“Gods help us,” Beck moaned. “Was it a skriker? Oh, Heaven save us, I don’t want to see it… !” He pressed his face into his hands like a frightened child.
At last, his heart rabbiting, Barrick worked up the courage to look again. The tangle of bridges was falling away behind them, and although for one chill moment he thought he saw something pale fluttering on the highest bridge, when he blinked and looked again it was gone. Still, he could not push the memory of it from his mind, although he could not say exactly what had frightened him so.
Like white rags caught on the wind…
The city seemed to be stirring back into a hushed, morbid sort of wakefulness. Barrick saw shapes moving in the darklit shadows, but they were all so heavily cloaked and wrapped that it was hard to make out anything more than their movement. Most of them were solitary, walking slowly along the sides of the canals or occasionally crossing overhead on one of the curiously high bridges, often bearing darklight torches so that they traveled in a small cloud of moving blackness. Barrick now wanted nothing more dearly than to escape this place as quickly as possible. What kind of unnatural things were these Dreamless? Did they truly hate the light so much, or was there something more to the practice? He was suddenly grateful that Beck had talked him out of carrying real fire.
Following Skurn’s slow-flapping lead, they crossed the widest part of the Fade and slipped into a narrow waterway that curled in on itself like a dead centipede, twisting through a seemingly forgotten section of town that, despite its proximity to the center of Sleep, seemed almost completely empty and abandoned, half the buildings in ruins, several of them nothing but charred rubble. Raemon Beck sat up in the bow of the boat, his face tense with attention and fear. “This is it,” he said. “Master took us here—I remember that tree.” He pointed to a gnarled and ancient alder growing on its own small, stony island, its trunk deformed by wind and time, branches reaching up and spreading over the center of the canal like the hand of a drowning giant. “I think Traitor’s Gate was nearby.”
“I hope so,” Barrick said, squinting. There were fewer darklights in this area, only an occasional brand spreading inky darkness from a canal-side sconce, but they still cast enough shadow to make it hard to see details of what was on the shore. A moment later he sat up and pointed. “Is that it?”
Whatever it had been once, the stone structure was now little more than a ruin, its outer buildings collapsed and the remaining high walls overgrown with trees and creepers. It looked like one of the tombs in the cemetery outside the Throne hall back in Southmarch, except that this tomb would have sufficed for a dead giant.
“I… I think that’s it,” said Beck, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Oh, Heaven protect us, I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now—what my master said of the curse frightened me.”
“What are you talking about? You might have told me before.” Hills, ruins—was there nothing in these benighted shadowlands that wasn’t cursed?
“I didn’t remember.” Beck’s eyes were wide and staring; his hand, which he held up as if to shield his eyes from the nonexistent sun, shook badly. “Master said that this place was forbidden ground—and that all the people of these lands, Dreamless and Dreaming, were cursed too because of what Crooked did to the gods.” He pawed at his face. “I can’t remember anymore—I was new here then. Everything was so strange ...”
Barrick felt a cold contempt wash over him. Words—words! What use were they to anyone? “I’m going in. You may stay here if you wish.”
Raemon Beck looked around wildly. “Please don’t, my lord! Can’t you see how bad it is? I won’t go in there!”
“That is your choice.” As the boat grounded softly against the rotting wooden dock, Barrick stood up, making the boat pitch so that Beck had to grab the rails. Skurn was nowhere in sight, but he would surely see the boat and know where Barrick had gone.
Beck didn’t say anymore, but when Barrick climbed carefully onto the pier, which quivered but held, Beck got up to follow him, face pinched with misery and fear.
“Be sure to tie up the boat so it doesn’t float away.” Barrick had an ugly feeling they might want to leave suddenly.
When he stepped into the trees, away from the single darklight torch that burned on a post near the edge of the canal, Barrick could see the building better. It was larger than it looked from the canal and the land around it was wider and deeper than it had first appeared. The place seemed measurelessly old, its pale, vine-latticed walls scratched with deep gouges—writing, or mystical incantations perhaps, but as crude as if they had been made by an immense child. Every soft step they took across the leaves and fallen branches seemed to rattle like a drumroll. As Barrick picked his way through the undergrowth toward the great stone ruin, past gigantic blocks of stone that had broken loose and tumbled from the walls, he was coldly satisfied to hear Beck scuffling along behind him, whispering miserably to himself.
A black something came rushing through the trees toward him.
“Run!” shrieked Skurn as he dove past. “Coming!”
Barrick stood for a confused moment after the bird was gone. Then he saw a pair of pale shapes coming toward him from the ruins, sweeping over the uneven ground like windblown leaves.
“Skrikers!” choked Raemon Beck. He turned to run back toward the boat, but tripped and fell face first into a clot of brambles.
The creatures moved with terrible swiftness, loose garments rippling and flowing like mist, faces invisible in the depths of their hoods as they leaped or slithered over obstacles they barely seemed to touch. They crossed a hundred paces of distance so quickly that Barrick only had time to yank Raemon Beck to his feet before the first of the things was upon them. Without thinking, he swung Qu’arus’ sword at the thing’s head, or at least where its head should be. It leaned back, hissing like a startled snake, and he caught a glimpse of a face—red eyes and a cobweb of dull scarlet veins on corpse-white skin. Then the thing laughed. It was a terribly, lonely wheeze of sound, but worst of all was that the inhuman voice was unmistakably female.
Barrick’s legs felt stiff and weak as wax candles, as if any moment they would break beneath his weight. The other pale thing floated to the side, trying to get behind him. Barrick staggered back a step and let go of Raemon Beck, who crumpled to the ground with a whimper of resignation. The boat was several dozen paces behind them but it might as well have been miles. The billowing shapes moved closer, their ragged voices twining in a cracked chant of hunger and triumph.
The skrikers were singing.
29. Every Reason to Hate
“The fairies’ only remaining city is in the far north of Eion, north even of what was once Vutland. Ximander calls it ‘Qul-na-Qar’ or ‘Fairy Home,’ but whether those are the names the fairies themselves use is unknown.The Vuts called it ‘Alvshemm’ and claimed it was a city with towers as numerous as the trees in a forest.”
The sun had almost sunk to the horizon and the lamps were being lit all over Broadhall Palace. Briony was on her way back from visiting Ivvie, who was feeling better, if not quite well—the girl’s hands still shook badly, and she could take nothing into her stomach stronger than clear broth—when she was met in the hall outside her rooms by two armed and helmeted soldiers wearing the royal Syannese crest. The guards’ air of tense expectancy was such that for a moment she feared they meant to kill her. She was relieved, but only a little, when one of them announced, “Princess Briony Eddon, you have been summoned by the king.”