“What?” The autarch’s ears were clearly not as sharp as Barrick’s. “What did he say? Do you want more, Vo? Name it!”
“You did not even need her.” The bearded man spoke so softly that nearly everyone on the island fell silent to hear him. “You put a demon in my gut to make me deliver the girl to you… and you did not even need her for your little mummers’ show.” He sagged at the waist and the knees, bending until Barrick was certain he was about to collapse. Then he slowly straightened. “And now you want this, too,” Vo murmured.
“Leopards… !” said the autarch quietly, but his voice was far from calm. “Be ready ...”
“But you shall not have it.” Daikonas Vo turned sharply and heaved the statue back toward the Shining Man as hard as he could. As the autarch and the others watched in gape-mouthed astonishment, it spun through the air toward the suddenly darkened Shining Man; then, as the statue vanished into the rock’s great black shadow, the entire stone mass erupted in blinding light. The Xixian soldiers closest to it stumbled back, clutching their eyes, weeping and shrieking, but the autarch let out only a single, agonized shout of despair.
Even as the dazzling glare spread, the cavern began to shiver as if something gigantic had picked it up and begun to shake it. The platform pitched, and those still standing there fought to keep their balance. The blaze that was the Shining Man grew brighter still until its harsh glare had driven away everything else, until it seemed as though the sun itself had been kindled in the great cave.
The Fireflower voices filled Barrick’s head.
“Crooked is gone!”
“Woe! The way has finally been opened! Woe to all the earth!”
“The gods will be free again!”
The streaming white light suddenly faded to something duller, a swirl of violet and indigo like a bruise on the air, then even that began to die. The shaking of the cavern became less. For a moment only a tattered black hole remained in the air where the Shining Man had stood, then the body of Barrick’s father fell to the ground beside him with a noise like a sack of wet meal. The hole in the air at the center of the island filled with hot, red light, then something stepped through it, bigger than a man and growing every moment, a banked white fire in the shape of a beautiful youth who wore rippling flames as a cloak.
“I MUST NOW DECLINE YOUR GIFT OF A MORTAL BODY,” the god announced, towering over all their heads now and still growing. His voice was so sweet that Barrick wanted to impale himself on it and die pierced by its music. “FOR AS YOU CAN SEE, I CAN NOW CREATE MY OWN. ...”
“No! You are mine, Deathgod!” shrieked the autarch.
The youth laughed, his hair floating around his head in tufts of pale flame. “I TOLD YOU THAT IF YOU COULD NOT NAME ME, YOU COULD NOT TAME ME. I AM NOT KERNIOS, WHO STILL SLUMBERS WITH THE REST OF THE GODS, ALTHOUGH PERHAPS ONE DAY I WILL WAKE MY FATHER TO SERVE ME WITH THE REST OF THE COURT. NO, YOU FOOLISH MORTAL! YOU TRIED TO ENSLAVE A GOD, BUT IT IS YOU WHO HAVE BEEN COZEND BY ME—THE TRICKSTER, AS THE MEWLING QAR NAMED ME. NOW ZOSIM SALA-MANDROS IS FREE! AND YOUR MORTAL ARMIES AND YOUR IDIOT CURSES AND SPELLS MEAN NOTHING TO ME!”
I have met this thing before, in a dream in the city of Sleep, thought Barrick, despairing. “Can you kill the darkness?” it taunted me. “Can you destroy the solid earth or murder f lame… ?” And it’s right. Now that Crooked is dead and the way is open, we can’t stop it… !
“COME TO ME NOW, LITTLE SOLDIER!” Zosim thundered. He snatched up Daikonas Vo, the man who had freed him, and lifted him high into the air. “YOU HAVE SERVED ME WELL—SO I GIVE YOU A GIFT! YOU WILL BECOME PART OF A GOD!” He threw Vo into his flaming maw and crunched him up like a roasted chestnut. “BE PROUD!” Zosim laughed, belching out a cloud of fiery amusement. “NOW YOU ARE IMMORTAL!”
The monstrous figure grew, and the air burned hotter and hotter; men screamed and burst into flame even as they tried to flee him. Now a handsome youth as tall as a temple minaret, the god of poetry and deceit stared down at their helpless struggles and laughed until the very stones of the cavern trembled.
41. Snakes and Spiders
“Many devout people came to Tessideme to see the place where the sun had been returned to the sky, and also to bring an offering to the grave of the Orphan. So many came that, as the years passed Tessideme grew from a small place to a city of high walls, where many people lived, and they called it Tessis.”
The thing that had been following him drew closer, and for the first time Beetledown could see it clearly when he turned. It was a gray devil owl, a huge bird with eyes that shone as brightly as lamps even in the near darkness.
Devil owls were night-sky hunters—he had never heard of one so far beneath the ground—but it was foolish to waste time wondering why it was here. The silent predator was right behind him, nimbly matching every swerve that Muckle Brown made and never falling behind more than a short distance. Beetledown could feel the bat laboring as she tried to stay ahead of the monstrous bird, but the owl seemed to glide almost without effort. Three times now it had come close enough to climb above Beetledown’s head, ready to drop and strike. Only Muckle Brown’s last-moment spins out from beneath it had saved him, and he was less than halfway back to the place Chert had told him to go. Owls could hunt in total darkness if they were familiar with the territory, and with their silent wings and keen hearing, they didn’t need much light even in a strange place. Long before he reached his goal, the hunting bird would catch them in its sharp talons, and then both he and the flittermouse would be torn to pieces by that great, curved beak.
It was by far the most frightening journey of Beetledown’s adventurous life. He clung tightly to the flittermouse’s back, his belly pressed flat against her shoulders and neck to reduce the pull of the wind and to keep him close as she swung rapidly through the narrower spaces of these stony depths, but although there were points where the owl fell back a short way, he and Muckle Brown never got far ahead: the creature was strong, pursuing them with a relentlessness he had never seen in one of the great birds before, as though it had a Beetledown of its own strapped to its back and goading it along. He had already tried twice to hide in small spaces the owl couldn’t reach, but it had waited so patiently that both times he had bolted back into flight—he simply didn’t have the time to wait.
When he dared to, Beetledown swung back out into the great open spaces of the chimney that had led him in and out of the depths, then climbed as swiftly as he could to gain much-needed upward distance before the monster caught up with him and forced him into the narrower, safer side passages once more. That was also the only way he could keep moving in the right direction; at this frenetic pace, even his own excellent instincts could make no sense of the twists and turns of the smaller tunnels, and he was nearly as frightened of getting lost as he was of being caught and eaten straightaway.
But did it even matter? Hadn’t the Funderling magister told him, “It will not matter,” or something like it? “Now we are all dead,” Cinnabar had said.
All? What did that mean, Beetledown wondered even as he clung to his careening mount. Did it mean the Rooftoppers, too? Could this be the end of his own people—had he no chance of success at all… ?
High Lord, do you truly wish nowt more for thy faithful folk ...?