26
By the Light of Burning Ships
“The villagers of Tessideme did not want the boy to go on such a perilous quest, for he was much loved, but Adis the Orphan knew this was the task for which the gods had marked him.”
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
BRIONY’S MOMENT OF HOPE was short-lived. As the Xixians on the waterfront fled from the attack of the airborne Rooftoppers and their birds, a force of the autarch’s cavalry burst out from the town and came thundering down Market Road toward the harbor.
Briony joined Eneas and his remaining soldiers as they wheeled to face this new and deadly charge; all the nearby Qar quickly joined them. Some of the fairies were mounted on horses as beautiful and slender as the sticklike creatures she had seen in ancient mosaics, and the riders were even stranger than their mounts. Some of these new allies weren’t even people, but foxes and wolves and wild forest cats whose very presence made the Syannese horses skittish.
“Do not lose heart!” Eneas cried to his men, who had begun to scatter in fear as the alien Qar came among them. “These are allies! Together we will bring the southern Falcon down!”
They met the charging Xixians at the place where Market Road crossed the dock road. As the two troops crashed together, the clamor of steel on steel and the screaming of both horses and men was so heart-breaking that Briony, still a dozen yards back from the fighting, wanted to clap her hands over her ears until the dreadful noise stopped.
Why was I so stubborn? Why did I think I should ride to war like a man? She was terrified.
But even the bravest of these knights must be frightened, she suddenly thought. Even Eneas himself. It didn’t matter why she was here—she was here.
Briony had little time after that to think about anything except staying alive, dealing enough blows to defend herself, or to help an ally in need—she saved a bulky, bearlike creature from a mounted spearman by hammering the Xixian’s helmet with her sword and knocking him out of the saddle. The bear-thing did not stop to thank her, but only hurried off to another part of the fray.
She stayed back from the thickest fighting where her smaller size and reach would be a disadvantage, striking only when she had to. If the southerners managed to push past on just one side, Briony’s company and their allies would be caught between two halves of the autarch’s forces and quickly squeezed to death. Torches were streaming toward Market Road from the fields and the town—hundreds, maybe thousands more of the autarch’s foot soldiers still making their way to the battle. Eneas was too deep in the battle to see it, fighting for his life—without a miracle, there would be no escape from this nightmare except death.
Then the bay behind her exploded into flame.
No, not the bay, Briony saw as she struggled to turn her startled horse. Tongues of fire ran up the mast and along the furled sails of the nearest Xixian ship; as she stared, a dozen more vessels, large and small, kindled one after another. The flames seemed to leap across the bay like living things, two or three southern ships catching fire at a time until dozens were ablaze and the wavering red light of their burning fell across the battlefield as brightly as if the setting sun had returned. All around her, voices called out in surprise, wonder, and horror.
In the midst of this apparent world’s ending, both sides again flung themselves at each other in the scarlet glow. With their means of escape now gone, the Xixians fought with growing desperation. The line of battle moved like a living thing. One moment the Qar and Syannese seemed poised to overrun the Xixians and drive them out of their own camp, then a few moments later the shape of the struggle convulsed again and the Syannese and the Qar became the desperate ones as they were forced back to the edge of Brenn’s Bay.
A crackling arc of fire leaped out from behind Briony and set one of the nearest Xixian tents ablaze. A dozen more fiery streaks followed and several struck buildings along the waterfront, setting flames in their rafters and roofs. A few even reached the town’s watchtower and within moments it, too, was blazing like a great torch.
Fire arrows! Where was this attack coming from? The water? The bay was black and shiny as pitch, ships and water both striped with smears of shuddering, blazing light. The autarch’s ships were all on fire now, the survivors swimming for their lives—who could be shooting arrows?
Her answer came a moment later as long, dark shapes began to slide up onto the beach, dozens of long, low boats pushed through the shallows by dark figures who whooped and shouted as they dropped the boats and came running up from the water, some already loosing more fiery arrows into the Xixian camp. Why were they helping? Who were they?
Skimmers! she realized in astonishment as the first of the long-armed newcomers came sprinting up the beach and threw themselves onto the nearest Xixians.
“Egye-Var!” they screamed, jabbing with their fishing spears and slashing with strange swords as short and heavy bladed as butcher’s cleavers. The southerners staggered back in dismay at this latest and most unexpected assault.
Briony felt a cry well up in her own throat. “Erivor—and Eddon!” she screamed, spurring her horse back into the thick of the fighting.
Barrick watched the girl crawling through the maze as though he were a bird hovering high above her, distant and detached. He could see how hopelessly far she was from the way out, but he could not find his voice to tell her and was not even certain he should bother. The black-haired girl looked familiar but he could not summon her name. That disappointed him, although he did not know why.
She is precious, a voice told him. More precious than even you know. It was the blind king speaking, he knew, but he did not understand why this nameless young woman should mean anything to him.
First of the last, the king told him. Last of the first.
What did that mean? Why was it so hard to think?
Do not forsake her, the king said.
He tried to ask, What do you mean? But nothing would pass his lips. He might have been some mute creature, a bird, a horse, watching things far beyond its understanding.
First of the last, the voice said, quieter this time, farther away. Last of the first. Marriage of the dead. Hope for the living ...
What does it mean? But still he could not speak; the words were only in his own head, only in his own lonely, friendless thoughts.
No, Barrick Eddon.
The voice sounded different this time, closer—and it was a woman’s voice. Could it be the dark-haired girl? Was she aware of him at last?
Come back to us, Barrick Eddon. Come back. It is not time for this journey yet. The roads are wrong. The darkness began to slip away like sand through an hourglass and a different, brighter world began to appear behind it.
“No!” Barrick cried, finding his voice at last. “She’ll be lost! She’ll be lost ...”
“She still has a chance,” someone said to him—another female voice, this one deeper and also more familiar than the first. “Do not give up hope.”
A face was looking down at him, a pale oval with black eyes and an expression so calmly patient it might have been carved in marble—Saqri, the queen of the Fay.
“Hope ... ?” he asked. He felt light-headed, but at the same time his body ached badly. A shadow, he remembered—a great shadow had fallen over him and pushed him into the darkness. “So dark ...!”
“It is all one thing,” Saqri said. “What you saw, what you fear, what you fought. All one thing concealed in a thousand, thousand guises. And that one thing is oblivion. Remember that, Barrick Eddon. The worst that can happen is that you cease to exist. Is that so bad?” Saqri had shed her battle armor and now wore a robe of shining white silk. A smaller Qar woman stood beside her, her angular features and animal eyes making her seem both less human and less frightening than the queen. “This is Sunset Pearl,” Saqri said. “She is a healer.”
Urayanu, the Fireflower voices murmured. She of the Strengthening Touch.
“What happened?” Something was missing. How had he come here?
“You destroyed the Stone Swallower, then you fell.”
“That thing, that woman or ... monster.... Who was she?”
Saqri shook her head. “Some minion of the autarch’s. But the stone she had from her master—that was a great weapon indeed. A broken bit of tile, a small piece of Silvergleam’s ruined moon-palace—a kulik Khors, as some mortals named them. As the greater Tiles can open a door across the roads of Grandmother Void, so too can one of those bits of stone. But it only opens doors to a very unpleasant place, and when the way is open, one of the things that lives there comes through to inhabit the body of the Stone Swallower. That is what you saw. That is what you fought.” She turned to the other Qar woman. “How are the manchild’s wounds?”
“The worst was that the thing fell on him in its death throes,” the small woman said. “He will survive, my lady, but he needs rest.”
“And that he will have. Thank you, Sunset Pearl.” Saqri reached down and touched her cool fingers to Barrick’s brow. “You did a brave thing, manchild. You set yourself against a terrible, pitiless foe who would have killed many. ...”
He suddenly remembered what had been happening before his encounter with the Stone Swallower. “The autarch—all those soldiers—what happened? Did we beat him?”
“The southern king is no longer in the camp by the bay,” Saqri told him. “But I think you guessed that already. He has taken his strongest forces and gone into the depths, so the danger is as great as ever. We and our unexpected mortal allies only had to fight troops he left behind, though even those were many times our number.” She told him of the success of their plan, how the bird-mounted archers and the Skimmers with their flaming arrows and their small, silent boats had astonished the Xixians. “Only the surprise of our cousins’ attacks saved us,” Saqri finished. “The southerners broke and the survivors fled into the hills, so for the moment we are safe.” She shook her head so gently her glossy black hair barely moved. “My husband was right. He often told me that one day we would fight beside our sundered kin again. I was certain he was only hoping for something that could never be.”
“And you?” Barrick asked. He was tired and in pain, but he felt a stronger connection to the queen than ever before. “Are you well, Saqri? Have you rested?”
“I have just risen from a hundred years spent in unwilling sleep, Barrick Eddon. I will not need to rest again until my race is run.” She touched her fingers together to form Spider’s Sleep, which announced a moment of change. “Time is important to us now ... and time is short. I am going now to meet with the mortal soldiers who aided us and talk with them of what will come next. I would be glad to have you with me.” She looked at him for a long moment. “But I think Sunset Pearl would be angry with me if I brought you out. You have been near the edge and are only just back.” She hesitated, something he did not remember seeing from her. “Unless it is that you miss the chance to speak with your own kind?”
Barrick shook his head. Just the thought was exhausting. “I scarcely remember speaking with my own kind, and I don’t feel any strong urge to do it again. Who are they, anyway? Do you know yet?”
Again Saqri seemed to consider. “They are commanded by a prince of Syan. I am told his name is Eneas.”
“Enander’s son? I know of him. He is said to be a good man.” Barrick let his head sag back down onto the cushion. “If I am truly needed, I’ll manage. I’ll come. ...”
“You have convinced me,” said the queen. “Stay. Rest and grow stronger.” She bent and kissed his forehead with a touch dry as paper.
When Saqri had gone the healer named Sunset Pearl came back to Barrick’s bedside with a cup in her hand. “Drink this,” she said. “I think it will do you no harm, and it may do you much good.”
He stared at her. He was feeling truly tired now, struggling to keep his eyes open. “You think it will do me no harm?”
She looked back at him sourly. There was something catlike about her, but it was a cat that had seen many years and many disappointments. “I have never plied my craft on a mortal man. Content yourself that if you die in terrible agony I will at least know what not to do with the next mortal.”
He laughed a bit despite himself. “And who do you think will recommend any other mortals come to you if you kill me?” He lifted the cup to his lips, closing his eyes to try to make sense out of the unexpected but not wholly unpleasant flavors.
“You did not come to me by choice, Barrick Eddon,” the healer said, “and I doubt the others needing my help in days ahead will be any different.” Her look was less amused than resigned. “In truth, I expect to see more than a few dead and dying mortals here. Now drink up, Redling.”
The name and its hint of the familiar puzzled him for a moment. He lay back and closed his eyes. “Strange,” he told the healer, if she was still there. “I’m certain someone used to call me that ... but I can’t remember who ...”
The Xixian carrack, or what remained of it, had been driven far onto the sand by the tide, but the big ship still blazed like a Zosimia bonfire, outshining the smaller but still sizable campfire that the Syannese soldiers had made near the water’s edge.
Southmarch Castle lay just across the water. Briony could not quite accustom herself to that thought after so much time away—her home waited just across the bay. Just as the burning ship dwarfed the fire Briony shared with Eneas and his commanders, so the torches on the castle’s battlements shone much brighter than the stars above the smoke-shrouded bay.
“Are you warm enough, Princess?” Eneas asked.
She almost laughed. Only a couple of hours before, men had been trying to murder her with spears and swords. “I am quite well, thank you. When are they coming?”
“The messenger said ...” Eneas paused. “Look. They come.”
A strange procession was making its way along the strand toward them by the light of burning Xixian ships that still smoldered on the bay. Some of the Syannese soldiers camped around their own small fires got up and scrambled away, although the Qar did not come close to any of them. Briony could understand their alarm. No one could see so many weird shapes and gaits go past or meet the gaze of those glowing eyes—orange, yellow, green as a will-o’-the-wisp—without feeling that something had changed forever, and not necessarily for the best.
The newcomers slipped up to the edge of the prince’s fire and then stopped. At first Briony wondered why, but then a slender figure dressed in white stepped forward.
“May we share your fire?” The woman’s voice had a strange music—Briony did not understand her words until a moment after she had finished. “I am Saqri, mistress of Qul-na-Qar. You would call me the queen of these folk.”
“Of course, Majesty,” Eneas said. “You are welcome here.”
Saqri beckoned a small group of her own people to accompany her to the fire; the rest, perhaps two or three dozen at the most, promptly sat down on the ground. Relieved, the prince’s soldiers went back to eating their well-earned meals and bandaging their wounds. They had already buried their dead. The Syannese had lost many men, but the Xixians had lost far more.
The fairy queen was not quite what Briony had expected. She was beautiful, of course, with skin as translucent as snow and eyes so wide and black that Briony was frightened to look into them for more than an instant. But although Saqri’s beauty, preternatural stillness, and calm bearing lifted her above any mortal monarch, she was not tall. Briony was at least half a span taller. And even the Qar-woman’s grace did not entirely hide the fact that she was sore and weary.
Eneas offered wine, and to Briony’s surprise Saqri and most of her companions accepted it, although some of them had trouble drinking from cups. When they had been served, Eneas cleared his throat.
“So, Queen Saqri,” he said, “we are grateful for your help today fighting the Xixians, but before we talk of anything else, I must know something. Are we still at war, your
people and mine?”
The fairy queen’s mouth pulled tight for a moment in what might have been a smile. “You ask a good question.” For a brief moment the Qar woman’s penetrating gaze left him and turned to Briony, who could not face it and looked away; instantly, she was angry with herself. “The answer, Prince Eneas,” Saqri told him, “is that we are what we make of ourselves tonight, at this fire. But know this ...! Even though we may continue as allies, we will never be friends.” She was looking at Briony again. “Your people—and particularly those who live in this castle—have taken things from me that cannot be replaced or forgiven.” The fairy queen spoke with such feeling that Briony sensed the Syannese knights around her growing wary. “But I am not Yasammez, the dark lady you have already met and whom you already fear,” Saqri told them, her voice turning measured once more. “She is the one who warred on Southmarch ... although I admit I did not discourage her. Her bitterness toward your kind will never heal. But on this matter I have broken from her, and the People follow me.” Saqri spread her hands. “So, Prince of Syan, our peoples are at peace as long as we fight together. There will be no treachery. Not from my folk, at least.”
Eneas nodded. “Nor mine, I swear. So then, let us put the past aside and talk only of things that matter now. What do you plan? Has the autarch truly gone down into the ground under the castle, as I hear?”
“Tomorrow’s sun brings Midsummer’s Eve,” Saqri said. “The day after is Midsummer, and when Midsummer ends, the hour we fear will be upon us. The year begins to die. The sun begins its slow journey away from the earth and the spirits of discord rejoice.” She raised her hand as if in warning. “If the southern king, Sulepis the Autarch, defeats the few Funderlings who still resist him and reaches his goal in the depths beneath the castle by midnight of Midsummer’s Day, he will be able to perform the ritual. He will open the gate of dream and free the gods.”
“I have never heard of such a thing, not even in old tales,” said Eneas. “Why would he do it?”