Vansen looked back at her. Yasammez was the child of a god they said, but she was also a living woman, however strange. She was angry—a bitterness that he recognized, one that was hard to let go; his father had felt that way toward the other farmers in Little Stell, that because he was of Vuttish blood they treated him as a stranger even after he had lived twenty years with them. He had died with that bitterness still on him, refusing on his deathbed to see any visitors not of his own family.
It was odd, Vansen thought, here in the midst of all these other earth-shaking events, that he suddenly felt no anger toward the man who had sired him, no sorrow, as if they had finally reconciled, despite Pedar Vansen being years dead. What had changed?
“If all this is true, Lady Yasammez,” he said out loud, ending the long, whisper-scratched silence, “then there is nothing to be said by either Marchman or Funderling except that… we are sorry. We the living did not do these deeds—most of us did not know of them until now—but we are still sorry.” He turned to Malachite Copper. “Is that so for you?”
“By the Hot Lord, but certainly!” said Copper, and then covered his mouth at having shouted such a strong oath in the very chapel of the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple. “Ever since I came of age and my father passed this heavy secret to me—it travels thus, to each Copper heir—I have thought of my great-grandsire only with sorrow. I think he meant well but he plainly did wrong. If the rest of my family knew of it, I believe they would feel as I do and grieve at this family shame.” He shrugged. “That is all there is to be said.”
Yasammez looked from him to Vansen, and then paused, staring at nothing, making Vansen wonder to whom she spoke in her silent thoughts. Then she took up the great, dark ruby around her neck, slipped the heavy chain over her head, and let it fall to the refectory table with a loud clatter. As the rest of the assembly stared she drew out her strange sword, pure white in color but its glow as shimmery as mother-of-pearl, and set it atop its sheath on the table before her as well.
“This is the Seal of War,” she said, gesturing with a long, thin finger toward the stone, baleful as a dying ember. “Because I bear this, the decisions of life and death I make are a bond upon the People—the Qar. This is Whitefire, the sword of the sun god himself. I swore that I would not sheathe it again until I had destroyed this mortal hall where our great ancestor, my father Crooked, fell.” She swung her gaze around the table. Even Vansen found it hard to meet those eyes, which had looked out at the world since Hierosol itself was young.
Then Yasammez took the hilt of the white sword in her hand and lifted it. Anxious whispers turned to outright cries of alarm before she slid it into the scabbard with a noise like the snap of a door latch.
“Today I swallow my own words. I default upon my oath. The Book of the Fire in the Void will find a way to even my account, I am sure.” Yasammez lowered her head as if a great weariness had just come over her, and for a moment the entire room grew completely still. Then she straightened, her face a mask again, and donned the Seal of War once more. “I decree that my people are still at war… but only with the autarch. Today I have made myself an oath-breaker, but there is no escaping it—this man’s danger must be faced. For he comes here to wake a god on the night of Midsummer, but down in the place you call the Mysteries there is more than one god waiting to be awakened, and many of them are angry with all the living.”
4. The Deep Library
“He could play his shepherd’s flute well, and with it would delight all who heard him, man or beast. He could also understand the speech of the birds and the beasts of the field. Even the lions that lived in Krace in those days did him no harm, and the wolves shunned his flock…”
When he awakened, he was still as tired as if he had run for hours. It was impossible to tell how long he had slept; the luminous gray sky outside, the swirling clouds and damp, ancient rooftops seemed unchanged. He sat up on the bed, thoughts blurry and wordless, then put his feet on the floor and had to stop there, dizzy. He remained that way, head in hands, until he heard the queen’s voice.
“Manchild.”
He opened his eyes to find her standing over him. He was in a room that was plain but comfortable. Beside the bed a window with an open shutter looked down onto an enclosed courtyard and an overgrown garden of white-and-blue flowers. All of the other windows Barrick could see were shuttered.
“I had a dream ...” he began.
“It was not a dream,” Saqri told him. “You were on your way to the fields beyond, almost obliterated by the strength of the Fireflower. But my husband is with you now, helping you. Or a part of him is—the part that your need has prevented from going on.” Saqri’s dark eyes were solemn. “I do not know whether I should hate you for that or not, Barrick Eddon. Ynnir was meant to go on. He chose to go. But now because of the bond of responsibility or shame he feels to you, he lingers.”
“Ynnir is… inside me?”
“They are all inside you, it seems, all the men of the Fireflower, in almost the same way the women are all inside me, my mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, our family stretching back entirely to the days of the gods. But though a part of them remains with you, the Ancestors of the Father have in truth gone on to whatever lies beyond ...” She shook her head. “No. There are no words that will truly speak it from my thoughts to yours. But my husband… my brother… he cannot ...” Her face changed and she fell silent again. He heard a batwing whisper in the dark depths of his own being, but from a voice that was neither hers nor his own—“Sad she is sad she misses me even through the fury oh proud sister you are still beautiful… !”
“I must spend some time in thought about this—about everything,” Saqri told Barrick at last. “I will go. Harsar will attend to you until I call you.”
Shortly after she had left the room, the strange little servant Harsar came to him with a tray containing what Barrick could only regard as a feast—bread and salty white cheese and honey and a bowl of the fattest, sweetest, most thin-skinned plums he had ever tasted. Harsar did not leave immediately, but stood watching Barrick eat.
“I have never seen one of your kind, except in dreams,” the manlike creature said to him at last. “You are neither so fearsome nor so strange as I would have expected.”
“Thank you, I suppose. I would say the same for you, except I’m not sure I’ve ever seen your kind even in dreams.”
Harsar gave him a squinting look. “Do you joke? Never seen the Stone Circle People? Your people used to dance with ours by moonlight! We took you down into our towns beneath the hills and showed you wonderful things!”
“Doubtless,” Barrick said, wiping honey off his chin. The excellent meal was improving his mood by the instant. “But I’m young, you must remember. Still, I’m sure my grandfather danced the Torvionos with your grandfather at every festival!”
The squint deepened until Harsar’s eyes had disappeared. “You are jesting. Foolery.”
Barrick laughed. It felt strange—he could not remember the last time he had done it. “You are right, sir. You have caught me.”
Harsar shook his head disapprovingly. “Just like ...” He stopped himself with an obvious effort. “To jest is to mock the seriousness of things.”