No. He pulled himself back, disentangling himself from her. Hope is the only strength left to us and I will not give it up.
What hope? For me? I… doubt it. And even if so, then what of you…? He sensed her amusement, that old, bitter mirth that sometimes over the long centuries had felt to him like a slow poison. What of you,Ynnirit-so?
/ ask for nothing I cannot bear. And Yasammez has given tlie glass to her clear¬est, closest servitor, Gyir.
The Encauled One? But he is so young in years…!
He will bring it to us. He will stop for nothing-he knows its importance. Do not despair, my queen. Do not go down into the darkness yet. Things may change.
Things always change, she told him, that is the nature of things… but she was fading now, weary and in need of that deeper blackness that was her sleep, and which might last days. A last bubble of dark amusement drifted up to him. Things always change, but never for the better. Are we not the People, and is that not the substance of all our story?
Then her thoughts were gone and he stood alone with her silent, coolly slumbering shell. The beetles shifted on the walls again, a quiet unfurling and resettling of wings that rippled sunset-colored lightning all around the chamber until they too settled down to sleep once more.
They were back.
The dark men, the faceless men, once more pursued him through burn¬ing halls, sliding in and out of the rippling shadows as though they were nothing but shadows themselves. Was it a nightmare? Another fever dream? Why couldn't he wake up?
Where am I? The tapestries curled and smoked. Southmarch. He knew the look of its corridors as completely as he knew the sound and feel of his own blood rushing through his veins. So had all the rest been a dream? Those endless hours in the dripping forest behind the Shadowline? Gyir and Vansen, and that bellowing, one-eyed giant-had they all been fever-fancy?
He ran, gasping and clumsy, and the faceless men in black oozed behind him like something that had been melted and poured, losing bodily form as they flowed around corners and snaked along the walls in sideways drips and smears only to regain shape once more, a dozen shapes, and spring out after him, heads following his every movement, fingers spreading and reaching. But even as he ran for his life, even as the tapestries flamed and now even the roofbeams began to smolder, he felt his thoughts float free, light and in¬substantial as the flakes of ash swirling around him on hot winds.
Who am I? What am I?
He was coming apart, fragmenting like a kori-doll on an Eril's Night
bonfire, his limbs Hailing but useless, his head a tiling of straw, dry (unlet, full of sparks.
Who am I? What am I?
Something to hold-he needed something cool as a stone, thick and hard as bone, something real to keep himself from falling into flaming pieces. He ran and it was as though he grew smaller with every step. He was losing himself, all that made him up charring, disappearing. The rush and thump of the faceless men's pursuit echoed in his head as if he were listening to his own blood coursing through the gutters of his body, his own filthy, corrupted blood.
I'm like Father-worse. It burns in me-it burns me up!
And it hurt like the most dreadful thing he could imagine, like needles under his skin, like white-hot metal in his marrow, and it shifted with every movement, driving bolts of pain from joint to joint, rushing up into his head like fire exploding from a cannon's barrel. He wanted only to get away from it, but how? How could you run away from your own blood?
Briony. If Southmarch itself was no longer his home, if its passageways were full of fire and angry shadows and the galleries hung with leering, alien faces, his sister was something different. She would help him. She would hold him, remember him, know him. She would tell him his name-he missed it so much! — and put her cool hand on his head, and then he would sleep. If only he could find Briony the faceless men would not find him-they would give up and scuttle, slide, ooze back into the shadows, at least for a while. Briony. His twin. Where was she?
"Briony!" he shouted, then he screamed it: "Briony! Help me!"
Stumbling then, and falling; a bolt of pain shooting through him as he struck his injured arm-how could this be a dream when it felt so real? He scrabbled to lift himself from the hot stone, arm aching worse than even the burning of the skin on his hands. He could not stop, could not rest, not until he found his sister. If he stopped he would die, he knew that beyond doubt. The shadow-men would eat him from within.
He stood, even in this dream world forced to cradle his throbbing, aching arm, that thing he carried through his life like a sickly child, loving it and hating it. He looked around. A vast, empty room stretched away on all sides, dark but for a few slanting columns of light falling down from the high windows-the Portrait Hall, and it was empty but for him, he could feel it. The faceless men had not caught him yet, but he could smell smoke and sense the growing murmur of their pursuit. He could not stop here.
\
A picture hung before him, one he had seen before but seldom paid much attention to-some ancient queen whose name he could not re¬member. Briony would know. She always knew things like that, his beloved show-off sister. But there was something about the woman's eyes, her cloud of hair, that caught his attention…
The sound of his pursuers rose until it seemed they were just beyond the I'ortrait Hall door, but he stood transfixed, because it was not the face of some ancient Eddon pictured there, some long-dead queen of Southmarch, but his own, his features haggard with fear and terror.
A mirror, he thought. It's been a mirror all this time. How often had he passed through this place and its ranks of frowning dead without realizing that here, in the center of the hall, hung a mirror?
Or is it a portrait…ofme…? He stared into the hunted, haunted eyes of the sweating red-haired boy. The boy gazed back. Then the mirror began to dim as if clouds were forming on its surface, as if even from this distance he fogged it with his own hot, fretful breath.
The clouds dimmed and then dissolved. Now it was Briony who looked back at him. She wore a strange hooded white dress he had never seen be¬fore, something a Zorian sister would likelier wear than would a princess, but he knew her face better than his own-much better. She was unhappy, quietly but deeply, a look he had never seen so much as he had since first they had word their father had been betrayed and made a prisoner.
"Briony!" he shouted now, "I'm here!"
He could not reach her, and he knew that she was not hearing his words, but he thought she could at least feel him. It was glory to see her, cruelty to have so little of her. Even so, just the sight of her utterly familiar and per¬fect Briony-face reminded him of who he was: Barrick. He was Barrick Eddon, whatever might have happened to him, wherever he might be. Even if he had been dreaming this-even if he was dying and it had all been some strange illusion the gods had set for him on the doorstep of the next world-he had remembered who he was.
"Briony," he said, but more quietly now as the clouds covered the face in the mirror. For a moment, just before it disappeared, he thought he saw a different face, a stranger's face, astoundingly, a girl whose black hair was streaked with a red like his own. He could not understand what was hap¬pening-to go from that most familiar of all faces to one he had never seen before…!
"Why are you in my dreams?" she said in surprise, and her words pattered
in his head like cooling rain. Then the black-haired girl was gone too. and so was almost everything else-the faceless men gone, the Portrait Haill gone, the flames of the terrible conflagration grown as transparent as wot parchment and the castle itself going, going…
As the terror lost its grip a little he was startled, frightened, confused, and even excited by the memory of that new face-seeing it had felt like cold water in a parched mouth-but he let it go for the moment so he could cling instead to what was more important: Briony had touched him, some¬how, across all the cold world and more, and that great goodness had kept him in the world during a moment when he would otherwise have cho¬sen to leave. He was still footless and confused by the dream he was in, but he understood that he had chosen to remain for now on the near side of Immon's fateful gate, however wretched and painful living might be.