter and that frightened him. Still, it was interesting to know he could still feel anger. When he had been falling alone, he had felt almost nothing. I just know that I was by myself, and then you were here. I haven’t felt ... It would have been almost impossible to explain in his waking life—in this wordless, directionless place it was far beyond impossible. / haven’t felt anyone in my heart since I lost her. He could not summon the name, but he knew her, his sister, his twin soul, his other half.
The other was silent for a long moment. You love her.
I do. But there was a misunderstanding between them, a sort of cloud of confusion, and again the girl’s presence became remote. Don’t go! I need to see you. I want to . . . There was no word for what he wanted—there weren’t even thoughts that could be strung together—but he wanted a reason to exist. He wanted a place to be, and to feel someone waiting for the thoughts in his head, so that he knew there was more to the universe the gods had made than simply a few whispers in endless darkness. / want to . . .
There is a place around us, she said suddenly. / can almost see it.
What do you mean?
Look! It’s big, but it has walls. And there’s . . . a road?
He could see it now, at least its faint lineaments. It was a space only slightly smaller than the endless dark through which they had been falling, and only a little more bright, but it had shape, it had boundaries. At the center of it he saw what she had called a road, an arching span of safety over an astonishing, terrifying dark nothing—a nothing even more profound than the void through which he had been falling. But this pit of blackness beneath the span was not simply nothing, it was a darkness that wanted to make everything else into a nothing, too. It existed, but its existence was a threat to all else. It was the raw stuff of unbeing.
No, that’s not a road, he said as the one stripe of something slowly hardened into visibility. It’s a bridge.
And then they were facing each other on the curving span, the boy and the girl, shifting and vague as objects seen through murky water. Neither of them were really children, but neither were they grown or anywhere close to it. They were raw, frightened, excited, and still new enough to the world that a thing like this made as much sense as anything else.
Her eyes were what held him, although he could not keep his stare fixed on them for more than a moment—everything here was inconstant, shift ing and blurring as though he had exhausted his sight with hours of read-ing instead of just regaining it.
It wasn’t the eyes themselves that fascinated him, although they were large and kind, brown like the eyes of some creature watching with caution from the forest depths. Rather it was the way her eyes looked at him and saw him. Even in this fit of madness (or whatever had swallowed him) the brown-eyed girl saw him, not what he said or what he seemed or what others imagined him to be. Perhaps it was only because they were in this place without names—perhaps she could have seen him here in no other way—but the way she looked at him felt like a welcoming campfire summoning a freezing, exhausted traveler. It felt like something that could save him.
Who are you? he asked again.
I told you, I don’t know. Then she smiled, a surprising flash of amusement that transformed her solemn little face into something astounding. I’m a dreamer, I suppose, or maybe I’m a dream. One of us is dreaming this, aren’t we? But that was a jest, he knew. She was no idle wisp of either his fancy or her own—she was strong and practical. He could feel it. And who are you?
A prisoner, he told her, and knew it was true. An exile. A victim.
Now for the first time he felt something other than kindness from her, a sour taste in her reply. A victim? Who isn’t? That isn’t who you are, that’s just what’s happening to you.
He was torn between his desire to feel her sweetness again and the need to explain just how badly life and the gods had treated him. The gods? They were trying to kill him!
You don’t understand, he said. It’s different with me. But he found that here on this bridge over Unbeing, this span that led away in either direction to unseen and unknowable ends, he couldn’t explain why that was. I’m . . . wrong. Crippled. Mad in the head.
If you expect me to feel sorry for you because you dream of impossible places and people without names, she said, some of her sly humor creeping back, then you’ll have to try something else instead.
He wanted to let himself enjoy her, but he could not. If he did—if he belittled his own miseries—how could he even exist? The only thing that made his suffering bearable was the knowledge that it also made him dif—
FERENT that he had been elected somehow for this pain, But I didn’t ask to be like this! His despair rose up in a howl of fury. / didn’t want things to be this way! I don’t have the strength for any more!
What do you mean? Her amusement was gone—she was looking at him again, really looking. He would not recognize this blurry, occulted phantom even if he stood face-to-face with her, at least not by her features, but he would know the quality of attention she gave him anywhere, in any disguise.
/ mean it’s too much. One horror after another. The gods themselves . . . The monstrousness of it all could not be explained. I’m cursed, that’s all. I’m not strong enough to live with it any longer. I thought I could—I’ve tried—but I can’t.
You don’t mean that. It’s a kind of. . . showing off.
I do mean it! I’d rather be dead. Dead, he might not see his beloved twin soul ever again—or this one either, this new friend in darkness—but at this moment he didn’t care. He was tired of the burden.
You can’t ever say that. Her thoughts were not plaintive but angry again. We all die. What if we only get one chance to be alive?
What if it’s all pain?
Push against it. Escape it. Change it.
Easy to say. He was disgusted and furious, but suddenly terrified she would lea
ve him alone on this bone-white span over nothing—no, worse than nothing.
No, it’s not. And it’s even harder to do, I know. But it’s all you have.
What is?
This is. All of it. You have to fight.
Will you . . . will you come back to me if I do?
I don’t know. A flash of sweetness in the nothing, a smile like a fluting of birdsong in the dark before sunrise. / don’t know how I found you, so I can’t say if I’ll ever find you again, dear friend. Who are you?
I can’t say—I’m not sure. But come back to me—please!
I’ll try . . . but live!
And then the bridge, the pit, the girl, everything was gone, and Barrick Eddon was swimming slowly back up through the ordinary soundings of dream and sleep.
—^
Ferras Vansen was relieved to see that the prince’s miseries seemed to have eased a bit. Barrick was no longer making that terrible wheezing noise, and although he still lay stretched on the stone floor of their cell he seemed to be resting now instead of suffering. Vansen, who had tried to> comfort the prince once and had been hit in the face by a Hailing hand for his trouble, let out a breath. Apparently he would live, although Vansen was still not entirely certain what had sickened him so badly. It seemed to he something to do with . . .
So what was that thing? he demanded of Gyir. That . . . door. You haven V told me anything since we came back into our own heads except “Grab the boy’s legs” when he was thrashing on the floor. Why do you keep silent?
Because I am trying to understand. Gyir’s thoughts traveled slowly as summer clouds. What we saw seemed to have only one explanation and I do not trust such seemings. But the more I think, the more I come back again and again to the same conclusion.
What conclusion? Vansen looked to the prince, who had sat up, but was hunched over like a small child with a bellyache. I am only a soldier—I know nothing of gods, fairies, magic. What is happening here?
You saw the pine tree and the owl, Gyir said. They are Black Earth’s symbols. What else could we have seen except the fearful gate of lmmon, as you would name him—the way into the palace oflmmon’s master, bleak Kernios himself?
It was not the familiar Trigonate god Vansen saw in his mind’s eye now, not a statue or a painting on a church wall, but a memory from his early life in the dales—whispers of the dark man with his mask and his heavy gloves, who would grab wicked children (or maybe even good ones if he caught them alone) and drag them down beneath the ground.
Kernios . . . the god of the dead? Are you telling me that we are standing on top of the entrance to his palace? It was one thing to meet even a terrifying giant like Jikuyin and be told he was a demigod, another thing to be told that one of the all-powerful Trigon made his home just beneath their feet in this very spot, the dark brother whose frowning eyes had been on Fer-ras Vansen since he had drawn breath, the shadow that had haunted his dreams as long as he could remember. But how could that be? Why would it be here?
It could be anywhere. It simply happens to be here. Or a doorway does, at least. Where other doorways are, who can say . . . ?
But what does that mean? If the gate’s here, the whole palace has to be here, too, doesn’t it? Buried down there in the stone?
Gyir shook his head. There was a small furrow between his eyes that showed his worry, the only sign of recognizable feelings on that bleak ex—
pause. The ways of the gods, theirr dwellings and habits, are not like ours. ‘I’hey ivalk different roads. They live in different fields, some of which we cannot even tread. One side of a doorway is not always in the same place or even time as what is on the other side. The fairy lifted both hands, made a sign with them that spoke first of connection, then separation. It is confusing, he admitted.
Vansen thought about his own experiences trying to find his way around behind the Shadowline, then tried to imagine something that would confuse even creatures like Gyir who had been born and raised in these shifting, unfixed lands. But why are they digging it out? he asked. The giant and that gray man—why would they want to go near it? Ferras Vansen had a sudden, terrifying thought. Is . . . Kernios on the other side of that? Waiting?
No, he is gone, Gyir said. All the gods are gone, Perin Shatterhand and Kernios and Immon the Black Pig—at least all those gods whose names I know. Banished to the lands of sleep.
“Then why are they digging?” In his agitation Vansen spoke aloud. After so much time, the croaking sound of his own voice irritated him. “For treasure?”
“Because they are mad,” grunted Barrick, rolling over. “The Qar are mad, but the gods and demigods are even more so. This whole land is cracked and deathly.” The prince couldn’t yet sit up straight, but he was doing his best to hide his discomfort, and Vansen couldn’t help admiring him for it.
Gyir must have said something to him then, because there was a pause before the prince said aloud, “Because I can’t. It hurts my head too much. I’ll just have to be careful what I say. Can you talk to both of us at the same time?”
J will try, Gyir said. You think us all mad, man-child? I wish it were only so, then our problems might not be so great.You speak from pain, because the essence of the gods hurts you, even when they are absent. In a way, you seem much like me. We have both felt the power of this place, only in different ways.
“What are you talking about?” Barrick asked.
You are sensitive, it seems, as I was and as all the Encauled would be—sensitive to the voice ofjikuyin, sensitive to the Pig’s gate and to the throne room of Black Earth beyond. But it is a little strange, almost as if... as if.. . Gyir closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. No, he told them, opening his eyes again. It matters not. Listen, though, and I will tell you some things that do matter. The fairy settled himself on the stone floor of the cell and briefly closed his red eyes in thought.
When Kernios was driven out, he—Told them at last, he left behind everything that was material, all that was of flesh or the world . . .
Vansen was puzzled, uncertain if he had understood Gyir correctly. Driven out?
“Explain,” Barrick said. “I’m tired of guessing.”
Yes, driven out. He and the other gods were banished from these lands and cast into the realm of sleep and forgetting.
“Banished by who?”
I will try to explain all, but you two must not interrupt me with questions—especially you, Prince Impatience, since you are speaking aloud so anyone can hear. Gyir’s anger flashed like lightning through his thoughts. We are fortunate—/ sense there is no one near who can hear what I say in your heads or who speaks your mortal tongue—but do not stretch your luck. We are in terrible, terrible danger—worse even than I had feared. The fairy raised his fingers to his temples as though his head pained him. Please, let me begin where I need to begin. Even to Vansen, still not entirely familiar with this way of conversing, it was impossible to mistake the desperation in Gyir’s every thought.
Prince Barrick raised his hand in surrender or permission.
First you must understand something of my own history. I am not merely a warrior. In fact, it is the most unlikely thing I could have become. Those of my folk who are most like your people in shape—for it was a shape we all shared, once—are called “the High Folk,” not because looking like a sunlander is comely, but because it is the old way of seeming. But even some of the High Ones are so different from your kind as to be almost unrecognizable, either born dissimilar or because they can change their outward appearance. Some of them have been figures of terror to your kind for thousands of years. Others, like the Guild ofElementals, take earthly shapes only when it suits them, like the gods themselves.
And then there are folk like me, who although we come from the great families of power that have kept the most of the old seeming, yet we ourselves are born different—freakish even among our varied folk. I am one such—one of the Encauled, as those of my malady are named. We are born with this tissue of flesh over our
faces that we must wear all our lives, but we are granted other gifts—senses that are stronger than most, an understanding that allows us to find our way when even the powerful might become lost. Among the People, we Encauled often become the guides, the searchers, those who explore different ways. Some of us take service in the Deep Library in the House of the People, which is our great city and capital. The Library is where we speak with the spirits of those who have left their flesh, as well as with some who have never worn flesh. Serving the Library is an exacting and noble pursuit.
That would likely have been my calling, but my parents fell afoul of one of the court rivalries and my father was killed. My mother was driven out of the House of the People by a faction who held strong allegiance to KingYnnir—although, to be fair, they did not always act as the king would have wished, nor could he always control them. My mother and I wandered for years, taking service at last with Yasammez—Lady Porcupine, the great iconoclast, the woman who belongs to no one but herself. In her house in the Wanderwind Mountains I grew, and when my mother at last became weary of the many defeats and disappointments of her life and surrendered to death, I was raised inYasammez’s martial service, my gifts used not for contemplation but for warfare on behalf of the woman who had taken me in and raised me almost as her own.