“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.