"This is what, exactly?"
"Greatdeeps. The entrance to the ancient mine." Barrick closed his eyes for a moment, listening to that silent voice. "He says we must hold hands, because to get separated here might be worse than death."
"A cheery thought," said Vansen as lightly as he could, but his own heart was like a stone. They continued up the great staircase, which seemed wider than the Lantern Broad in Tessis. At the top yawned a great doorway, high as a many-storied house. Compared to the twilight in the valley and on the stairs, its interior was dark as night.
"There will be a fight here, mark my words," Vansen whispered to Bar¬rick. It felt strangely natural to hold the boy's hand, as though this topsy¬turvy land had given him back one of his younger brothers. "No creature would let itself be driven into that without a struggle."
But there was no struggle, or at least not much of one. As the prisoners bunched in the doorway, some moaning and slumping to the ground, some actively trying to turn back, the Longskulls charged. They had been pre¬pared, and now they leaped up the stairs and onto the landing as a unified force, shoving, kicking, poking, and even biting until all those who could do so clambered to their feet and staggered through the door. Many were trampled, and as Vansen let himself and Barrick be drawn into the darkness, he wondered if in the long run those lying bloody and crushed on the top step might not be the lucky ones.
"Should we have tried to get away?" Barrick whispered. "Before they shoved us in here?"
"No, not unless your Gyir says we must. We do know wh.at is inside but we might find a better chance for escape later on." Vansen wished he believed that himself.
They allowed themselves to be dragged along in the river of captive creatures, out of the initial darkness into sloping, timbered tunnels lit Willi torches, then down, down into the heart of the mountain.
He did not notice it at first, but after a short time of trudging through the dank, hot corridors Vansen began to realize that some of the other pris¬oners were disappearing. The group in which they traveled was perhaps half the size now that it had been when they had first been driven through the great doors, and as he watched he saw two of the Longskulls roughly separate a group of perhaps a dozen captives-it was hard to tell in the flickering shadows, because the prisoners were of so many odd sizes and shapes-and drive them away down a cross corridor. He whispered this to Barrick, and saw the prince's eyes widen in alarm.
"Is that because they mean something different for us? To kill us instead of making us slaves?"
"I think it's more likely that they haven't seen many of our kind before," Vansen reassured him. "These LongskuU things don't seem the types to act without orders. They may want someone to tell them where we should be put." He didn't really want to talk-it was hard enough trying to keep some idea in his mind of what turns they'd taken, where they might be in rela¬tion to the original doorway. If there was a chance later for escape, he did not want to run blindly.
Soon there were only a few prisoners left beside themselves, a more or less manlike creature with wings like a dragonfly, taller than Vansen al¬though much more slender, a pair of goblins with bright red skin, and one of the wizened mock-Funderlings-a Drow. This last walked just in front of Vansen, which gave him more chance to look at it the little manlike crea¬ture than he might have wanted: it had a huge, lopsided head, a stumpy body, and hands that were almost twice as big as Vansen's, although the creature itself was far less than half his size.
The remaining Longskulls hurried the last prisoners along. Vansen had to trot, no easy feat with heavy shackles on his wrists, and also to help the prince when the boy stumbled, which was often. The pain in the prince's withered arm from the restraints must be great, Vansen knew, although Bar¬rick refused to mention it: it took no physician's eye to see the boy's pale
skin, his creased, wincing eyes, or to interpret the Silence that had fallen over him in the last hour.
They reached a wide place in the corridor where several other passages branched out. The guards forced them down one of those branches, and within just a few more paces they emerged into a large open space where they stopped before another massive doorway, this one guarded by lower¬ing apelike things that might have been Followers, but grown to the size of men and dressed in dusty, mismatched bits of armor. The Longskulls gab¬bled at these sentries, then stepped forward and used their spears to tap on the door, which despite their deferential touch made a hollow, brazen clang with each knock. The door slowly swung open and the quietly honking guards shoved the prisoners inside.
Behind the door lay the most demented place Vansen had ever seen, a cavern as large as the interior of the Trigon Temple in Southmarch, but fur¬nished by a madman. Broken bits and pieces of the statues that had once lined the valley stood all around the immense space-here half a warrior crouching in the middle of the cracked floor, there a single granite hand the size of a donkey-cart. Moss and little threadlike vines grew patchily on the sculptures, and in many places on the rough-hewn walls and floor as well, and the air was damp with mist from an actual waterfall that poured from a hole high on one side of the cavern and followed a splashing course downward over stone blocks to fill a great pool that took up half of the vast room.
Across the pool from the doorway stood another huge statue of a head¬less, seated warrior, tall as a castle wall. Enthroned on this stone warrior's lap, with various creatures kneeling or lying at his feet like a living carpet, sat the biggest man-the biggest living thing-Vansen had ever seen. Two, no, three times the height of a normal man he loomed, massive and mus¬cular as a blacksmith, and if it had not been so absolutely clear that this monstrosity was alive, Vansen would never for an instant have believed him anything but a statue. His hair was curly and hung to his shoulders, his beard to his waist, and he was as beautiful as any of the stone gods' statues, as if he too had been carved by some master sculptor, except that one side of his gigantic face was a crumpled ruin, one eye gone and the skin of cheek and forehead a puckered crater in which his disarranged teeth could be seen like loose pearls in a jewelry box.
Somewhere deep beneath them, something boomed like a monstrous drumbeat, a concussion that punched at Vansen's ears and made the entire
rocky chamber shudder ever so briefly, but no one in the room even seemed to notice.
Chains of all sizes and thicknesses hung around the terrible god-tiling's waist and dangled from his neck and shoulders, so that if he wore some other garment it could not be seen at all. Hundreds of strange, round objects hung from the chains. As his eyes became used to the light, Vansen realized that every one of the hanging things was a severed head, some only naked skulls or mummified leather, some fresh, with ragged necks still dripping-heads of men, of fairies, even animals, heads of all descriptions.
The full childhood memory came back to Vansen suddenly, the taunt of older boys to scare the younger ones-"Jack-in-Irons! Jack-in-Irons he coming from the great deeps to catch you! He'll take your head!"
Jack in Irons. Jack Chain. He was real.
The apparition raised an arm big as a tree trunk, chains swaying and clanking, the heads dangling like charms on a lady's bracelet. The bastard god grinned and his beautiful face seemed almost to split open as he dis¬played teeth as large as plates, as cracked and broken as the ruined stones.
"I AM JIKUYIN!" he roared, his voice so loud and so painful that Vansen fell to his knees and then slumped down to his belly with his hands over his ears in a fruitless attempt to protect himself from the deafening noise. It was not until the giant spoke again that Ferras Vansen realized he was hearing the words not with his ears, but echoing inside his mind.