A Storm of Wings
“Little Adis began to dream nightly about a flock of martlets that flew around his head. The little birds told him they could not land because the ground was too cold. They were doomed forever to remain in the air . . .”
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
THE NAMES AND THE VISIONS crowded in on Barrick like beggars—the moment just before the charge, repeated over and over again throughout the People’s history like a nightmarish ritual . . .
The Ghostwood, where the Dreamless waited in their shrouds, invisible in the twilight, all their handpicked stratimancers whispering death-songs at the same moment so that the whole forest rustled, though no wind was blowing . . .
. . . Shivering Plain, where Yasammez fought her enemies in armor that glowed scarlet like sword-iron in a forge . . .
. . . the screams around Giant’s Cairn and the horrors that had waited for the first riders to top Blue Wolf Ridge . . .
All those terrible moments crowded in on him, or at least the Fireflower’s memories of those moments, all the times the People had fought with their very survival at stake, all those dull, painful martyrdoms that together were called the Long Defeat. Even with his eyes closed, the phantoms still surrounded Barrick, a thousand different voices from a hundred different ages, all that the Fireflower had seen and heard and thought now swept through him like crackling sparks.
We have always fought and we have always lost—even when we won . . . Winding through it all came a faint, dry thought he could scarcely pick out from the cloud of memory and lamentation—a whiff of humor dry as dust. Perhaps someday we should try to win by losing . . .
Ynnir, my lord! Will you stay with me?
But that intimate stranger’s voice had already trailed away into silence.
Barrick’s Qar armor felt no heavier than another layer of skin and the laurel helm fit him just as comfortably. But the thing he wore most lightly was his own self, which seemed no more substantial—a fraction of the weighty whole, a flame to its candle. Barrick felt utterly careless, even fearless: to die would only be to lose his body and float away as all the thoughts and memories that had been Barrick Eddon scattered like dandelion fluff. And the Qar memories inside me, the Fireflower kings . . . they would be scattered, too . . . ?
Saqri came toward him in her white-and-blue war armor. She looked Barrick up and down and did not say anything, but he knew her well enough to see the single mote of disquiet—the subtle, tiny trace which was recognizable to the Fireflower only because of generations of experience with the women of Crooked’s descent. “The last of the Xixian column has just passed on their way down from the surface,” she announced quietly. “Be ready.” She turned and walked away.
“She is not like Yasammez,” said a deep, rumbling voice beside him. “She does not like killing, even when she must.”
Barrick turned to discover massive Lord Hammerfoot standing near him—and not just Hammerfoot, but a spectral blur of all the Ettins that the custodians of the Fireflower had ever known, so many memories that, if Barrick did not concentrate, they fogged his mind like winter glass. The master of the Ettins stared back at him, the burning coals of his eyes barely visible beneath the helmet that further shadowed his great, ugly face. “I will watch out for you, Barrick of the Eddons, fear not.” The creature’s voice was so deep that Barrick could scarcely understand him. Hammerfoot slapped at his ax, a monstrous thing with a blade half the size of a small table. “Give me a lot of room when I start swinging Chastiser here. He’s a big lad, needs a lot of room when he gets playful.” He patted the massive ax. “You may soon notice, Barrick Eddon, that unlike Saqri, I enjoy killing men. Do not take it amiss.”
“You . . . you speak my tongue . . . our—what do you call us, sunlanders?” Barrick asked. “You speak our sunlander tongue very well.”
“Used to hunt your folk and eat them, to tell it square,” Hammerfoot admitted. “Means I had to live close enough to get to know them.” The Ettin didn’t seem to be joking now. He shook his broad head. “Who would ever have thought . . . ?”
Barrick could not easily of summon anything to say to that.
A silent signal from Saqri sent the drows forward at last, scuttling down the uneven passage in almost complete silence. Hammerfoot stepped out after them, his footfalls so heavy Barrick could feel them through his own bones. “Stay with me, human,” Hammerfoot growled. “Even better, stay behind me. And do everything I tell you.”
The Fireflower specters were singing excitedly in Barrick’s head and the drows were running, and a few moments later they all burst out of the passageway and into the wider corridor known as the Great Delve, which led ultimately under the bay and up to the Xixian camp on the far side of the water—Saqri’s goal. The troops who had marched past on their way to join the autarch below had already vanished.
The drows and Hammerfoot did not hesitate, turning in the opposite direction and hurrying up the wide track toward the world above. Barrick sped to a trot, grateful for the solid but featherweight Qar armor. He had just looked back to see Saqri and the others pouring out of the branch-tunnel behind him when a roar from Hammerfoot made him stumble and almost fall.
Just ahead, a Xixian platoon had appeared around a bend of the passage. They shouted in alarm at the sight of the approaching Qar and quickly ranged themselves across the road, raising their shields to head height and leveling their spears in bristling formation, but even in the dim light of the tunnel’s torches Barrick could see the southerners’ eyes widen in terror as Hammerfoot bellowed even louder and thundered toward them, Chastiser spinning above his head. Every single one of the Xixians lifted their shields, but that did those who were in front of Hammerfoot no good: the gigantic ax fell with a swift, savage crunch. The shrieking of those crushed beneath the weapon and their own crumpled shields was horrible to hear.
The Xixians a little farther back escaped the giant’s first onslaught but were caught with their shields up as the drows running behind Hammerfoot quickly reached them and began ripping at the soldiers’ legs and feet with the hooks on the base of their short spears, tumbling dozens of the dark, bearded men to the gravel track.
Then the Ettin bellowed a word the drows seemed to recognize. The little men dropped to the stone; Hammerfoot snatched up Barrick, then turned and threw himself to the floor as well. A moment later a swarm of arrows snapped out of the Qar ranks and feathered the first row of Xixian soldiers. The wounded and dying sagged back and tangled the men behind them.
Barrick dimly heard Saqri’s voice, although he could not say whether in his ears or in his head, since the battle was already casting a thousand shadows in his mind, and it was all he could do simply to understand what he saw before him.
Saqri’s deadliest hand-to-hand fighters, Tricksters and Changing People, now leaped out. Within moments they were in among the Xixians and drawing blood with blade and talon so quickly that armored, bearded men appeared to fall untouched to their red-soaked knees, worshiping swift shadows. But the autarch’s soldiers were no cowards—these men had fought many enemies, if not any stranger ones—and within moments had begun to recover from the initial surprise and retaliate. A few clashing, shouting knots began to form in the chaos, and in places the Qar were being pushed back. When somebody fell against a wall and knocked down a torch, it was quickly stamped into sparks and the hallway became even darker.
Like hired fighters performing in the halls of Kernios, he thought wildly.
Earth Lord, the voices sang to him. We are in the Earth Lord’s house. His vengeance will be terrible—if we fail, we lose more than our lives . . . !
We fought him and his brothers on Silvergleam’s walls cried others, flung this way and that in Barrick’s thoughts like leaves in a gale. Do not catch Death’s cold eye! Do not let him freeze your heart as he did Lord Silvergleam’s . . .
For Whitefire! For the Children of Breeze!
No. Find your
self, said Ynnir’s voice, closer than the rest. Find yourself only. Let the rest go.
Barrick grabbed at the elusive thought, struggled to push the rest away.
Find yourself.
And suddenly, like a child learning the trick of walking for the first time, Barrick reached out toward himself and stepped out of the noise. What was happening was still all around him, but it slowed and grew more and more insubstantial until it seemed no more distracting than a pleasant breeze.
You are needed.
And suddenly he could see everything, clear as the finest glass, like something Chaven had ground for himself, and time lurched forward again, pulling Barrick as though with a string. A short distance away across the broad, dark space he could see Saqri’s red stone glowing, bouncing like a floating spark as she faced a half dozen Xixian soldiers. Six foes, but a hundred queens, a hundred ancestors, were in her, Barrick could feel it. He could sense her hot furies and cold joys as she fought, could even perceive a little of the chorus of battle-queens of which Saqri herself was only a part, a music of thought so complicated and bizarre that he could barely hear it, let alone understand it, even though it filled his head.
“Whitefire!” It came to his thoughts and his lips at the same moment—Whitefire the sun god, the brother of doomed Silvergleam. And Whitefire, the god’s sword, carried so long by Yasammez in the defense of the People. It felt right. “Whitefire!” Barrick shouted again, and suddenly saw—no, not just saw, but for a moment truly lived—that god’s last doomed charge against the monsters who had killed his brother Silvergleam, his hated rivals and stepbrothers, the Children of Moisture. Barrick hurried forward and the battle surrounded him like roaring water. All the battles surrounded him. A song of war that was many songs and many sounds filled his head, so many voices singing it that he could no longer tell which thoughts were his own, though that did not matter to him. Like a salmon breasting the crash of the river, Barrick Eddon swam into the dark and the blood and all the sounds of death run wild in a small place.
Briony thought she had plumbed the depths of surprise during this year of impossible strangeness, but she had not expected to wake up to find a man smaller than the stub of last night’s candle standing beside her head. She gasped and sat up. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the tiny man was no dream.
“I am searching the leader of this lot,” he called up to her. “I carry important news for un.” He bowed to her. “Beetledown the Bowman am I. Beest tha the princess Briony, good Olin’s daughter?”
A hundred different responses came to her lips, but what came out at last was a startled giggle. “Merciful Zoria,” she said. “I am. What are you?”
“Telled tha oncet already.” She could see his little face frown in irritation, then suddenly go wide-eyed. “Oh, beg pardon, Majestic Highness! Forgive us our rough scout’s manner.”
Briony really didn’t think she could still be sleeping, but couldn’t help wondering whether she might have lost her wits somewhere. “You said you’re . . . Beetledown?” She shook her head. “But what are you, Beetledown?” The first light of dawn was creeping past the flap of her tent. She could hear men moving outside, the sound of the day beginning, and could smell the fires that had only recently been lit. In the midst of everything else the smell of burning wood made her stomach twitch with hunger.
“I’ll take you to Prince Eneas,” she said at last. “These are his men. But I’d better carry you.” She stared at him. “How did you get here? Did you simply . . . drop out of the sky?”
His smile was no bigger than an eyelash, but still quite charming. “After a manner of saying . . . yes, mum. I came as a courier. My feathersteed waits on a branch.”
“Your what where? Feathersteed . . . ?”
He looked at her in surprise. “My bird, Your Heightsome Majesty.” He was worried now that she might be making fun of him. “I prefer to fly a flittermouse, in truth, but with the sun up, I left ’em to their sleep and came by pigeon.”
“I can promise no more,” the tiny man told Prince Eneas and his captains. Beetledown was doing his best to stand still in the platform of Briony’s outstretched hand, but every time he shifted his balance it made her palm tickle. “Just that my queen and the queen of the Fay both say to you and your soldiers that if you come to look on the autarch’s camp you might see something that will interest you. They advise to come in force.”
“Might see something?” Lord Helkis looked at the little man with disgust and something that might have been fear. “Are we so foolish that we are meant to fall for a trap like this? Simply march out to be destroyed on the word of some magical creatures out of a story? This . . . roof rat?”
“Rooftopper,” said Beetledown with affronted dignity. “Your kind know my kind well enough, tall man—used to put out bowls of milk and pieces of bread for us, to ask our favor and blessings on the house.”
“The night-elves of your nurse’s stories have come to visit us, Miron!” The prince was laughing, but more at his angry lieutenant than at the tiny messenger. “Perhaps you should look to your shoes to see if any of them need mending.”
But Lord Helkis was not to be so easily convinced. “Do you not understand, Highness? These are Blue Caps. Speak of the old tales? They are creatures of the twilight, the shadows. We cannot trust them.”
“If you remember,” Briony pointed out, “that is who this small gentlemen and his friends are fighting. Would we make the same mistake again, attacking allies and helping enemies?”
The tiny man looked puzzled by this. Briony quietly explained what had happened.
“Those must have been Akutrir’s lot,” he told her. “Lady Porcupine sent them out, but they had not returned when I left,” he said. “We did not know you had found each other.”
Eneas scowled; he had heard. “We shall speak more of that shame later. For now, we must hear all of what your mistress has to say. Queen Saqri, is it? Is she the one who has terrified the north—the dark lady?”
Beetledown shook his head. “Nay, but un’s that Lady Porcupine’s daughter—or granddaughter . . . I am not certain. But dark lady has stepped down and Saqri commands the Qar now, and says that if tha hurry toward the mainland city of Southmarch on the bay shore tha might see something of interest.” He turned toward Briony. “You, too, Princess, although the queen didn’t speak or send ’ee any message. By the Peak, tha and thy family have been away a long time!”
She nodded. “We have.”
“What else can you tell us?” demanded Eneas. “What exactly will we find on the shore of Brenn’s Bay, besides a vast camp of Xixian soldiers?”
Beetledown moved a little, trying to keep his balance on Briony’s unsteady hand. “I do not know for my personal self, Prince. I tell ’ee only what was given to me to tell—I know nought else. But Queen Saqri sent this message knowing tha wert here when none of the rest of us knew, so I think tha would do well to listen.”
Lord Helkis snorted. “A mannekin no bigger than a whisker bids us trust his fairy-mistress. How could that possibly have an unhappy ending?”
“Your mockery is duly noted, Helkis.” Eneas frowned at him. “It does not help me decide what to do next.”
“Ah, tha minds me of another part of my message,” said little Beetledown. “Tha should be on top of the hills above the bay by sundown.”
It was only after Barrick had defended himself through a dozen struggles and bloodied his sword several times—first on a fallen Xixian who tried to stab him from the ground, next on another southern soldier surprised to have missed his spear thrust, who did not get a chance to thrust again—that he tumbled out of his exalted state and began to feel like an ordinary mortal prince again. The Qar were now pushing back the autarch’s men without much resistance, so he let the battle eddy past him while he leaned against the wall and tried to get air back into his burning lungs. Every muscle in his body throbbed. He remembered every moment of what had happened, but at the same time it seemed so
distant that it might have happened to someone else.
Even when I can subdue them, the Fireflower voices are too strong for me to silence for long. But Ynnir’s words had given him an idea, a first taste of how it might feel to harness the Fireflower like a battle charger and put all that strength to work.
What can I become, he wondered. What will I become? I understand the speech of the fairies, he thought. My crippled arm is healed. There is nothing of the old Barrick left. It has all been burned clean away.
If Hammerfoot was protecting him, it was in a very distant sort of way. The jut-browed giant was currently somewhere in the middle of the autarch’s men, roaring as he used a soldier from the Sanian hills as a club until he could pick up his ax again, which had become stuck in the shattered carcass of a supply wagon. Barrick’s safety did not appear to be uppermost in his mind.
Barrick reached again for the trick of thought that would allow him to muffle the voices and dim the shadows that the Fireflower made in his thoughts—a trick like squinting inside his own head. It was hard to hold it, easy to be distracted, and he knew it would avail him nothing if he were pushed to his limits.
Let it move through you, Ynnir’s quiet voice told him. You cannot make it happen. You cannot make it anything. It is.
The Xixians were fighting desperately now, retreating back up the wide tunnel but grudging every step, and even without the benefit of a hundred Qar kings and warriors Barrick would have known why. Many thousand of the autarch’s men were camped just above. These troops had undoubtedly sent messengers for reinforcements already. But didn’t these fools wonder why? Did they not question why the Qar would attack such a large army and in such a strange way—from beneath?
Perhaps this autarch is too used to having his own way. Or perhaps he has simply underestimated the People.
A huge, one-eyed man with a beard crashed through the Qar just in front of Barrick. The attacker thrust a spear all the way through a slender, pale-skinned Qar warrior so that the creature dangled like a broken puppet, then knocked aside two more with his hide-covered shield before immediately turning on Barrick, who tangled his sword with one of the other Qar’s blades and lost it as he tried to spin out of the way. The one-eyed man’s spear snapped out and missed Barrick’s gut only by the width of a finger or two. The tip scratched its way up the chestplate before slipping past his helmet. Barrick brought his shield up in time to repel a second thrust, but the Xixian giant swung his own shield, big and heavy as a door, and knocked Barrick onto his back.