So why should I be able to do it? Vansen asked. He was fearful of what the answer might be-some taint in his family, some witchy blood, another mark of shame laid on his quiet, hard-working, abashed people.
Some say that all the sunlanders once could speak with us this way-that they, or at least some of them, were of the same great branch as the People, that they came of the People and not just after them. Perhaps fikuyin merely thrust the gift of True Speech upon you, somehow-his kind, the Old Ones, are grandchildren of the Formless and have many powers that are unknown. But also it may simply be that when he spoke to you the power of his voice cleared the channels of your heart as a great flood may scour clean riverbeds long filled with silt. It is possible he only gave back to you that which is the birthright of your kind.
But… but Prince Barrick… Vansen turned and saw the boy staring back at him with something in his eyes that looked almost like hatred. Shaken, it took him a moment to remember what he had been saying and to form the words in his mind. Prince Barrick could speak to you already, and understand you, long before we met this thing you call fikuyin. Vansen could not approach the complexity of images which Gyir used when he «spoke» their captor's name, but he felt certain just his horrified memory of the ogre's massive, ravaged face would be enough.
Prince Barrick is different, Gyir said abruptly, otherwise he would haw been dead long ago and you would not have followed him here. That is all I may say.
"Don't talk about me." The boy wiped angrily at his eyes. "Don't."
Why can't I hear him-Barrick-in my head? asked Vansen.
It could be in time you will, Gyir replied. Or it could be that both of you can only speak with me.
Vansen wanted to go to the prince, to bring him back to sit with them, but something in the boy's expression kept him seated where he was. Why are we here in this mine or prison or whatever it is? Why aren't we dead? And what is the monster who's captured us? Does he have any weaknesses? You said he was one of the Old Ones, a god or a god's bastard.
Gyir looked at him for a few moments before answering. As to why we are not dead, I cannot say, Ferras Vansen, but it is clear thatfikuyin wants slaves more than he wants corpses. The fairy looked as though he was almost asleep, red eyes only half open. What he wants them for, I do not know, but this place has an old, grim reputation. As to what he is, I told you-a grandchild of the Formless.
This means nothing to me. I have never heard of such a god.
You have, but among your people the true lore is almost lost. Even here, in our own land, the stories have become children's tales. You remember the raven's little tale of Crooked and his great-grandmother, Emptiness? There were bones of truth buried in it, but the flesh was corrupt. The truth at its core is that the Formless begat both Emptiness and Light, and those two in turn begat gods and monsters. The One in Chains is such a one-a small monster, not a god but a demigod. Still, he is a great power.
And that's whose prisoner we are? asked Vansen. His head was beginning to hurt from all this think-talking. Why have I never heard of them-of any of them?
"You have," said Barrick. He sounded as though he had a mouthful of something bitter. "You know them all, Captain-Sva, the Void, and Zo, her mate, the First Light. All the rattling nonsense the priests talked… and it's all real." He seemed on the verge of tears again. "All of it! The gods are real and they will destroy us all, for not believing. We can no longer pretend it isn't true."
They will not destroy us, said Gyir, and although your kind and mine may well destroy each other, it will not be the gods' doing. But he did not sound as certain as he had before, and Vansen wondered suddenly if it was- really true that the True Speech could not lie. They are all gone from the earth now, long gone. Only a few of their lesser children like this crippled demigod remain.
Vansen had to lake a breath, pained by such sacrilege from an inhuman creature the gods gone? / still do not understand you. Sua and Zo? I have heard of them, but what of Perin and the Trigon? What of the gods we know, at whose temples we worship?
They are all one family, said Gyir. One family and one blood. And long before your folk or mine had even thought to clothe ourselves, they were spilling that blood.
"It's pointless," protested Barrick, putting his hands over his ears as though he could block out the soundless words that way. "This talking- any of this! It changes nothing." His face reddened and seemed to crum¬ple. The boy was crying again, rocking in place. "I thought it was all priest's lies. Instead, I am being p-p-punished… punished for my miserable, fly¬blown, shit-stained pride!"
Vansen clambered to his feet and hurried to the prince's side. "Your Highness, it is not your fault…"
"Leave me alone!" the boy shrieked. "Do not speak to me of things you know nothing about! What could you know of a curse like mine?" He threw himself down on his stomach and banged his forehead against the stone, like a man in a terrible hurry to pray.
"Prince Barrick…! Barrick, get up…"Vansen put his arms around the boy's chest and tried to lift him, but the prince fought his way loose, and as he did so struck Vansen hard in the face.
Barrick did not even seem to notice. "No! Don't you touch me!" he groaned." I am filthy! On fire!" A froth of spittle hung at the corners of the boy's mouth and on his lower lip. "The gods have chosen me for this suffering, this curse…!"
Vansen hesitated only a moment, then drew back and slapped the prince full in the face. Barrick stumbled and fell to his knees, shocked into silence. His hand slowly came up to his cheek. He drew it away and stared at it as though expecting to see blood, although Vansen had hit him only with his open hand. "You… you struck me!"
"I apologize, Your Highness," Vansen said, "but you must calm yourself, for your own sake if nothing else. We cannot afford to bring down the guards, or start a fight with other prisoners. You may punish me for my crime as you wish if we make it home to Southmarch again. You may even have me put to death for it, if it pleases you…"
"Death?" said Barrick, and in an instant the flailing child was gone, his place taken by someone who looked like him but was eerily self-possessed. Barrick's anger, hot a moment before, had suddenly turned icy. "You're a
fool if you think you're going to get off that easily. If the impossible occurs and we return to Southmarch alive, I'm going to tell my sister how you feel about her and then order you to join her bodyguard, so you have to look at her every day and know that she is looking back at you with disgust, that she and all the other ladies of the court are marveling together at the sight of the most arrogantly foolish and pitiful idiot who ever lived."
The prince turned away from him. Gyir seemed lost in his own secret thoughts. Ferras Vansen had no choice but to sit silently, holding his stom¬ach as though he had been kicked.
22
A Meeting of the Guild
As a marriage gift, Silvergleam gave to Pale Daughter a box of wood,
carved with the shapes of birds, and in it she put all that she could
remember of her family and old home. When she opened the box, its music
soothed her heart. But her father Thunder could not make music to cool the
burning of his own anger. He called out to his brothers that he was
afflicted, dying, that his heart was a smoldering stone in his chest. They
came to him and he told them of the theft of his daughter, his dove.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
I DON'T LIKE IT," OPAL SAID. "No good can come of telling everyone."
"I'm afraid this once I can't agree with you." Chert looked around the front room. Evidence of the distractions of the last days were everywhere-tools uncleaned, dust on the tabletop, unwashed bowls and cups. "I am no hero, old girl. I've come to the limit of what I can do."