Like hired fighters performing in the halls of Kernios, he thought wildly.
Earth Lord, the voices sang to him. We are in the Earth Lord’s house. His vengeance will be terrible—if we fail, we lose more than our lives… !
We fought him and his brothers on Silvergleam’s walls cried others, flung this way and that in Barrick’s thoughts like leaves in a gale. Do not catch Death’s cold eye! Do not let him freeze your heart as he did Lord Silvergleam’s…
For Whitefire! For the Children of Breeze!
No. Find yourself, said Ynnir’s voice, closer than the rest. Find yourself only. Let the rest go.
Barrick grabbed at the elusive thought, struggled to push the rest away.
Find yourself.
And suddenly, like a child learning the trick of walking for the first time, Barrick reached out toward himself and stepped out of the noise. What was happening was still all around him, but it slowed and grew more and more insubstantial until it seemed no more distracting than a pleasant breeze.
You are needed.
And suddenly he could see everything, clear as the finest glass, like something Chaven had ground for himself, and time lurched forward again, pulling Barrick as though with a string. A short distance away across the broad, dark space he could see Saqri’s red stone glowing, bouncing like a floating spark as she faced a half dozen Xixian soldiers. Six foes, but a hundred queens, a hundred ancestors, were in her, Barrick could feel it. He could sense her hot furies and cold joys as she fought, could even perceive a little of the chorus of battle-queens of which Saqri herself was only a part, a music of thought so complicated and bizarre that he could barely hear it, let alone understand it, even though it filled his head.
“Whitefire!” It came to his thoughts and his lips at the same moment—Whitefire the sun god, the brother of doomed Silvergleam. And Whitefire, the god’s sword, carried so long by Yasammez in the defense of the People. It felt right. “Whitefire!” Barrick shouted again, and suddenly saw—no, not just saw, but for a moment truly lived—that god’s last doomed charge against the monsters who had killed his brother Silvergleam, his hated rivals and stepbrothers, the Children of Moisture. Barrick hurried forward and the battle surrounded him like roaring water. All the battles surrounded him. A song of war that was many songs and many sounds filled his head, so many voices singing it that he could no longer tell which thoughts were his own, though that did not matter to him. Like a salmon breasting the crash of the river, Barrick Eddon swam into the dark and the blood and all the sounds of death run wild in a small place.
Briony thought she had plumbed the depths of surprise during this year of impossible strangeness, but she had not expected to wake up to find a man smaller than the stub of last night’s candle standing beside her head. She gasped and sat up. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the tiny man was no dream.
“I am searching the leader of this lot,” he called up to her. “I carry important news for un.” He bowed to her. “Beetledown the Bowman am I. Beest tha the princess Briony, good Olin’s daughter?”
A hundred different responses came to her lips, but what came out at last was a startled giggle. “Merciful Zoria,” she said. “I am. What are you?”
“Telled tha oncet already.” She could see his little face frown in irritation, then suddenly go wide-eyed. “Oh, beg pardon, Majestic Highness! Forgive us our rough scout’s manner.”
Briony really didn’t think she could still be sleeping, but couldn’t help wondering whether she might have lost her wits somewhere. “You said you’re… Beetledown?” She shook her head. “But what are you, Beetledown?” The first light of dawn was creeping past the flap of her tent. She could hear men moving outside, the sound of the day beginning, and could smell the fires that had only recently been lit. In the midst of everything else the smell of burning wood made her stomach twitch with hunger.
“I’ll take you to Prince Eneas,” she said at last. “These are his men. But I’d better carry you.” She stared at him. “How did you get here? Did you simply… drop out of the sky?”
His smile was no bigger than an eyelash, but still quite charming. “After a manner of saying… yes, mum. I came as a courier. My feathersteed waits on a branch.”
“Your what where? Feathersteed… ?”
He looked at her in surprise. “My bird, Your Heightsome Majesty.” He was worried now that she might be making fun of him. “I prefer to fly a flittermouse, in truth, but with the sun up, I left ’em to their sleep and came by pigeon.”
“I can promise no more,” the tiny man told Prince Eneas and his captains. Beetledown was doing his best to stand still in the platform of Briony’s outstretched hand, but every time he shifted his balance it made her palm tickle. “Just that my queen and the queen of the Fay both say to you and your soldiers that if you come to look on the autarch’s camp you might see something that will interest you. They advise to come in force.”
“Might see something?” Lord Helkis looked at the little man with disgust and something that might have been fear. “Are we so foolish that we are meant to fall for a trap like this? Simply march out to be destroyed on the word of some magical creatures out of a story? This… roof rat?”
“Rooftopper,” said Beetledown with affronted dignity. “Your kind know my kind well enough, tall man—used to put out bowls of milk and pieces of bread for us, to ask our favor and blessings on the house.”
“The night-elves of your nurse’s stories have come to visit us, Miron!” The prince was laughing, but more at his angry lieutenant than at the tiny messenger. “Perhaps you should look to your shoes to see if any of them need mending.”
But Lord Helkis was not to be so easily convinced. “Do you not understand, Highness? These are Blue Caps. Speak of the old tales? They are creatures of the twilight, the shadows. We cannot trust them.”
“If you remember,” Briony pointed out, “that is who this small gentlemen and his friends are fighting. Would we make the same mistake again, attacking allies and helping enemies?”
The tiny man looked puzzled by this. Briony quietly explained what had happened.
“Those must have been Akutrir’s lot,” he told her. “Lady Porcupine sent them out, but they had not returned when I left,” he said. “We did not know you had found each other.”
Eneas scowled; he had heard. “We shall speak more of that shame later. For now, we must hear all of what your mistress has to say. Queen Saqri, is it? Is she the one who has terrified the north—the dark lady?”
Beetledown shook his head. “Nay, but un’s that Lady Porcupine’s daughter—or granddaughter… I am not certain. But dark lady has stepped down and Saqri commands the Qar now, and says that if tha hurry toward the mainland city of Southmarch on the bay shore tha might see something of interest.” He turned toward Briony. “You, too, Princess, although the queen didn’t speak or send ’ee any message. By the Peak, tha and thy family have been away a long time!”
She nodded. “We have.”
“What else can you tell us?” demanded Eneas. “What exactly will we find on the shore of Brenn’s Bay, besides a vast camp of Xixian soldiers?”
Beetledown moved a little, trying to keep his balance on Briony’s unsteady hand. “I do not know for my personal self, Prince. I tell ’ee only what was given to me to tell—I know nought else. But Queen Saqri sent this message knowing tha wert here when none of the rest of us knew, so I think tha would do well to listen.”