Praise the ancestors. Another voice, another thought, suddenly intruded into the emptiness. I have searched and searched. I thought you lost in the Great Between…
Qinnitan clearly did not sense this presence any more than she heard or saw Barrick. Her voice was growing fainter. Oh, Barrick, why… ?
Come, the new voice said—a male voice. He had heard it before. I will help you, child, but you must cross the gap yourself. It is late now—you must go directly through a dark time… Then he could see it, a huge, pale shape on four legs, its head a complication of slender boughs like a young tree.
No, he realized, they were antlers: what stood before him in the endless dark, burning icily bright as a distant star, so that he could barely see Qinnitan beyond it, was a great white stag.
Follow me, it said. The very words seemed to glow with a pale lavender light of their own. Follow—or have you already fallen in love with nothingness? Something seemed to seize him then, a flash of white that lifted him loose from the void and pulled him away from the dark-haired girl.
No! He fought but could not overcome it. Qinnitan, no, I’m here! I’m here!
But she still could not hear him, and he could not fight this new force. A moment later she was slipping away, retreating into greater inclarity as though she sank beneath the surface of a muddy pond; the last he saw of her was a flicker of fire in the great black. Barrick felt as though his heart had been ripped from his breast and he was leaving it behind in the void.
Now he began to spin through alternations of heat and cold and flashes of light that pained and sickened him but did not entirely disperse the darkness. He was falling, he was flying, he was… he could not tell. The flashes of light came faster, the pulses of heat more frequently. Soon came sound as well—brief wordless hisses, groans, and then roars, as if the world of life and movement were crashing in on him like ocean waves and then receding just as swiftly.
I want to go back… ! But whoever had pulled him away from the dark-haired girl was no longer speaking to him, or at least Barrick could no longer hear his voice.
Qinnitan, I’m so sorry…
And then light and sound suddenly broke in like a river overflowing its banks, a flood of sensation that hammered at his thoughts until he could not think, only absorb. Madness surrounded him.
Faces big as mountains—faces that were mountains, vomiting out rockfalls—and faces like swollen thunderheads spitting lightning. Men that were storms and women that were fiery columns. Shadows riding horses that trampled tall trees beneath their hooves. The land itself riven and turned over, gouged into fresh valleys and mountains, the sky blazing with white light or popping and crackling as it filled with falling stars. Barrick could only cringe and whimper as it all thrust in upon him.
It was a war between gods, a war of giants and monsters, the maddest, strangest war that had ever been. The warriors became animals, became spinning winds or sheets of flame as they struggled with each other before the walls of a bizarre city, a rumpled hedgehog-hide of high, spiky crystalline towers that seemed to both loom and tremble, as though the sky itself pressed down on them. One moment the city seemed taller than any mountain, the next it was dwarfed by those who fought there, by both besiegers and besieged.
A battle was raging. Birds arrowed down from the sky in thousands, attacking a woman who seemed to be made of water, but who grew until she was a fountain higher than the black towers themselves. Bursts of blinding light revealed whole armies of skeletal soldiers that became invisible again when the light died. Stones swirled like windblown leaves, a snake made of bundled lightning squeezed the top from a mountain and set it tumbling down to shatter one of the castle walls. The hole was quickly patched by a swarm of insects all made from metal, huffing steam at every crack and joint.
In the center of everything three massive figures stared down upon the gates, their shapes indistinct even in the brightest glare except for the icy, star-bright gleam of their eyes. One of them held a massive hammer forged from some dull gray metal, but the other two held spears, one spear double-pronged and green as the ocean, the other as black as a hole in the ground.
Barrick knew those three, although it terrified him to admit it, even to himself.
The middle figure raised his hammer and what seemed like a storm of bright shadows rushed forward and flung itself against the walls of the great castle, fiery shapes, glowing shapes, changing shapes, their combined radiance so great that Barrick could scarcely make out what was happening. For a moment it seemed that the city, for all its size and magnificence, must simply burn away like a dry forest in a raging firestorm. Then an even brighter light began to burn like the rising sun and the attackers fell back from the walls in disarray.
Only two shapes came forward from the besieged city, but they drove back the attackers. One was a great sphere of blazing amber light, the other a chilly, blue-white glow that somehow remained visible even beside the greater golden brilliance. The shapes of two riders sitting proud and tall atop their mounts could be seen within these two powerful lights, each rider carrying a sword; it was impossible to tell whether the glow came from the figures themselves, from the blades they carried, or from the armor they wore, but faced with the bright radiance of the two the besieging army now scattered in all directions.
The roar in Barrick’s ears became louder, so that his skull boomed and echoed as though a storm beat inside it. He could scarcely see for the blazing light. The three shapes on the hill spurred their mounts forward, rushing down the slope, the hooves of their monstrous horses not even touching the ground. They raised their weapons and the very sky seemed to crack open to bring unending darkness stabbing down at them all.
And then, suddenly, they were all gone—the fire-women, the air-men, the beautiful figures in their terrible anger, all the fighting and all the fighters ended and vanished in an instant. Only the castle itself remained, its pale, shining towers now toppled like trees after a winter storm, broken and scattered so that the pieces gleamed in the muddy ashes like droplets of molten gold on the floor of a forge.
Barrick had only seen the mad beauty that had preceded this ruination for a short moment, but as he stared at the destruction he found himself mourning what had been lost with every nerve of his being.
Then, without warning, he found himself plunging downward. The ruins of the castle were changing even as he rushed toward them: what had been gleaming gold, pale blue-green, or creamy white now grew back black and twisted, and what had been translucent became full of shadow. The castle that had been so marvelous was now only a dusty, deserted cobweb where a shining, rain-shimmering spider’s net had once hung. The beauty was gone, but in some strange way it remained.
It was the same. It was completely different. And Barrick fell into it like wind blowing down a well.
He had only a moment to realize he was lying facedown on a floor of flat, polished, and carefully interlocked black stones. He heard strange skittering noises getting closer, and then, a moment later, the whisper of soft footfalls.
He opened his eyes to a nightmare. The faces pressing down on him were bestial, with rolling, idiot eyes and gaping fanged mouths. Only the shape of their heads was vaguely human. That was the worst part.
“Ah,” said a voice behind him—a cold, unfamiliar voice. “Very good, my dear ones. You have caught a trespasser.”