“Lisiya, where are you?” Briony screamed.
“Here! Here!”
And then she could feel the old woman’s hand again, the calloused skin wrapped tight around hers. She was yanked forward, a tumble into dark space through sudden winds, then out into light and the rain-lashed forest. The sky above was frantic with lightning, burst after burst blanketing the sky and turning the trees into snapping, dancing silhouettes. The thundering voice, still unintelligible and still terrifyingly close, pressed in on Briony from all sides until she thought the very weight of it would crush her skull like an egg.
“What is it?” she shrieked, holding her hands over her ears, an action that helped nothing.
“He is starting to wake!” Lisiya’s faint voice was all but blotted out by the deep, wordless roar. “Run!”
“Who is?” Briony screamed, the force of the wind and thundering voice making her sway and almost fall.
“Run!” shouted Lisiya. “It is later than I imagined! I should have told you…”
“Told me what?”
“Too late. You must go to the Stone People… they must take you to you their ancient drum… their stone drum… !”
And then the demigoddess was gone. The air was full of whirling leaves and branches stripped from forest trees, all smacking at her like angry hands, scratching her, making her all but blind. In the momentary bright smears of lightning, though, she could see one thing, a huge dark shape looming high overhead, far above the trees, blotting out the sky.
Briony covered her head with her hands and ran and ran and ran, through falling trees and hurtling branches, through air that tightened and boomed with the roar of rumbling laughter.
She woke up without screaming this time, but covered in sweat, her heart beating so fast her chest hurt. She lay clutching Lisiya’s talisman to her chest, praying for her brother and herself and all she loved. Briony was so tired that she felt older and frailer than the ancient demigoddess herself, but even after her heartbeat had slowed to its ordinary pace she could not get back to sleep until dawn had almost arrived.
20. Bridge of Thorns
“It is claimed most ettins now live in the underground city of First Deep, far behind the Shadowline in what once was West Vutland, but before the days of the Great Plague they are said to have lived at least as far south as the Eliuin Mountains of Syan, and in the Settish and Perikalese mountains as well.”
I am the worst spy the Godsever made, Matt Tinwright had to admit. The first time someone asks me what I’m doing here I shall scream like a little girl and swoon.
He had never been in this part of the royal residence as far as he knew; with its unfamiliar, echoing halls and ancient floor-to-ceiling tapestries full of staring beasts it might as well have been an ogre’s cave in the deep forest, carpeted in the bones of unwary travelers. Doom seemed to lurk around every corner.
The gods curse you, Avin Brone, he thought for perhaps the hundredth time. You are a monster, not a man.
Tinwright had only risked a venture into this frightening territory because most of the household were out on the castle walls looking at some devilry the fairies had begun across the water. He had wanted to go and see for himself, of course, but knew he could not afford to miss this opportunity. So far Brone had scorned all information Tinwright had brought him, dismissing a list of mirrors to be found around the residence as “blithering nonsense” and threatening to have the poet skinned and made into a hat. While even Tinwright did not believe he was likely to wind up in a milliner’s workroom, he had no doubt that the Count of Landsend was losing his patience: every word of the man’s last shouting denunciation had shivered him to the very center of his bones.
But now he had been wandering the residence halls for over an hour. He had been forced to tell several curious servants that he was lost, making up false errands to explain his presence, and each time his feeling of dread had increased. What if he was caught? What if they brought him to Hendon Tolly and he had to look into those horrible, piercing eyes and try to lie? He would never manage. Matthias Tinwright had learned long before that although he could write poems about heroes like Caylor, describe in stirring words how they stood before the direst foes with faith in their hearts and a smile on their lips, he was no hero himself.
No, I will tell my captors everything, he promised himself, long before the first red-hot iron nears my skin. I will tell them Brone made me do it. I will beg for my life.
Gods help me, how did I find myself in this evil trap?
Tinwright walked beneath an arch and paused, staring up at the faces lining the walls. He was in the royal portrait gallery—but how had he strayed so far? The kings and queens looked down on him, some smiling but most dour and forbidding, as if disturbed to find this callow interloper in their midst. The earliest, brought from Connord with Anglin and painted in the crude style of the early Trigonate era, seemed no more human than the beasts from the tapestries, all staring eyes and stiff, mask-like features…
Now, suddenly, he could hear voices in the passage outside the hall. Tinwright looked around in panic. He was caught in the middle of a large room—by the time he reached the far side and the door the speakers would see him. Did he dare hope it was only more servants and try to brazen out yet another encounter? The voices, getting nearer by the moment, sounded loud and authoritative. His heart raced even faster.
There. The wall was open just across from him—a stairwell. He dashed across the stone flags and up onto the bottommost step just as the men he had heard swept into the room, their voices suddenly growing and echoing beneath the tall ceiling. Tinwright crouched, shrinking back against the stairs so that he could not be seen, although it meant he himself could not see who had entered.
“… Have found something in one of the old works—Phayallos, I believe—that refers to such things. He called them Greater Tiles because of their size, and believed that they were—how did he put it?—‘Windows and Doorways, although few can cross their thresholds.’ ” Tinwright could almost recognize the voice—he was certain he had heard it before, hoarse with age, breathy but sharp-edged.
“Which tells us little we don’t already know,” said the other. Tinwright shrank even farther back into the shadows of the stairwell and held his breath in fear. The second voice belonged to Hendon Tolly. “Look at all these cow-eyed fools!” Tolly was obviously speaking of the Eddon portraits. “Generations of kings no better than shepherds, content to tend their little pasturage.”
“They are your ancestors, too, Lord Tolly,” the other man observed respectfully.
To Tinwright’s continuing horror, the pair had stopped in the middle of the great chamber, not far from where he crouched. Why did I hide? Idiot! There’s no way to pretend innocence now if they catch me!
“Yes, but not my ideal,” said Tolly. “Great Syan to the south has been weak for a century, beautiful to see but rotten inside. Brenland and the rest are little more than peasant villages with walls around them. With only a little determination we could have ruled all of Eion.” Tinwright could hear him spit. “But things will change.” A deeper tone entered his voice—something cold and harsh. “You will not fail me, will you, Okros?”