“Only a thousand or two… in all this?” Barrick was astonished—Tessis or Hierosol alone must be able to count a hundred times that number.
Most of them have gone to war, Ynnir told him. Against your people, to be precise. I doubt any of those will return. The bitterness of Yasammez is too old, too deep…
The name, and the sudden memory of the frightening, awesome woman in black, made Barrick stop and fumble in his shirt. “I have it… !” he said, trying to pull it free. “The mirror ...”
Ynnir held up a thin hand. I know. I can feel it like a burning brand. And that is what we are going to do—use it to restore the heat of the Fireflower. But do not give it to me yet.
Thoughts were cascading through Barrick’s mind, the newest dislodging the previous ones before he had a chance to examine them. “Why are we… why are you… ?” He paused, confused: for a moment, he had forgotten who he was—even what he was. “Why are the Qar at war with Southmarch? ”
Because your family destroyed my family, the king answered with no discernible malice. Although it could also be said that our family is destroying itself. Now please be silent, child. We have reached the antechamber.
Before Barrick could even begin to make sense of what the tattered king had just said, he found himself stepping out of the dim but almost ordinary light of the passage and into a room that seemed carved from raw stone, with long streamers of pale rock stretching between ceiling and floor like cobwebs—this despite the fact that they were in the midst of the great palace. “What is this place?” he asked.
The king raised a hand. No questions for now, child of men. I must go ahead of you and tend to the rituals alone—the Celebrants especially do not much like mortals. In any case, you are not yet ready to see such things—not with your own eyes and thoughts. Stay here and I will come back for you.
The king stepped into a dark place along the wall and was gone. Barrick took a few steps forward to examine the spot Ynnir had disappeared. Was it a doorway? It looked like nothing but a shadow.
He waited in the stony chamber for what seemed like a terribly long time, listening to the quiet, empty voices that were everywhere in this place. The king had all but called him a murderer, or at least called his family murderers, yet he had treated Barrick like a welcome guest. How could that be? And the mirror that he had carried so far and through so many dangers—why hadn’t the king simply taken it from him? If humans were Ynnir’s enemies, why did he continue to trust Barrick with a prize for which the warrior Gyir had sacrificed his life?
Confusion and boredom at last overcame patience. Barrick went back to the place the king had disappeared and stood, listening, but heard nothing: if it was an open doorway then only silence was on the other side. He put out his arm and felt it go chill for a moment, but nothing impeded it, so he stepped forward himself into the cold shadow.
For an instant—just an instant—it was like falling into the doorway at Crooked’s Hall again and he was terrified that he had done something fatally stupid. Then the light warmed to swirling gray and he could make out a white shape, fluttering and ragged, surrounded by a whirl of shadows like a man beset by angry birds. The white figure was Ynnir, who had his hands raised in the air and his mouth open, as though he were calling for help, or… or singing. The black shapes whirled and darted. Barrick caught a snatch of the wailing, otherworldly melody before he realized some of the flitting shadows had left the king and were moving toward him instead. Heart hammering, he stepped back into the cold darkness once more, retreating into the empty stone chamber; by the time he had reached it he was shivering and covered with clammy sweat.
You must bow to Zsan-san-sis, Ynnir told him when he returned. If he had noticed Barrick’s intrusion he had not mentioned it. He is much older than me, at least in one sense, and his loyalty to the Fireflower is unquestioned. The king laid a cold hand on Barrick’s shoulder and guided him toward the dark door.
The room on the far side seemed different this time, not a confusion of grays but a shadowy depth, the only source of light a yellow-green glow on the far side of the chamber. As the king led him forward Barrick realized with a shock that the glow came from inside the hood of a dark, robed figure waiting there like a statue. Then the hooded head lifted and for a moment Barrick caught a glimpse of stark, silvery features—a mask, Barrick thought, it must be some kind of mask—that leaked green light from nostrils, eyes, and mouth. The thing raised its arm toward them as if in greeting, and for a moment a six-pointed green star of light bloomed at the end of its sleeve.
“This is Zsan-san-sis,” said Ynnir, needlessly.
Barrick bowed as low as he could. It was much preferable to having to look again into that weird, sickly gleam.
Words were spoken, or at least Barrick thought he heard whispers, not words but hisses and quiet bubblings. Then the glowing, hooded thing seemed to fold up into itself and disappear. The walls dissolved around them, then the king led him forward once more into a place whose walls and floor and ceiling were covered with faint but constantly moving specks of colored light, so that the darkness seemed lit by a thousand minute candles.
Despite the dazzle of it all, Barrick’s eye was drawn immediately to the figure at the center of the small, low-ceilinged room, a woman stretched on an oval bed as if asleep. At first he thought by her paleness and stillness that she was a statue, but as the king led him nearer Barrick’s heart grew heavy and cold. She must be dead, this dark-haired woman with her strangely angular features, and his own arrival too late after all. The figure was a corpse, a beautiful, stern corpse, a queen lying in state.
“I am so sorry, Lord ...” He took the mirror from its leather bag and held it out to the blind king.
She still lives. The king’s thoughts were soft as snowfall. His long fingers closed on the mirror and he held it up before his face as though he examined it with his blind eyes through the strip of cloth that covered them. A small frown crossed his face.
Something is wrong, he said quietly. Something is missing.
Barrick’s insides went cold. “My lord?”
The king sighed. I expected more, manchild, even with the Artificer so close to his ending. Still, it does not matter. This age of the world comes down to what we hold here, whatever essence he has given us. We have no other choice but to use it and pray the flaw is not too great.
The blind king breathed on the mirror and then laid it against the queen’s breast.
For a stretching moment nothing seemed to change. The chamber’s inconstant light flickered silently; the very air seemed drawn tight like a held breath. Then the queen’s face contorted in what seemed a grimace of pain and she gasped as she pulled in air. Her eyes—black eyes, startlingly dark and deep—sprang open for a moment and her gaze slid from Barrick to Ynnir, where it rested. Then, like a drowning swimmer who has come to the surface for one last breath before surrendering forever, she seemed to fall back. Her eyes fluttered and slid closed once more; her hand, which had moved toward her breast as if to touch the mirror, fell back on the bed.