You are mad, said Gyir wonderingly. Many in the room heard his silent words: a moan of fear rose up, as though the slaves who could understand him expected to share his punishment.
"There is no madness among gods!" Jikuyin laughed. "How will I be called mad when I can shape everything to my own thoughts? Soon the gate will open, the blood will flow, and then what I speak… will be."
My blood will dry to powder, to choking dust, before I let you spill so much as a drop in pursuit of this madness.
Jikuyin reached out a giant hand, fingers spreading as though he would crush Gyir to jelly. Instead, he only flicked at him, knocking the Qar war¬rior into a mass of shrieking prisoners. After those who could escape had
sc rambled away, the Storm Lantern lay unmoving where he hdl fallen, his featureless face in the dust.
"Who said it was your blood I wanted, you little whelp of Breeze?" Jikuyin laughed again, a booming roar of satisfaction that threatened to bring down the cavern roof. His hand reached out again, knocking Vansen to the ground, then it folded around Barrick, who let out a thin shriek of surprise and terror before the breath was squeezed out of him. Jikuyin dropped the limp prince among the guards. "Him-the mortal child. I can smell the Fire-flower in him. His blood will do nicely."
Vansen struggled helplessly against the heavy shackles as the guards dragged Barrick toward the looming gate, but they were too tight to slip, too heavy to break. Ferras Vansen let out a howl of grief. Whatever hap¬pened, he would certainly die too, but the imminent death of the prince seemed a greater failure, a more horrifying finality.
Something grabbed at his arm. Vansen kicked out and one of the stink¬ing, shaggy guards fell back, but got up immediately and came toward him again. Fighting the inevitable, Vansen managed to land another kick (to even less effect) before he saw that something was strange about the crea¬ture's expression. The apelike face was slack, and the eyes wandered lazily, fixed on nothing, as though the guard were blind. It was also holding a key in its clumsy, clawed hand.
If they want me unshackled before they kill me then it only means I'll take some of them with me. But why would they want to take that risk? As the creature fum¬bled roughly with the shackles, he suddenly realized he had seen that befud¬dled expression before on the creatures Gyir had controlled. Vansen looked to the fairy. The Storm Lantern was staring up into nothingness, squinting so hard in concerntration that his eyes were little more than creases. Another guard stood behind Gyir, doing something with his bonds as well, but even if the fairy was controlling them both, time was running out.
The guards had dragged Prince Barrick to a spot just before the mighty doors which stretched above them higher and wider than the front of the great temple in Southmarch. Ueni'ssoh, the terrible, cadaver¬ous gray man, walked slowly up to stand beside them and raised his skele¬tal hands in the air.
"O Fire-Eyed, White-Winged, hear us through the empty places!" he in¬toned in his harsh, unfeeling voice, "O Pale Question,grant us audience!"
Vansen could understand every word, but the tongue was nothing In-had ever heard before, as inhuman as the sawing of a cricket: the sound of the gray man's fluid speech was in Vansen's ears, all tick and slur, but the meaning was in his head.
"O Emperor of Worms, see us through all darknesses!" Ueni'ssoh sang, "O Empty Box, grant us audience!"
The gray man's voice now rose, or gained some other power, because it seemed to fill Ferras Vansen's head like water poured splashing into a bowl, louder and louder until he could scarcely think, although the actual tones seemed as measured and unhurried as before. This was no song of Kerneia that he had ever heard, but Vansen thought he recognized a few words here and there, the ancient words of mourning his grandfather had sung at his grandmother's grave in the hills, but the gray man's terrible, flat voice made Ferras Vansen see pictures in his head that had nothing to do with his long-dead grandmother or his father's burial plot. A crimson-lit world of scut¬tling shadows filled his thoughts, an end to all things so final and so terrible that it lay on his heart like an immense weight.
The fairy-spelled guard still scrabbled at his shackles. Vansen was not free yet-he could not let the voice overwhelm him. He could not fail.
"See now where the darkness twists in us like a river
It is time to get up and go to the land of the Red Sunlight
The land where the sun sets and does not rise.
"O Burned Foot, let us shelter in your hard folds of shadow
Where we can still see the dying sun until the last day.
Crowfather
Wearer of the Iron Gloves
Husband to the Knot that cannot be Untied
We are frightened, O King. Open the gate!"
At first, in his terror and confusion, Ferras Vansen thought the massive stone portal was beginning to fade, or to melt away like ice. But no, he re¬alized a moment later, something much stranger was happening: the great doors were swinging inward into shadow, the darkness beyond so absolute
that it could smother the stars themselves. Vansen's heart quailed. 1 lis body felt suddenly boneless, limp as an empty sack.
Verms Vansen, do not despair! The words came like a whisper from the Other side of the world, but they gave him back a little of himself. It was Gyir speaking, Gyir in his head, but only faintly. He could feel the fairy's powers stretched to their utmost as they touched Vansen, Barrick, the guards working at their bonds, and many others Vansen could not even name-Gyir's will spreading among them in an invisible spiderweb of in¬fluence, although the web quivered and sagged now, near its breaking-point. The Storm Lantern's strength was astonishing, far beyond anything Vansen could have dreamed.
Fight! Gyir demanded. Fight for the boy-fight for your home! I need more time.
Time? Why? It did not seem as though even the fairy's heroic efforts would make much difference. Whether they were shackled or not, the world was ending right now, here in the darkness beneath the ground. Whatever was behind that door would swallow them all…
But even now, when nothing mattered, Ferras Vansen could not forget his oath to Barrick's sister. It was almost the only thing he could remember: his own name and history, all that had happened to him before this mo¬ment, were fading swiftly, swallowed in the gray man's sonorous words.
"O Silver Beak, Send your flying ones before us
O Ravens' Prince, Make a trail in the sky
Show us the way to the gate, the gate of your servant."
The gray man's incantation now filled the cavern like the noise of a ris¬ing storm, harsh and booming, but it was also as intimate as if he whispered in Vansen's ear. Surely no human throat could sound like that…!
"The ocean of mud where the breathless sleep
Pass it by!
The dreaming tree that lifts mountains with its crushing roots
Pass it by!
The forest of the beating heart
Where the flutes of the lost play in the shadows beside the path
Pass it by!
The Storm of 'loirs With rain that wounds the faces of pilgrims like arrows-Pass it by!"
The gate was completely open, a hole into absolute blackness, but a blackness that was still somehow, inexplicably alive-Vansen could almost hear it breathing, and his heart seemed to swell in his breast until he thought it would push up into his throat and choke off the last of his air.
"Skull Eater, destroy our enemies hiding beside the road;
Roots of the Immortal Pine, fill our nostrils so we do not smell demons!
Shepherd of the Mummies, lead us safely among the unquiet dead;
Black Bones, hold us tightly in the icy winds!
Cloak of Singing Dust, show us only to the stars!
The gray man gestured. Two huge, hairy guards pulled Barrick up onto his knees in front of Ueni'ssoh, who was still chanting, then one of them yanked Barrick's head back so that the boy's chin jutted out toward Vansen and the others watching. The other guard unsheathed a strange, terrible knife with a jagged blade half as wide as it was long, and set it almost ten¬derly against the white flesh of the prince's throat. Frenzied, Vansentried to struggle to his feet, and just at that moment he felt the creature behind give a last wrench at the shackles and they tumbled off his arms. Knives of pain stabbed in his joints as he raised his arms and staggered toward Barrick and the guards.