Vansen was too weak to resist. All he could do was try to keep a hand on Barrick's unmoving form as they were carried out of Jikuyin s throne room by the bristly, foul-smelling creatures. As they were roughly hurried down what seemed an endless succession of lightless tunnels he struggled against his heavy shackles, doing his best to cling to the prince so that they would not be separated, as a mother who has fallen into a river with her child will still keep a hand clenched on the infant's garment even after death has stolen away her breath.
Even in the center of his own great house, the fortress that had been given to his family from the gods' own hands, the blind king Ynnir dina'at sen-Qin, Guardian of the Fireflower, Lord of Winds and Thought, could not simply walk to the Deathwatch Chamber. First the Guard of Elemen-tals must be supplicated, allowed to perform their warlike rites in his honor,
and in honor of the one they were protecting-the Salute ol the Bone Knife, the Song of the Owl's Eye (blessedly shorter in these latter days, thanks to an edict by Ynnir's own grandfather: once the chant would have lasted an entire day), and the Arrow Count. When all these duties were fin¬ished and the Guard-Commander of the Elementals had removed his hel¬met in salute-even without sight, Ynnir always found that part difficult-the king moved on.
The Celebrants of Mother Night did not perform official duties, but they had been allowed to make their camp of suffering outside the Death-watch Chamber. Merely to move among them, to hear their moaning and weeping and feel the naked misery of their grief, was like walking through biting winds and needle-sharp sleet. Pale Daughter herself, fleeing her lover's house with an infant godling in her belly, could have felt nothing more chillingly painful.
It was a relief, after a time that felt like days, to pass out of the chambers where the Celebrants shrieked and tore at themselves and into the silence of the final antechamber, to face Zsan-san-sis, the ancient chieftain of the Children of the Emerald Fire. Zsan-san-sis had returned from the under¬ground pools in which he had spent more and more time as he aged; it was a measure of the crisis that he should appoint himself the final guardian of the Deathwatch Chamber when it was only one of his young grand-nephews who stood watch outside the Hall of Mirrors itself.
"Moonlight and Sunlight," said the king.
"And thus roll the days of the Great Defeat unto Time's sleep," said the other, completing the ceremonial greeting. "I bid Your Majesty welcome." His tone seemed even more curt than usual, the glow from inside his cer¬emonial robe dim and noncommittal, so that his mask was almost invisible in the shadowed hood. The king had always had trouble reading the moods of Zsan-san-sis, as if his own sightlessness and the Emerald Fire chieftain's silver mask were impediments as real to him as they would be to a mortal. The Children had long favored the queen's cause, although the old chief¬tain had been the most conciliatory of his clan. In days past Ynnir had often wondered what would happen when Zsan-san-sis eventually sank to the bottom of his pool and did not surface again, a day when someone less will¬ing to compromise might rise to lead the Emerald Fire Children. Now it no longer seemed to matter.
"How is she today?"
"I have not gone in to her, Majesty. I feel her, but barely-a breath faint
as a whisper from Silent Hill." His thoughts and words both for ihey came to the king as a single thing-were clouded with regret and resignation, "liven were we to triumph, Majesty, she could never travel now. She would the before we left our own lands."
Ynnir brought his open hand to his chest, then spread his fingers, a ges¬ture called Significance Incomplete. "We can only wait and be patient, old one, hard as that is. Many threads still remain unbroken."
"I would not have spent my last seasons this way," said Zsan-san-sis. "I lolding together what is broken, knowing that my daughter's daughter's daughters will bear their young in pools without light."
Ynnir shook his head. "We all do what we can. You have done more than most. This defeat was authored when Time began-all we do not know is the hour of its coming."
"Who could not say with certainty that it is upon us?"
"I could not." Ynnir said it gently, letting it pass to the ancient guardian with an undertone of spring, of hope, of renewal even after death. "Neither should you. Do as you have always done-do as your broodsire raised you. We will face it bravely, and who knows? We may yet be surprised."
Zsan-san-sis' glow guttered for a moment, then burned more strongly. "You are more king than your father was, or his father before him," he said.
"I am my father, and his father before him," said the blind king. "But I thank you."
He did not clasp the old chieftain's hand-it would be unwise even for the king to touch one of the Children of the Emerald Fire-but he nodded his head so slowly it might almost have been a bow. He left the robed guardian in a posture of surprise as he walked into the Deathwatch Chamber.
The beetles on the walls shifted minutely as he entered and the move¬ment of their iridescent wingcases sent a ripple of changing colors across the entire chamber. They settled again; the flickers of blue and pale green were replaced by an earthier tone that better reflected the gray and peach of the cloud-wreathed sunset outside the open window. Blind for cen¬turies, Ynnir could smell the sea as powerfully as a drowning man could taste it, and he hoped that his sister-wife could smell it too, that it gave her a little relief in the growing dark.
He stood over the bed and looked at her, so wan, so still. It had been a full turning of the seasons since she could even bear to be sat up in Hall of Mirrors like some obscene, floppy icon. He was almost grateful that those
humiliating days had passed, that she had slipped down into herself so far that she could not even be moved.
Even as he stared in silent contemplation he realized he saw no traces of life at all. Alarmed, he looked to her lips, the pink now paler than ever, al¬most white, and felt a moment of real fear. Always before, even on the worst days, she had greeted him before he spoke. So still…!
My queen, he called to her, shaping each word so clearly that he could imagine it as a stone dropped into a still pond, the ripples sending every¬thing that swam beneath them scattering, until the stone itself struck into the softness at the bottom. Can you hear me? My twin?
Despite all that had gone between them, the fair and the foul, his heart leaped in his breast when he at last heard her words, as quiet as if they did indeed issue from beneath the mud at the bottom of a deep, deep pond.
Husband?
I am here, at your bedside. How are you today?
Weaker. I… I can barely hear you. I sent my words to Yasammez. She did not think the name, but rather a flutter of ideas-Grandmother's Fierce Beau¬tiful Sister of the Bloodletting Thorns and the Smoking Eye. / should not have done it, she told him, almost an apology. J did not have the… strength… but I was…
Afraid she would use up what little of her music remained, he hastened to finish her thought. You were wondering if she had succeeded. And she told you she had.
Succeeded at your plan. Fulfilled the Pact. Not at what I wished…
Which would have availed you nothing. Trust me, my sister, my wife. Many things have passed between us over all these years, but never lies. And it could yet be my own compromised plan, like the despised, bent tree in the corner of the orchard, that will bear fruit:
What would it matter? There is nothing that can be done now. All that we love will perish. Her thoughts were so full of blackness he could almost feel him¬self pulled down by them, like a man so fixed on the swirling clouds below his mountain path that he leans toward them and falls free…