Barrick felt as if he might weep, but the pain was too cold, too stony for tears. He had failed. Why had he or anyone else thought it might end differently?
The king bowed his head and for long moments knelt in silence beside the queen. Then he reached out a hand that shook only a little and lifted the mirror from her bosom. He held it up as if to examine it, then, shockingly, tossed away the thing that first Gyir, then Barrick had carried for so long. As it clattered across the room the walls erupted into movement, and for the first time Barrick saw that the gleaming scales that covered walls and ceiling were shimmering beetles, each wingcase flashing rainbows like a puddle of oil.
It has given her a few more hours, perhaps days, but there was not enough of our ancestor in the mirror to wake her, Ynnir said heavily. There is only one way left to me. Come, child of men. I must tell you of true and terrible things, then you must make a decision no creature of your race has ever been asked to make.
Whether the gods were always here, or whether they came to these lands from somewhere else entirely, we cannot know. Even Ynnir’s thoughts came slowly, as if with great effort.
The two of them had returned to the room where Barrick had slept, and Barrick realized for the first time that with all these miles of castle to choose from, the humble little chamber was the king’s own retiring room.
They say they always existed. Ynnir paused to drink from a cup of water, a strangely ordinary thing to do. None of us were alive so we cannot dispute what they say…
“The gods say they always existed?” Barrick was not sure that he had understood Ynnir.
That is what they told our ancestors. In fact, that is what Crooked himself, the father of my line, told the first generation of the Fireflower, although even Crooked could not have known for certain. He was born here, of course, during the Godwar.
Born here? What did the king mean, Barrick wondered. And why was Ynnir bothering to tell him all this if the mirror had failed—if Barrick himself had failed?
But whatever their birth, their source, the king went on, the gods were already here when the Firstborn arrived.
“The Firstborn—is that what you call your ancestors?”
And yours, child. Because once we were all the same people—the Firstborn. But one part of that race had the First Gift—the Changing, as some called it. The part that would become our people came from a trick of nature and our blood that allowed us many different shapes, many ways of living and being, while the rest of our Firstborn fellows—those were your people—were immutable in their bones and skin. So as time passed the two tribes began to grow apart until they were quite separate, my people and yours, and in some cases did not even remember their shared root. But shared it was, and is—that is why some of us, especially of my family, look so much like your kind. We have changed, but mostly on the inside. On the outside we have kept much of our original seeming.
Barrick thought he understood, at least enough to nod—but what astounding sacrilege the Trigonate church back home would name it!
Forgive me for sending this all to you on the wings of thought, Ynnir said, but it tires me less than speaking the way your kind does. He sighed. By the time that the Moonlord and Pale Daughter ran away together to his great house, beginning the Godwar, our two peoples were no longer separated simply by the First Gift. Most of your ancestors were in the southern continent, living near Mount Xandos, worshipping Thunderer and his brothers. Most of my people had settled here in the north around Moonlord’s stronghold, and as a result, when Moonlord and his kin were besieged by the Thunderer’s clan, we took the side of Moonlord and Whitefire…
“Moonlord, Pale Daughter… I… I don’t know who these people are, Lord ...” Barrick said.
Not people—gods. And you know them well, just not by our names. Call them Khors and Zoria, then, and Zoria’s father Perin the Thunderer, who angrily laid siege to the lovers’ moon-castle. So Khors called for help from his brother and sister, Zmeos and Zuriyal, who came to his defense. My people cast their lot with them, and even those of my ancestors who were far away came to join them here.
For a long moment, as Ynnir sat gathering his thoughts, Barrick did not understand the meaning of what he had heard. “Hold, please, my lord. Your ancestors came… here?”
Yes, this place is far older than my people, Ynnir said. The castle in which you sit, or rather the castle that lies beneath and behind the castle in which you sit, was once the domain of the god of the moon himself, Khors Silvergleam. When next you see the walls and the tall, proud towers, look not to the black stone we have built with, but look for the gleam of the moonstone beneath. A careful eye will see it.
Barrick could only stare around him. This strange castle—was it truly Everfrost, the dark fortress of all the stories?
Even the most ignorant of your people knows how that battle ended, although they do not know all the reasons, Ynnir continued. Khors was killed, his brother and sister banished from the earth. His wife—Perin’s daughter, Zoria—escaped and wandered lost until at last she was found by Perin’s brother Kernios, the dark master of the earth. He took her into his house and made her his wife—whether she wished it or not.
But she had a child during the war, of course—clever Kupilas, fathered by the Moonlord—and as he grew his gift for making things was such that although they mocked him and treated him brutally, Perin and the other Xandian gods took Kupilas back with them so they could have his skills at their service. He made many wonderful things for them ...
“Like Earthstar, the spear of Kernios,” said Barrick, remembering Skurn’s tale.
Yes, and that particular weapon was both Crooked’s glory and his doom, Ynnir said. But we do not speak of that yet. Still, the doom of the Fireflower—that which overwhelms us even now—was built in the ruins of the Godwar. Crooked escaped his captors at last. He traveled the world, teaching both your people and mine, learning more than any other man or god ever learned about the art of making things. And during those years he also learned how to walk the roads of the Void.
Barrick nodded, remembering another of the raven’s strange stories. “His great-grandmother’s roads.”
Yes. And so he came at last and lived for a while among my people, here in the ruins of the moon-castle, and while he lived among us he fell in love with one of my ancestors, the maiden Summu. Those were days when gods and mortals shared the earth, and even had children together. But unlike most of his kind, Crooked—Kupilas—did not leave his offspring with only tales as a legacy. Summu had three children, two girls and one boy, and all of them were born with the gift we call the Fireflower. When Kupilas had gone on to fulfill his great and terrible destiny, it was discovered that his offspring were not as others of their tribe—life ran stronger in them. One of those children was Yasammez, the great dark lady you have met, who has lived all the ages since then, a life almost as long as that granted the gods themselves. Her brother and sister, Ayann and Yasudra, used the gift in a different way, although they did not at first know they had any gift to give. Although they lived no longer than those of our families usually do, a span that can be counted in a few centuries, their gift was not granted to them, but to their offspring.