Now she looked Barrick up and down. “I could not have believed that the Book could contain such a strange chapter, yet here you are again.” Yasammez spoke aloud, each word like the chime of cold steel. “I had meant only to show Ynnir what the sacred Fireflower had come to in the veins of mortal murderers, but he has bested me again. The Lord of Winds and Thought must be the cleverest coward who ever lived.”
“He is no coward,” Saqri said calmly, “and it is too soon to assess what he has done, but it seems premature to judge his actions.”
“You always had a soft spot for your brother,” Yasammez said. “Even when I told you he would bring destruction on all our line. Can you pretend I was wrong?”
“As I said, it seems too early to judge.” Saqri bowed her head for a moment. “But I would prefer not to argue with you in any case, my great and beloved. Let us see what we have and what we may yet do. Later there will be time to talk of who was right and who was wrong.”
Yasammez could not have made her distaste for this more plain, but still her pale face remained as expressionless as a mask beneath her tangle of dark hair. “Later there may be time only to die,” Yasammez said. “However, that is not the way to greet kin, and not the way I wish to greet you, my only heart.” And without saying anything more she turned and walked away into the shadows. After a moment, Saqri and Barrick followed.
“I’ll just go and tell my folk that it’s all begun, shall I?” Rafe called after them. “Tell them to send folks as like to flap lips to join the war council.”
Barrick didn’t know what to say, and none of the Qar seemed to feel a need to reply.
“Right, so,” said the Skimmer cheerfully. “I’ll get to it, then.”
They were beneath Southmarch—beneath even Funderling Town! Barrick had never suspected there was anything beneath the Funderlings’ underground city except stone. Surely they must be in the very roots of the earth now!
As Barrick sat on cushions on the floor of Yasammez’ tent, with Saqri and the tent’s mistress again locked in deep, silent communication, he could feel the whole history of the place, or at least as much history as was known to the last Qar who walked the same earth as the gods did. He knew that Kernios—Earth Father—had met his end here at the hands of Crooked, the clever god whom mortals called Kupilas. He knew that the cavern in which this tent stood, surrounded by the Qar camp, had once been known as “Glittering Delights,” and had served as the garden of Immon, the gatekeeper, although that version of the cavern was no longer visible (or at least only appeared at extremely irregular intervals.)
Saqri sat up straighter. She had put on something more martial, a less spiny version of the armor Yasammez wore, its cream-colored plates trimmed with different shades of gray and blue. “I do not know why you still keep so much hidden from me,” Saqri said, and the fact that Barrick heard her say it was evidence that she wanted it heard.
“Because you are not yet yourself.” Yasammez’ tone was stern but Barrick’s deepened understanding could also detect a note of unhappy need—almost a plea.
“May I know the subject?” he asked. “Perhaps Lady Yasammez—to whom I am grateful for having my life spared, of course—now thinks I would have been better off as a dead example than as a live prince. But I am here, and for better or worse your Fireflower now burns in my veins—mine, Lady. So please, talk to me if you value my goodwill. I grow tired of wondering what’s afoot.”
Saqri actually smiled, although it might have been purely perfunctory. “Wait only a few moments more—talking, in large part for your benefit, Barrick Eddon, is just what we are about to do.…”
Even as she said it, folk began filing into the large tent, silent and watchful as deer, although with some the silence was distinctly more threatening. Elementals swathed in runecloths but still leaking radiance, bright-eyed Tricksters, Changers, Stone Circle People (each of whom might have been the twin of little Harsar back in Qul-na-Qar) goblins and drows and Mountain Korbols all entered in groups of two or three and spread themselves along the perimeter of the tent. They were followed by a contingent of Skimmers. Rafe was one of them, and he was carrying the box from his boat. Although the light in the tent was dim, Barrick could see at least a dozen Rooftoppers standing at the rail of the box like passengers on a ship watching for the approaching shore.
But where are the Funderlings? he wondered.
“Hear me!” a loud, clear voice said from behind them in the ordinary tongue of Southmarch mortals. It was Aesi’uah, Yasammez’s chief eremite, but her mistress did not even look up as the counselor spoke. “On behalf of my lady Yasammez, I bid you lay down your weapons and your feuds—all peaceful folk have safe welcome in this house.” The words echoed in Barrick’s mind, a time-lost traditional greeting, a memory of more warlike days that now seemed to have come again.
“The Autarch Sulepis’ army is outside the castle walls,” Aesi’uah continued. “He has brought machines the world has not seen since the gods’ day, great guns that smash the stone like a hammer. He has bred monsters. He has even bred living children of the Exile to use like beasts, all so that he can raise the god he thinks is Whitefire—Sulepis calls him Nushash—from eternal sleep and force him to wield his matchless strength on the autarch’s behalf.” She bowed her head for a moment. “He has studied and prepared carefully. We believe he has the power to do just what he intends.”
“But how could he command a god even if he could wake one?” said a Skimmer man, standing up. “Egye-var speaks to us through the sisters and the Scale, but we could no more tame him than we could tame the watery ocean itself.”
“The southerner believes he has a way to force the god to do his bidding,” said Saqri, speaking up from her seat beside Yasammez. “The ripples of his exploration—with apologies to Turley Longfingers and his beloved ocean—could be felt in the Deep Library, and even by some of the more sensitive still among the living.” She paused in an odd way, and Barrick suddenly sensed that she spoke of herself—that her own long, long sleep and the dreams that had come with it had not always been peaceful or pleasant. “We do not know how this mortal plans to control a god, but we believe after everything else he has done, it would be foolish to assume he cannot accomplish it.”
“So, if it pleases my fellow monarchs,” little Queen Upsteeplebat called out through her speaking-trumpet, “what is the point of our all being here? The autarch has already plunged down past these halls and is moving in the deeps with his men, forcing his way downward to the Funderlings’ sacred place—to the Shining Man.”
“It is not only the Funderlings’ sacred place,” said Saqri. “No matter which gods we chose to follow, he who is prisoned in the Shining Man saved us all from continuing enslavement. Without him, the gods would yet rule us.”
“Would that have been so bad, Mistress?” asked Turley the Skimmer. “Our god speaks often-like to us and it’s done us naught but good.”
“It could be that you misremember what it was like when the sea god could take a more active interest in things,” Saqri said. “But I will grant that he was always the most peaceful of the brothers—his power came not just from his strength but also from his wisdom. In any case, it is not the return of the gods we fear, though it is something worth fearing, as much as the more frightful idea of a mortal madman controlling an immortal’s power.”
Aesi’uah spoke again, relating things Barrick had already heard but with new details which had clearly been learned only recently, like the story of the autarch’s visit to M’Helan’s Rock and conversation with Hendon Tolly, which the Dreamless woman now reported word for word in her calm, clear voice. She, and occasionally Saqri, also spoke of things Barrick had not heard, or had heard only imperfectly, retelling the tale of Crooked and his destruction of the gods in such a way that it seemed almost entirely different from the version the raven Skurn had told him, full of strange details which raised quiet Fireflower echoes in his thoughts.