And then, just when it seemed that the Qar could do nothing but flee or surrender, a figure on a great gray horse appeared in the road as if it had stepped out of nowhere. The fairy folk collapsed into a semicircle around this armored warrior, who although nowhere near as large as the club-wielding giant still seemed tall beyond mortal men. His armor was a dull, leaden color, his face a sooty black—not black like the skin of Shaso or Dawet or the other southerners Briony had met, but black as something burned, black as charcoal or a fireplace poker. The creature’s eyes, though, were like nothing Briony had ever seen, lambent yellow as amber held before a flame, and he carried a weapon that had an exotic blade on one side and a spike on the other, clearly meant to pierce armor—even more frightening when Briony contrasted it with the light mail Prince Eneas was wearing.
To his credit, Eneas did not hesitate, but spurred toward the newcomer, recognizing that the Qar were rallying around him and a victory over the fairies that had seemed so certain a few moments ago now seemed much less so. A rain of arrows came from the hill above; Eneas’ men screamed in outrage at the human mercenaries who had fired them, because as many of them seemed to strike the Syannese as the enemy Qar.
The black-faced creature spurred toward Eneas, swinging his ax in violent circles above his head.
“Akutrir!” the other Qar chanted—the creature’s name, Briony guessed. “Akutrir saruu!”
Eneas and the fairy lord met in the center of the road, scattering both men and Qar who leaped for safety like grasshoppers disturbed in a summer field. The spike on the fairy’s ax bit into Eneas’ shield, piercing the painted white hound, and for long moments the two could not separate, Eneas struggling to pull back his shield and hacking at the handle of Akutrir’s weapon with his own sword. The fairy’s grinning mouth was huge—his dark-shadowed face seemed nothing but teeth and glowing orange eyes, like a Kerneia mask. The newness of everything that had distracted Briony was now gone; she was nothing but frightened. This was not an old story or a tale from the Book of the Trigon. Even though she was praying to Zoria as hard as she could and to the Trigonate Brothers as well, the gods would not step in and save them. They could all die here by the side of this lonely road, slaughtered by the enemy Qar.
What had seemed at first like single combat was nothing of the sort—the fairy folk around Eneas jabbed at him with short spears even as he met Akutrir’s blows with sword swipes of his own. The prince’s men charged forward to even the odds and everything disappeared into the swirl of flashing blades and dust from the road, which now hung over everything, a gray cloud sparkling in the morning sunlight.
And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. The tall fairy lord retreated and the rest of the Qar fled away toward the east as the mortals who had been fighting a losing battle for their lives only an hour before shouted and cheered. Some of them even hurried down to chase the retreating Qar, but the fairy folk seemed almost to melt away into the trees at the end of the valley.
The merchants and their mercenary soldiers might have been celebrating, but the Temple Dogs had lost more than a few men and were in no such mood themselves. Their grim faces as they brought back the bodies made Briony want to turn away. Instead, she forced herself to stand and watch the corpses being carried off the field to be laid beside the road. A detachment of the prince’s soldiers began to dig the necessary graves.
Now these Syannese men have died for my cause, too, she told herself. Eneas’ comrades and brothers. That is a debt that cannot be forgotten.
8. And All His Little Fishes
“... And so they entered into the great city of Hierosol. Along the way Adis was taught to pretend injury to excite the pity of wealthy folk, and other beggar’s tricks, so that he could earn his keep ...”
Barrick awoke in his chamber at Qul-na-Qar to find another meal waiting for him, just as good as the first—slices of some fruit crunchy as apples but tangy as a Kracian norrange, and thick brown bread that tasted a little of mulled wine, along with plenty of butter in a small pot. It seemed clear that some of the people who lived in the castle must still bake, and some kept cows or goats. At least Barrick hoped it was cows or goats supplying the butter and cheese, but if some other creature was responsible, he was just as happy not knowing because it all tasted good.
Barrick swallowed the last of the small loaf, then wiped the butter pot with his fingers and licked them clean. Gods, but it felt wonderful to have something in his stomach—real food, too, not bitter herbs or even the scrawny black squirrels he’d been hunting since crossing the Shadowline, miserable, tasteless things that in his hunger and misery had seemed a festival meal.
Harsar appeared a moment later, as though the little lop-eared servant had been in the hallway listening for the sound of Barrick sucking on his fingers. “She is waiting for you in the Chamber of the Gate of Sleep,” he said in his clumsily accented speech. Barrick wondered why the little servant didn’t just speak to him in thoughts as the queen did. “I will take you there.”
“Where?” But even as he said it he knew, as if it had been in his memory all along—the many-columned chamber with the shining disk where he had first arrived in Qul-na-Qar from the city of Sleep. His heart quickened. Saqri had been telling the truth, then. She had an idea.
The first thing that surprised him when he reached the columned room was that the queen was kneeling in the center of the glowing, pearly stone disk with her head bowed as if she prayed. The second was that when she rose and beckoned Barrick forward, Harsar stepped toward her as well.
“No, you must stay, Harsar-so-a,” she told the hairless creature. “After all, the castle will need to be looked after in our absence, and there is no one who knows it better than you. Your sons will need you, too.”
He bowed, showing no emotion. “As you say, my lady.” He turned and went from the room, quick and silent as a shadow sliding on the wall.
“Very well, then.” She turned to Barrick. “Two kinds of roads there are, as I told you. The first sort are those that Crooked himself created, or at least made available. We have one such road here before us.” She gestured to the gleaming disk. “Through it, you can pass into the city of Sleep ...”
“But that won’t do us any good… !”
“Just so.” She gave him a cold look, and he shut his mouth. “But there are other roads, other paths, and many of those the gods themselves found, although they did not know what they were or how to find or make more. They used them as a snake takes the burrow of a mouse for his own, although he did none of the work of digging. And just like a snake, sometimes the gods devoured or destroyed the roads’ original owners, spirits of an earlier age—but that is another tale. In any case, there are still several such roads leading to the houses of the great gods like Kernios and his brothers.
“Although it leads to the very place we seek, the road into Kernios’ house is banned to us because we have the smell of Qul-na-Qar on us, the house of the Earthlord’s enemies.” She turned to Barrick. “But there is one other god who might open a road for us. Long has your family believed itself descended from the great sea lord Erivor, brother of Perin and Kernios ...”