… But also with the sudden realization that he was going home to Southmarch.
But is it really my home? Except for the times with Briony, I was never happy. I never felt it in my bones the way I felt in Qul-na-Qar…
Beating heart of the People.
Rebuilt on the bones of Silvergleam and the ashes of the Dawnflower’s heart…
Our ancient house the People may never see again… whispered the chorus.
… Still, Southmarch was always my home, Barrick thought. How could it seem so foreign now… ?
It was not until he felt Saqri’s cool fingers touch his arm that he realized the old Skimmer women had vanished back into the Drying Shed. Rafe had tied the boat up at the end of the dock and was waiting for Barrick and Saqri to come aboard.
When they reached the bottom of the ladder, Barrick saw that the box in the bow of the fishing boat was a sort of carriage for Duke Kettlehouse and his people—the whole population of Rooftop-over-Sea, apparently, perhaps a hundred of the tiny folk in all, seated on low strips of wood which served them as benches, their children in their arms and their belongings piled around their feet.
Saqri once again allowed Rafe to steady her arm as she got in, which seemed to make Rafe very proud. Barrick clambered down beside her and settled in, a little awed by the queen’s nearness. He could smell her delicate and quite individual scent, flowers and cinnamon and some darker, stronger note, piney and bitter as temple resin.
They slipped quietly out of the cavern, Rafe rowing easily and strongly and the anxious Rooftoppers doing their best not to be thrown around by the movement of the boat. The sun had fallen very low in the sky and Barrick wondered how they could have been so long in that place when it had seemed less than an hour. By the time they reached the northern-most end of M’Helan’s Rock the last of the sun was sliding down behind the hills west of Southmarch. They waited in a shallow cove until the day had dwindled to a last bright glow behind the hilltops, then they slid out into open water.
Darkness billowed over them like a cloak. For a moment the jagged ruin of Wolfstooth Spire gleamed in the last light, then it too dropped into shadow.
The Last Hour of the Ancestor, a voice whispered to him above the murmur of the Fireflower chorus. I have never seen it since the day of my pilgrimage—except in dreams.
King Ynnir? Is that truly you?
The voice came to him, distant as the far side of the water. You called me back, manchild. I could only… Barrick had a momentary feeling of something being reassembled, piece by piece—something that had been happier in pieces. I am here.
And he was, stronger than any of the other voices, more coherent. The king was there, part of Barrick’s own blood and bones now.
“And now we return at long last, my love,” Saqri said out loud, startling Barrick, until he realized it was not him she was speaking to—not directly, in any case. “At long last, and at the end.”
“The ending of one thing is the beginning of another,” Barrick found himself saying, but even though it was the dead king speaking, it didn’t feel like a usurpation of his voice, only a prompting to say something he would have liked to say himself had he found the words.
The Fireflower voices fell silent. Even the crowded Rooftoppers in their box spoke only in inaudible whispers. For a long time Barrick heard only the steady, gentle splash of the oars, and he began to feel himself slipping into a sort of between-place, neither here and now nor any other time, as though they traveled between worlds—which in a way was true, Barrick thought. Everything that had gone before was done and behind him. Everything that would be lay ahead. Would it be the end of the world, as many around him seemed to think?
Perhaps. That was all he knew.
A quiet sound rose, so soft at first that he thought it only another note in the music of the bay and their passage upon it. It was no simple sound of water, though, but a sinuous, exotic melody. Then he heard words, or felt them in his head—at this moment there seemed no difference between the two.
It was Saqri, he realized, singing in a small, clear voice that rang like beaten silver. The melody ran around and around and began again without ever ending, like a snake with its tail in its mouth.
Her voice was sweet and low, but not soothing—this was no lullaby. It was rather a song so old Barrick could almost feel it sounding in his bones, each note a century, each century different, yet also much the same as the one before it, with cycles that came and went, came and went, until that time itself was all circles. And it was a woman’s song, a song of pride in survival, a chant of triumph at the survival of life despite all dangers, all obstacles…
After a while, Barrick Eddon could no longer remember what it had been like when Saqri was not singing—it seemed as though he had always rocked on these waves, in this darkness, while the words of this song coiled around him, touched him, whispered to him.
He had become something that had never been before, he realized, and he was returning to a home that was no longer his, if it ever had been. They were all doomed, but darkness was only the thing that gave light shape. He was going home, and the Mother of All was singing beneath the rising moon, a song that went on and on and round and round....