"The Black Pig has taken him!" A despairing cry rang in his head, a child¬hood memory-an old woman of the Dales, cursing her son's untimely death. "Curse the pig and curse his coldhearted master!" she had screeched. "Never will I light a candle for the Kerneia again!"
Kerneia. In a faraway land where the sun still rose and set, the crowds were likely gathering on the streets of Southmarch to watch the statue of the masked god go by, carried high on a litter. They would be drunk, even early in the morning-the litter-bearers, the crowds, even the Earthfather's priests, a deep, laughing-sad drunkenness that Vansen remembered well, the entire city like a funeral feast that had gone on too long. But here he was instead in the heart of the Earthfather's domain, being dragged to the god's very door!
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A fever-chill swept over him and Vansen hail to light to keep horn stumbling. He wished he could reach out to the prince, remind Barrick Eddon that he was not alone in this terrible place, but his shackles pre-vented it.
The way into the cavern that held the god's gate suddenly opened wide before them. The enormous chamber was lit by a mere dozen torches, its obsidian walls only delicately streaked with light and the ceiling altogether lost in darkness, but after the long trip through pitch-black tunnels Ferras Vansen found it as overwhelming as the great Trigon Temple in South-march on a bright afternoon, with color streaming down from its high windows. The gate itself was even more massive than it had seemed through the eyes of Gyir's spies, a rectangular slab of darkness as tall as a cliff, resembling an ordinary portal only in the way that the famous bronze colossus of Perin was like a living mortal man.
The guards prodded Vansen and the others toward the open area near the base of the exposed rock face. The slaves already assembled there, a pa¬thetic, hollow-eyed and listless crowd watched over by what seemed almost as many guards as prisoners, shuffled meekly out of the captives' way, clear¬ing an even larger space in front of the monstrous doorway.
The guards shoved the prisoners to their knees. Vansen wallowed in drifts of stone dust, sneezing as it billowed up around him like smoke and Barrick collapsed beside him as though arrow-shot, scarcely stirring. Vansen nudged the youth, trying to see if he had been injured somehow, but with the heavy wooden shackles around his wrists he could not move much without falling over.
Remember what I said…
Even as Gyir's words sounded in Ferras Vansen's skull, guards and work¬ers began to stir all over the room-for a moment he thought that they had also heard the fairy's thoughts. Then he heard a thunderous, uneven rhythm like the pounding of a mighty drum. When he realized he was hearing footfalls, he knew why the guards, even those whom nature had made help¬lessly crooked, suddenly tried to straighten, and why all the kneeling slaves began to moan and shove their faces against the rough floor of the great cavern.
The demigod came through the door slowly, the chained heads that or¬namented him swaying like seaweed in a tidal pool. As terrifying as Jikuyin was, for the first time Vansen could see something of his great age: the monster limped, leaning on a staff that was little more than a good-sized
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young tree stripped of its branches, and his great head lolled on his neck as though too heavy for him to hold completely upright. Still, as the ancient ogre looked around the chamber and bared his vast, broken teeth in a grin of ferocious satisfaction, Vansen felt his bladder loosen and his muscles go limp. The end had come, whatever Gyir might pretend. No one could fall into the hands of such a monstrous thing and live.
The other prisoners, many of them smeared with blood from their labors, struck their heads on the floor and wailed as the demigod ap¬proached. The awful, gigantic chamber, the hordes of shrieking creatures with bloody hands and filthy, despairing faces prostrating themselves before their giant lord-for a moment Vansen simply could not believe his eyes1 any longer: he had lost his wits, that was all it could be. His mind was re¬gurgitating the worst tales the deacon in Little Stell had told to terrify Fer-ras Vansen and the other village children into serving the gods properly.
"Perin Skylord, clothed in light,"
Vansen murmured to himself,
"Guard us through the awesome night
Erivor, in silver mail
Smooth the seas on which we sail
Kernios, of death's dark lands Take us in your careful hands…"
But it was pointless trying to remember childhood prayers-what help could such things be now? What good would anything do? The huge shape that was Jikuyin, so massive that he crushed stones that a strong man couldn't lift into powder beneath his feet, was limping toward them, each grating step like something as big as the world chewing, chewing, chewing…
Do not despair! The words came sharp as a slap.
Vansen turned to see that Gyir was still upright, though his guards had prostrated themselves. Everything in the Storm Lantern's featureless face showed in his eyes alone, wide with excitement and fear, but also hot with rage. Just beyond Gyir, Prince Barrick swayed as if in a high wind, scarcely able to balance even on his knees, his face a pale, sickly mask in the flick¬ering light. For a moment Vansen could see the sister's handsome features in the brother's, and suddenly he felt his almost-forgotten promise stab at
him like a dagger. He could not surrender while there was breath in him he had an obligation. Despair was a luxury.
Prayers to the Trigon brothers seemed pointless on the very doorstep of" the Earthfather's house. Unbidden, another prayer wafted into his thoughts like a fleck of ash floating on an updraft, a gentler prayer to a gentler deity-an invocation of Zoria, Mistress of the Doves. But although his lips moved, he could not make his clenched throat pass the words. Zoria, virgin daughter, give me… give to me…
A moment later the Zorian prayer, Zoria herself, even his own name, all blew out of Ferras Vansen's mind like leaves in a freezing wind as Jikuyin stopped in front of them and leaned down. His face was so huge it seemed the cratered moon had dropped from the sky.
"A gift to you." The demigod's voice shook Vansen's bones; his breath smelled like the fumes from a smelter's furnace, hot and metallic. "You will witness my supreme moment-and even participate." The curtain of dangling heads swayed stared sightlessly, shriveled lips helplessly grinning.
I'll be joining them soon, Vansen thought. How would the gods judge him? He had done his best, but he had still failed.
Jikuyin's great, bearded head swiveled to inspect Vansen and his com¬panions, and Vansen had to look away-the god's eye big as a cannonball, the power of that squinting, reddened stare, were simply too much to bear. "Your blood will unseal Immon's Gate," Jikuyin rumbled, "open the way to the throne room of the Dirtlord himself, that piss-drinking King of Worms who took my eye. And when Earthstar is mine, when his great throne is mine, when I wear his mask of yellowed bone, then even if the gods find their way back I will be the great¬est of their number!"