Fire, Briony realized. The fire is coming back… !
And then the sky exploded with bloody, glaring scarlet, so bright and hot that Briony screamed in terror and woke up panting in her tent in the Syannese camp, her fist pressed hard against her breast. When she opened her hand, she saw the charm was blackened and shriveled as if it had been burned.
Barrick did not speak a word as he walked to Saqri’s tent. Hundreds of eyes watched him crossing the great chamber, and all of them must have seen the blood-red stone dangling from his hand. Others, more familiar with mortals, might have recognized the expression of surprise and growing wonder on his face.
She gave it to me, he marveled. I told the oldest, strongest woman in the world that she was wrong, and so she resigned the leadership of the Qar armies.
But was it really as simple and straightforward as that? Something about the exchange still troubled him, although at the moment he was too stunned to ponder it much.
The guards did not lift a hand to stop him as he walked past them into Saqri’s tent. She looked up from a silent conversation with two fairy creatures he did not recognize. Her eyes widened a fraction when she saw what dangled from his hand.
“I felt her, but I did not know what I was feeling,” was all she said. “Is that for me or for you?”
Barrick laughed. It had not even occurred to him that he might keep it himself. He did not understand enough—he might never understand enough. “For you. And then you must decide what your people are going to do.”
“We will fight, of course,” she said, reaching out with slim fingers and letting the gem nestle in her hand. “Crooked was my grandfather’s longest grandfather, as we say—the father of the Fireflower. We cannot let him be used by this mad king. If the Long Defeat finally claims our kind, most of us will embrace it, for who would want to live in a world without the beauty of accident?” She stood looking down at the gem for a moment, then carefully lifted the chain over her dark hair and let the Seal of War rest on her white breastplate.
“Call them all from their camps—water children, air children, and all of the People who follow the Seal of War. Tell them we are making last choices now. The end of the Godwar has come.”
And so the Qar and their ancient allies, Rooftoppers and Skimmers, came from all the places they had been waiting and met in a great cavern near the Funderling temple, a wide, low-roofed chamber filled with limestone columns. Saqri sat beside a small, shallow pool in the middle of the cavern and all the others ranged themselves around it like the knights of Lander’s famous court, except instead of a table they gathered around a liquid mirror which reflected the lights of their torches and lanterns. Upsteeplebat’s people stood in their miniature lines near Saqri, with headman Turley and his Skimmers beside them. The leaders of the Qar seated themselves around the rest of the pond, their peoples crowded in behind them. Even the chief eremite Aesi’uah, the woman with the dark eyes, was there. Only Yasammez herself was absent. It was strange for Barrick to think of Lady Porcupine wandering alone and bitter somewhere beneath his old home, but he thought he understood her. She was not the type to surrender, but she had done so. She would not want to watch decisions being made without her.
“Once we were one people!” Saqri’s voice sounded as hard and sweet as the ring of a stone temple bell. “Once we were one song. Now we are dozens of different melodies, but today we join together to bring our songs into harmony once more. The Children of Black Earth—the Funderlings, as they are named here—have gone before us to fight the enemy, but to us they are drows and they have always been family, however estranged. The Skimmers are here with us. We call them Ocean’s Children, and although some have tried to make them follow this leader or that over the centuries, like the ocean they have remained free. We are proud they return to fight alongside us.
“And Thunder’s Children, who are the smallest of all, except in courage. Their kindred, the Tine Fay, live on in the shadowlands, some in the wilds, some in the towns and cities. Perhaps one day you will be reunited with them. Perhaps not. Nothing is easy to see or understand this close to the collapse of things.
“And we will fight beside humans, too, those we once called ‘stone apes’ before we learned to respect their strength and fear their intolerance. I would not be alive today without them. Barrick Eddon, the heir to this castle’s throne, brought me back the essence of my life, and he also stands with us in this fight. If there was any doubt about the days we live in they will be answered when I tell you that the Fireflower now blooms in his veins. Yes, think on that—the king my husband is dead, but his essence, and that of all his predecessors, is alive in the blood of a mortal man.”
A flock of whispers came from the gathered Qar, and many turned to stare at Barrick, eyes of almost every imaginable shape and size widening as they gazed at him.
“Mortal men also fight along with the Funderlings below us,” Saqri continued, “and thousands more have fought and died in the castle above, protecting the god who saved us all, though they did not know what they did or what it meant. Nevertheless, all debts will be paid by this last battle,” Saqri declared. “Whether we succeed or fail, live or die, our invasion of mortal lands is over.”
Somewhere Lady Yasammez heard that, and the clutch of anger and sorrow that came back, the feeling of being forced into dishonor, was so strong in his thoughts that Barrick almost fell over.
“Now we must plan,” Saqri said. “The ritual this autarch wants to perform in the Last Hour of the Ancestor must take place at Midsummer, and that is only days away. If we can somehow help the Funderlings to hold him back, he will miss his opportunity, and then have to hold his gains for a year before he can try again. Anything might happen in that time. Make no mistake—his army is vast and fierce, and he will sacrifice them to the last man if necessary to reach his goal, because once he has the powers of Heaven at his command he will no longer need an army. He will be unvanquishable.”
Only days, Barrick thought, looking around the cavern. Even counting those who were invisible in the shadows, they had only a few hundred fighters and not much more than a thousand Qar all together. Aesi’uah had told them that the Funderlings numbered perhaps two thousand, but likely much fewer.
“We will make our numbers felt,” said Saqri as if she had heard his thoughts. “But not down here—not at first. To make ourselves feared by the men in the earth, we must first strike in the open air. The southerners are used to seeing their own soldiers disappear into the tunnels. They will not be prepared for what comes out of them.”
“What do you mean, Mistress?” asked old Turley, his hairless face wrinkled in puzzlement. “The Xixies are digging down into the earth like worms.”
“Yes,” said Saqri. “But more than half their soldiers, their supplies, and ships remain on the surface. So we are not going down—we are going up.”
Barrick thought the idea was bizarre. Surely they did not have time to waste fighting on the beaches of Brenn’s Bay! And what hope did they have in any case—a few hundred fairies, fishermen, and creatures no bigger than mice? Either the Xixians’ cold steel or the coming of Midsummer would destroy them all. He felt cold and withdrawn at the thought. Saqri’s plan seemed nonsense.
And you will see it all, a voice sighed inside him, rising up from his thoughts like a single wisp of smoke. You will see many die.