The Water poured out of the great crevice and splashed across the shelf of flat black basalt before surging over the edge and down into the pit. For all its fury, the waterfall was nearly invisible in the dark cavern, which was lit only by a few small, glowing stones embedded in the walls. The impossibly high-ceilinged chamber was called Yakh Huyeru, which meant Hall of Trembling; and although the cavern had been given that name for another reason, the walls did seem to shiver ever so slightly as Kiga‘rasku, the Tearfall, rolled ceaselessly down into the depths. It made very little noise in its passage, whether because of some trick of the vast chamber’s echo or because of the void into which it fell. Some of the mountain’s residents whispered that Kiga’rasku had no bottom, that the water fell through the bottom of the earth, pouring endlessly into the black Between.
As she stood at the chasm’s edge, Utuk‘ku was a minute stitch of silvery white against the tapestry of dark water. Her pale robes fluttered slowly in the wind of the falls. Her masked face was lowered as though she sought Kiga’rasku’s depths, but at the moment she was not seeing the mighty rush of water any more than she saw the dim sun that rolled past the mountaintop overhead, on the far side of many hundred furlongs of Stormspike stone.
Utuk’ku considered.
Odd and unsettling shifts had begun to take place in the intricate pattern of events that she had undertaken so long ago, events she had studied and delicately modified over the course of more than a thousand thousand sunless days. One of the first of those shifts had caused a small tear in her design. It was not irreparable, of course—Utuk’ku’s weavings were strong, and more than a few strands would have to snap completely before her long-planned triumph would be threatened—but patching it would require care, and work, and the diamond-sharp concentration that only the Eldest could bring to bear.
The silver mask turned slowly, catching the faint light like the moon emerging from behind clouds. A trio of figures had appeared in the doorway of Yakh Huyeru. The nearest kneeled, then placed the heels of her hands over her eyes; her two companions did the same.
As Utuk‘ku considered them and the task she would set for them, she felt a moment of regret for the loss of Ingen Jegger—but it was a moment only. Utuk’ku Seyt-Hamakha was the last of the Gardenborn: she had not survived all of her peers by many centuries through wasting time on useless emotions. Jegger had been eager and blindly loyal as a coursing hound, and he had possessed the particular virtues, for Utuk’ku’s purposes, of his own mortal nature, but he had still been only a tool—something to be used and then discarded. He had served what had been at the time her greatest need. For other tasks, there would be other servitors.
The Norns bowing before her, two women and a man, looked up as though awakening from a dream. The desires of their mistress had been poured into them like sour milk from a pitcher, and now Utuk’ku raised her gloved hand in a brittle gesture of dismissal. They turned and were gone, smooth, swift, and silent as shadows fleeing the dawn.
After they had vanished, Utuk’ku stood for another long silent time before the falling water, listening to the ghostly echoes. Then, at last, the Norn Queen turned and made her unhurried way toward the Chamber of the Breathing Harp.
As she took her seat beside the Well, the chanting from the depths of Stormspike below her rose in pitch: the Lightless Ones, in their unfathomable, inhuman way, were welcoming her back to her frost-mantled throne. Except for Utuk’ku herself, the Chamber of the Harp was empty, although a single thought or flick of her hand would have raised a thicket of bristling spears clutched in pale hands.
She lifted her long fingers to the temples of her mask and stared into the shifting column of steam that hung above the Well. The Harp, its outlines shiftingly imprecise, glinted crimson, yellow and violet. Ineluki’s presence was muted. He had begun to withdraw into himself, drawing strength from whatever ultimate source nurtured him as air fed the flame of a candle. He was preparing for the great test that would be coming soon.
Although it was in some ways a relief to be free of his burning, angry thoughts—thoughts that often were not intelligible even to Utuk‘ku except as a sort of cloud of hatred and longing—the Norn Queen’s thin lips nevertheless compressed into a thin line of discontent behind her gleaming mask. The things she had seen in the dreamworld had troubled her; despite the machinations she had set underway, Utuk’ku was not altogether content. It would have been a relief of sorts to share them with the thing that was focused in the heart of the Well—but it was not to be. The greatest part of Ineluki would be absent from now until the final days when the Conqueror Star stood high.
Utuk’ku’s colorless eyes suddenly narrowed. Somewhere on the fringes of the great tapestry of force and dream that wove through the Well, something else had begun to move in an unexpected way. The Norn Queen turned her gaze inward, letting her mind reach out and probe along the strands of her delicately balanced web, along the uncountable lines of intention and calculation and fate. There it was: another parting of her careful work.
A sigh, faint as the velvet wind across a bat’s wing, fluted through Utuk’ku’s lips. The singing of the Lightless Ones faltered for a moment at the wave of irritation that washed out from Stormspike’s mistress, but a moment later their voices rose again, hollow and triumphant. It was only someone dabbling with one of the Master Witnesses—a youngling, even if of the line of Amerasu Ship-Born. She would treat the whelp harshly. This damage, too, could be repaired. It would merely require a bit more of her concentration, a bit more of her straining thought—but it would be done. She was weary, but not so weary as that.
It had been perhaps a thousand years since the Norn Queen had smiled, but if she had remembered how, she might have smiled at that moment. Even the oldest of the Hikeda‘ya had known no other mistress but Utuk’ku. Some of them could be pardoned, perhaps, for thinking that she was no longer a living thing, but like the Storm King a creature made entirely of ice and sorcery and endless, vigilant malignity. Utuk’ku knew better. Although even the millennial lives of some of her descendants spanned but a small portion of her own, beneath the corpse-pale robes and shimmering mask was still a living woman. Inside her ancient flesh a heart still beat—slow and strong, like a blind thing crawling at the bottom of a deep, silent sea.
She was weary, but she was still fierce, still powerful. She had planned so long for these coming days that the very face of the land above had shifted and altered beneath Time’s hand as she waited. She would live to see her revenge.
The lights of the Well flickered on the empty metal face she showed the world. Perhaps in that triumphant hour, Utuk’ku thought, she would once more remember what it was to smile.
“Ah, by the Grove,” Jiriki said, “it is indeed Mezutu’a—the Silverhome.” He held his torch higher. “I have not seen it before, but so many songs are sung of it that I feel I know its towers and bridges and streets as though I had grown here.”
“You haven’t been here? But I thought your people built it.” Eolair moved back from the stair’s precipitous edge. The great city lay spread below them, a fantastic jumble of shadowed stone.
“We did—in part—but the last of the Zida‘ya had left this place long before my birth.” Jiriki’s golden eyes were wide, as though he could not tear his gaze from the roofs of the cavern city. “When the Tinukeda’ya severed their fates from ours, Jenjiyana of the Nightingales declared in her wisdom that we should give this place to the Navigator’s Children, in partial payment of the debt we owed them.” He frowned and shook his head, hair moving loosely about his shoulders. “Year-Dancing House, at least, remembered something of honor. She also gave to them Hikehikayo in the north, and sea-collared Jhiná-T’s eneí, which has long since disappeared beneath the waves.”
Eolair struggled to make sense of the barrage of unfamiliar names. “Your people gave this to the Tinukeda’ya?”. he asked. “The creatures that we called domhaini? The dwarrows?”
“Some were called that,” Jiriki no
dded. He turned his bright stare on the count. “But they are not ‘creatures,’ Count Eolair. They came from The Garden that is Lost, just as my people did. We made the mistake of thinking them less than us then. I wish to avoid it now.”
“I meant no insult,” said Eolair. “But I met them, as I told you. They were ... strange. But they were kind to us, too.”
“The Ocean Children were ever gentle.” Jiriki began to descend the staircase. “That is why my people brought them, I fear—because they felt they would be tractable servants.”
Eolair hastened to catch up to him. The Sitha moved with assured swiftness, walking far nearer to the edge than the count would have dared, and never looking down. “What did you mean, ‘some of them were called that’?” Eolair asked. “Were there Tinukeda’ya who were not dwarrows?”
“Yes. Those who lived here—the dwarrows as you call them—were a smallish group who had split off from the main tribe. The rest of Ruyan’s folk stayed close to water, since the oceans were always dear to their hearts. Many of them became what the mortals called ‘sea-watchers.’ ”
“Niskies?” In his long career, during which he had traveled often in southern waters, Eolair had met many sea-watchers. “They still exist. But they look nothing like the dwarrows!”
Jiriki paused to let the count catch up, and thereafter, perhaps out of courtesy, kept his pace slower. “That was the Tinukeda’ya’s blessing as well as their curse. They could change themselves, over time, to better fit the place that they lived: there is a certain mutability in their blood and bones. I think that if the world were to be destroyed by fire, the Ocean Children would be the only ones to survive. Before long, they would be able to eat smoke and swim in hot ashes.”
“But that is astounding,” said Eolair. “The dwarrows I met, Yis-fidri and his companions, seemed so timid. Who would ever dream they were capable of such things?”
“There are lizards in the southern marshes,” Jiriki said with a smile, “that can change their color to match the leaf or trunk or stone on which they crouch. They are timid, too. It does not seem odd to me that the most frightened creatures are often the best at hiding themselves.”
“But if your people gave the dwarrows—the Tinukeda’ya—this place, why are they so afraid of you? When the lady Maegwin and myself first came here and met them, they were terrified that we might be servants of yours come to drag them back.”
Jiriki stopped. He seemed to be transfixed by something down below. When he turned to Eolair once more, it was with an expression so pained that even his alien features did not disguise it. “They are right to be frightened, Count Eolair. Amerasu, our wise one who has just been taken from us, called our dealings with the Tinukeda‘ya our great shame. We did not treat them well, and we kept from them things that they deserved to know ... because we thought they would make better servants if they labored in ignorance.” He made a gesture of frustration. “When Jenjiyana, Year-Dancing House’s mistress, gave them this place in the distant past, she was opposed by many of the Houses of Dawn. There are those among the Zida’ya, even to this day, who feel we should have kept Ruyan Ve’s children as servants. They are right to fear, your friends.”
“None of these things were in our old legends of your folk,” Eolair marveled. “You paint a grim, sad picture, Prince Jiriki. Why do you tell me all this?”
The Sitha started down the pitted steps once more. “Because, Count Eolair, that era will soon be gone. That does not mean I think that happier things are coming—although there is always a chance, I must suppose. But for better or worse, this age of the world is ending.”
They continued downward, unspeaking.
Eolair relied on his dim memories of his previous visit to lead Jiriki through the crumbling city—although, judging by the Sitha’s impatience, which seemed bridled only by his natural courtesy, Jiriki might have been just as capable of leading him. As they walked through the echoing, deserted streets, Eolair again had the impression of Mezutu‘a as not so much a city as a warren for shy yet friendly beasts. This time, though, with Jiriki’s words about the ocean still fresh in his mind, Eolair saw it as a sort of coral garden, its countless buildings growing one from another, shot through with empty doorways and shadowed tunnels, its towers joined together by stone walkways thin as spun glass. He wondered absently if the dwarrows had harbored some longing for the sea deep inside themselves, so that this place and its additions—even now, Jiriki was once again pointing out some feature that had been added to Mezutu’a’s original buildings—had gradually become a sort of undersea grotto, shielded from the sun by mountain stone instead of blue water.
As they emerged from the long tunnel and its carvings of living stone into the vastness of the great stone arena, Jiriki, who had now taken the lead, was surrounded by a nimbus of pale, chalky light. As he stared down into the arena, the Sitha raised his slim hands to shoulder height, then made a careful gesture before striding forward, only his deerlike grace hiding the fact that he was moving very quickly.
The great crystalline Shard still stood at the center of the bowl, throbbing weakly, its surfaces full of slow-moving colors. Around it, the stone benches were empty. The arena was deserted.
“Yis-fidri!” Eolair shouted. “Yis-hadra! It is Eolair, Count of Nad Mullach!”
His voice rolled across the arena and reverberated along the cavern’s distant walls. There was no reply. “It is Eolair, Yis-fidri! I have come back!”
When no one answered him—there was no sign of life at all, no footfalls, no gleam of the dwarrows’ rose-crystal batons—Eclair walked down to join Jiriki.
“This is what I feared,” said the count. “That if I brought you, they would vanish. I only hope they have not fled the city completely.” He frowned. “I imagine they think me a traitor, bringing one of their former masters here.”
“Perhaps.” Jiriki seemed distracted, almost tense. “By my ancestors,” he breathed, “to stand before the Shard of Mezutu’a! I can feel it singing!”
Eolair put his hand near the milky stone, but could feel nothing but a slight warming of the air.
Jiriki raised his palms to the Shard but paused short of touching it, bringing his hands to a stop as though he embraced an invisible something that followed the stone’s outline but was nearly twice as large. The light patterns began to glow a little more colorfully, as though whatever moved in the stone had swum closer to the surface. Jiriki watched the play of colors carefully as he moved his fingers in slow orbits, never touching the Shard directly, positioning his hands around the stone as though partnering the unmoving object in some ritual dance.
A long time passed, a time in which Eolair felt his legs beginning to ache. He sat down on one of the stone benches. A cold draft was wafting down the arena and scraping at the back of his neck. He huddled a little deeper into his cloak and watched Jiriki, who still stood before the gleaming stone, locked in some silent communion.
More than a little bored, Eolair began to fidget with his long horsetail of black hair. Although it was hard to tell exactly how much time had passed since Jiriki had approached the stone, the count knew it had not been a brief interval: Eolair was famous for his patience, and even in these maddening days, it took a great deal to make him restless.
Abruptly, the Sitha flinched and took a step back from the stone. He swayed in place for a moment, then turned to Eolair. There was a light in Jiriki’s eyes that seemed more than just a reflection of the Shard’s inconstant glow.
“The Speakfire,” Jiriki said.
Eolair was confused. “What do you mean?”
“The Speakfire in Hikehikayo. It is another witness—a Master Witness, like the Shard. It is very close, somehow—close in a way that has nothing to do with distance. I cannot shake it free and turn the Shard to other things.”
“What other things do you want to turn it to?”
Jiriki shook his head. He glanced quickly at the Shard before beginning. “It is hard to explain, Count Eolair. Le
t me put it this way—if you were lost and surrounded by fog, but there was a tree you could climb that would allow you to move above the mist, would you not do it?”
Eolair nodded. “Certainly, but I still do not quite see what you mean.”
“Simply this. We who are used to the Road of Dreams have been denied it of late—as surely as thick fog can make a person afraid to wander any distance from his home, even when his need is great. The Witnesses I can use are minor; without the strength and knowledge of someone like our First Grandmother Amerasu, they are of use only for small purposes. The Shard of Mezutu‘a is a Master Witness—I had thought of searching for it even before we rode out of Jao e-Tinukai’i—but I have just found that its use is denied me, somehow. It is as though I had ascended that tree I spoke of, clambering up to the upper limits of the fog, only to find that someone else was above me, and that they would not let me climb high enough to see. I am balked.”
“I’m afraid it is all still largely a mystery to a mortal like me, Jiriki, although I think I see a little of what you are trying to explain.” Eolair considered for a moment. “Saying it another way: you wish to look out a window, but someone on the other side has covered it. Is that right?”
“Yes. Well put.” Jiriki smiled, but Eolair saw weariness beneath the Sitha’s alien features. “But I dare not go away without trying to look through the window again, as many times as I have the strength.”
“I will wait for you, then. But we have brought little food or water—and besides, although I cannot speak for yours, I fear my people will have need of me before too long.”
“As to food and drink,” Jiriki said distractedly, “you may have mine.” He turned back to the Shard once more. “When you feel it is time for you to return, tell me—but do not touch me until I say it is permitted, Count Eolair, if you will promise. I do not know exactly what I must do, and it would be safer for both of us if you leave me alone, no matter what it may seem is happening.”