Again? I have never heard of him.
Jikuyin first made this place his own long, long before mortals roamed this country and built Northmarch, but he was injured in a great battle, and so after the Years of Blood he slept for a long time, healing his wounds. His name was lost to most memories, except for a few old stories. We drove the mortals out of Northmarch before he returned. That was only a very short time ago by our count. After they had fled we called down the Mantle to keep your kind away thereafter, banishing them from these lands for good and all.
Why did you do that?
Why? Because you would have come creeping back into our country from all sides as you did before, like maggots! Gyir narrowed his eyes, making crimson slits. You had already killed most of us and stolen our ancient lands! Not me, Barrick told him. My kind, yes. But not me.
Gyir stared, then turned away. Your pardon. I forgot to whom I spoke.
The procession was just emerging from between two hills and into a shallow valley and a great stony shadow across the road—an immense, ruined gate.
“By The Holy Book of the Trigon!” Barrick breathed. No oaths like that—not here, Gyir warned him sharply. But...what is this?
The column of prisoners had shuffled to a weary halt. Those who still had the strength stared up at two massive pillars which flanked the road, lumps of vine-netted gray stone that despite being broken still loomed taller than the trees. Even the smaller lintel that stretched above their heads was as long as a tithing barn. Huge, overgrown walls, half standing, half tumbled, hemmed the crumbling gate like the wings of some god’s headdress.
It is worse than I feared. The fairy’s thoughts were suddenly faint as a superstitious whisper, hard for Barrick to grasp.
Jikuyin has left his lair in Northmarch and made himself a new home...in Greatdeeps itself. This is its outer gate.
“What is this new misery?” Ferras Vansen was clearly feeling the strangeness of the place too, not just its size and immense age but even the hidden something that pressed ever more intrusively into Barrick’s mind like cold, heavy fingers.
“Gyir says it was something called Greatdeeps, or at least the first gate.”
“Greatdeeps?” Vansen frowned. “I think I know that name. From when I was a child...”
The Longskulls came hissing angrily down the line, poking and prodding, and at last even the most reluctant prisoners let themselves be driven under the massive lintel. It was carved with strange, inhuman faces that looked down on them as they passed—some with too few eyes, some with too many, none of them pleasant to see.
What lay beyond was equally disturbing. The wide, brokencobbled road dipped down into a valley that lay almost hidden beneath a thick cloud of smoky fog as it wound between two rows of huge stone sculptures. Some of the stonework portrayed ordinary things cast in giant size, like anvils big as houses or hammers and other tools that a dozen mortals together could never have lifted. Other shapes were not quite so recognizable, queer representations of machinery Barrick had never seen and the uses of which he could not even guess. All the statues were old, cracked by wind and rain and the work of creepers and other plants. Many had fallen and been partially buried by dirt and leaves, so that the impression was that monstrous citizens who had once dwelled here had simply packed up one night and left, allowing the mighty road to fall to ruin after they were gone.
Despite the apparent emptiness, or perhaps because of it, Barrick’s sense of oppression grew as they trudged forward. Even the Longskull guards grew quiet, their gabbling little more than a murmur as they moved up and down the line of prisoners, goading them forward.
What is this place? he asked Gyir. What is Greatdeeps?
The place where the gods first broke the earth, searching... A tennight before this Barrick had not quite believed in the gods. Now, in a place like this, the mere word set his heart racing, brought clammy sweat to his skin. Searching for what?
Gyir shook his head. The weight that Barrick felt, the despairing thickness that seemed to lie on him like a net made of lead, seemed to weigh on the fairy even more heavily. Gyir’s head was bowed, his back bent. He walked like a man approaching the gallows, struggling to get the smoky air in and out of his lungs. The fairy’s thoughts were heavy, too, like stones—it made Barrick weary just to receive them. I cannot...speak to you now, Gyir told him. I must understand what all this means, why...I must think... Barrick turned to Ferras Vansen. “You said you thought you remembered, Captain. Do you know anything of this Greatdeeps?”
“A memory, and only a faint one. Something—a story we children told to frighten each other when I was young, I think...” He frowned miserably. “I cannot summon it. What does the fairy say?”
Barrick glanced quickly at the fairy, then back to Vansen.
“Something about the gods breaking the earth here, but I can make little sense of it and he won’t say more.” The prince rubbed at his face as if he could scour away the discomfort. “But it is a bad place. Can you feel it?”
Vansen nodded. “A heaviness, as if the air was poisoned —and by more than smoke. No, not poisoned, but bad, somehow, as you say—thick and unpleasant. It makes my heart quail, Highness, to speak the truth.”
“I’m glad it’s not just me,” Barrick said. “Or perhaps I’m not. What will happen to us? Where do you think we’re being taken?”
“We shall find that out sooner than we want to, I think. What we should consider instead is how we might get away.”
Barrick held up the shackles, which although not too large for an ordinary person his size, were cruelly heavy on his bad arm. “Do you have a chisel? If so, I think we’d have something to talk about.”
“They haven’t tied our feet, Highness,” the soldier said. “We can run, and worry about freeing our arms later.”
“Really? Just look at them.” Barrick gestured to the nearest pair of Longskulls pacing the line with their strange, springy gait. “I don’t think we’ll outrun those, even without our legs shackled.”
“Still, The Book of the Trigon bids us to live in hope, Prince Barrick.” Vansen looked curiously solemn as he said it—or maybe it was not so curious, under the circumstances. “Pray to the blessed oniri to speak for us in heaven—the gods may yet find a way to save us.”
“Speaking frankly,” Barrick said, “just at the moment, it is the gods themselves I fear most.”
The prince seemed a little more like his ordinary self again, which was the only hopeful thing Vansen had seen all day. Perhaps it was because Gyir the Storm Lantern had almost stopped talking to him.
Judging by the usual run of his luck and mine, he’ll come back to himself just in time to be executed by our captors, Vansen thought with bleak amusement. At least I’ll probably be killed, too. Anything would be better than to face Barrick’s sister with news of her brother’s death.
Where is she? he suddenly wondered. In the castle, perhaps under siege? There’s no chance that Gyir’s people would have beaten us so badly and then just stopped in the fields outside the city... He felt a moment of terror, worse than anything he had felt for himself, at the idea of Princess Briony being threatened by monstrous creatures like these, perhaps a prisoner herself. He could not let the thought run free in his head—it was too horrible.