The eremites had taken a cave for themselves high in the hills above an empty stretch of windswept beach a short distance east of the city. Quiet and solitude were the walls of their temple, and they had picked a good place for both things: as Yasammez followed Aesi’uah up the rocky trail she could hear only wind and the distant creaking of seabirds. For a moment she was almost at peace.
Aesi’uah’s sisters and brothers—it was not always easy to tell which was which—were all gathered in the dark cavern. Even Yasammez, who could stand on a hilltop on a moonless, starless night and see what a hunting owl could see, could make out no more than the dull glitter of eyes in their dark hoods. Some of Aesi’uah’s youngest comrades, born in the years of twilight, had never seen the full light of the sun and could not have survived its bright heat.
Yasammez joined the circle. Aesi’uah sat beside her. Nobody spoke. There was no need.
In the dreamlands, in the far places where only gods and adepts could travel, Yasammez felt herself take on a familiar shape. She wore it when she traveled outside herself, both in the waking world and here. In the waking world it was as insubstantial as air, but here it was something more—a fierce thing of claws and teeth, of bright eyes and silken fur. The eremites, given courage by her presence, streamed behind her in an immaterial host like a swarm of fireflies. The Firef lower did not burn inside them as it did in her; without protection, they could only travel so far.
Aesi’uah had spoken the truth, though—the god’s presence was weaker than it had ever been, faint as the sound of a mouse walking in new grass. Worse than that, she could feel the presence of others, not the other lost gods but the lesser things that had been driven out with their masters when her father had banished them all. These hungry things smelled change on the breeze of the dreamlands and sensed that the time might come when they could return to a world that had forgotten how to resist them.
Even now, one such thing sat in the middle of the path, waiting for them. The eremites flew up in distress, circling, but Yasammez paced forward until she stood before it. It was old, she could tell that by the way it shifted and changed, its form too alien to her understanding for her eyes and thoughts to order it properly.
“You are far from your home, child,” it said to one of the oldest creatures that still walked upon the earth. “What do you seek?”
“You know what I seek, old spider,” she told it. “And you know my time is short. Let me pass.”
“You are rude to a neighbor!” it said, chuckling.
“You are no neighbor of mine.”
“Ah, but soon I might be. He is dying, you know. When he is gone, who will hold me and my kind back?”
“Silence. I want no more of your poisonous words. Let me pass or I will destroy you.”
The thing shifted, bubbled, settled again. “You have not the strength. Only one of the old powers can do that.”
“Perhaps. But even if I cannot end you, it may be that I will hurt you so badly that you will be in no condition to cross over when the time comes.”
The thing stared at her, or seemed to, because in truth it had no eyes that Yasammez could see. At last it slithered aside. “I do not choose to contest with you today, child. But the day is coming. The Artificer will be gone. Who will protect you then?”
“I could ask you the same.” But she had wasted enough time already. She passed and the eremites followed her like a cloud of tiny flames.
Yasammez moved as swiftly as she could through places where the wind howled with the voices of lost children and through others where the sky itself did not seem to fit correctly, until she came at last to the hillside where the doorway stood, a solitary rectangle crowning the grassy peak like a book standing on its end. She climbed the slope and crouched before it, curling the tail of her dream-form around her, ears laid flat against her head. The eremites hovered, uncertain.
“He can no longer be heard on this side of the door, Lady,” they told her.
“I know. But he is not gone. I would know if he were.” She sent out a call but he did not answer. In the silence that followed she could feel the winds that blew through the icy, airless places beyond the door. “Help me,” she said to those who had followed her. “Lend me your voices.”
They were a long time then, singing into the endlessness. At last, when even the inhuman patience of Yasammez had nearly gone, she felt something stir on the edges of her understanding, a faint, small murmur like the dying breath of the Flower Maiden in the stream.
“… Yessss ...”
“Is that you, Artificer? Is that you… still?”
“I am… but I am… becoming nothing…”
She wanted to say something soothing, or even to deny it altogether, but it was not the way of her blood to try to bend what was real into what was not. “Yes. You are dying.”
“It is… long awaited. But those who have waited almost… as long as I have… are readying themselves. They will… come through ...”
“We, your children, will not let them.”
“You have… you have not the power.” He grew fainter then, small and quiet as a drop of rain on a distant hilltop. “They have waited too long, the sleeping… and the unsleeping ...”
“Tell me who we must fear. Tell me and I can fight them!”
“That is not the way, Daughter… you cannot defeat strength… that way…”
“Who is it? Tell me?”
“I cannot. I am… bound. Everything I am… is all that keeps the doorway closed ...” And now she could hear the immense weariness, the longing for the end of struggle that death would finally bring. “So I am bound… to keep the secret ...”
His voice fell silent—for a time she thought it was gone forever. Then something came to her, wafting like a feather in a night wind. “The oracle speaks of berries… white and red. So it shall be. So it must be.”
Surely there was nothing left of him now. “Father?” She tried to be strong. “Father?”
“Remember the oracle and what it says,” he said, his quiet voice now slipping away into nothingness. “Remember that each light… between sunrise… and sunset ...”
“Is worth dying for at least once,” she finished, but he was gone.
When she was herself again, the Yasammez that breathed, and felt, the Yasammez that had lived each painful moment of her people’s millennial defeat, she rose and walked out of the cave. None of the eremites followed her, not even Aesi’uah, her trusted counselor. Death was in her eyes and in her heart. No living thing could have walked with her then and every one of them knew it.
This was not how Matt Tinwright would have chosen to spend his evening.
He broke apart the last small piece of bread he had brought with him and soaked up the wine in his cup. Sops, when he could have had eel stew! Still, he was lucky he’d found the wine, and he did not feel the least bit sorry for whoever had set it down. He’d been hiding on the chapel balcony from the evening bell to what must now be almost midnight, keeping an eye on the door that led to Hendon Tolly’s chambers, which was where the physician’s apprentice said Okros Dioketian had gone. What could the man be doing in Tolly’s rooms so long? More important, when he finally came back out, would he return to his own chambers so Tinwright could go and sleep? Surely Avin Brone didn’t expect him to follow Okros into his bedchamber… !