And so the Qar and their ancient allies, Rooftoppers and Skimmers, came from all the places they had been waiting and met in a great cavern near the Funderling temple, a wide, low-roofed chamber filled with limestone columns. Saqri sat beside a small, shallow pool in the middle of the cavern and all the others ranged themselves around it like the knights of Lander's famous court, except instead of a table they gathered around a liquid mirror which reflected the lights of their torches and lanterns. Upsteeplebat's people stood in their miniature lines near Saqri, with headman Turley and his Skimmers beside them. The leaders of the Qar seated themselves around the rest of the pond, their peoples crowded in behind them. Even the chief eremite Aesi'uah, the woman with the dark eyes, was there. Only Yasammez herself was absent. It was strange for Barrick to think of Lady Porcupine wandering alone and bitter somewhere beneath his old home, but he thought he understood her. She was not the type to surrender, but she had done so. She would not want to watch decisions being made without her.

"Once we were one people!" Saqri's voice sounded as hard and sweet as the ring of a stone temple bell. "Once we were one song. Now we are dozens of different melodies, but today we join together to bring our songs into harmony once more. The Children of Black Earth-the Funderlings, as they are named here-have gone before us to fight the enemy, but to us they are drows and they have always been family, however estranged. The Skimmers are here with us. We call them Ocean's Children, and although some have tried to make them follow this leader or that over the centuries, like the ocean they have remained free. We are proud they return to fight alongside us.

"And Thunder's Children, who are the smallest of all, except in courage. Their kindred, the Tine Fay, live on in the shadowlands, some in the wilds, some in the towns and cities. Perhaps one day you will be reunited with them. Perhaps not. Nothing is easy to see or understand this close to the collapse of things.

"And we will fight beside humans, too, those we once called 'stone apes' before we learned to respect their strength and fear their intolerance. I would not be alive today without them. Barrick Eddon, the heir to this castle's throne, brought me back the essence of my life, and he also stands with us in this fight. If there was any doubt about the days we live in they will be answered when I tell you that the Fireflower now blooms in his veins. Yes, think on that-the king my husband is dead, but his essence, and that of all his predecessors, is alive in the blood of a mortal man."

A flock of whispers came from the gathered Qar, and many turned to stare at Barrick, eyes of almost every imaginable shape and size widening as they gazed at him.

"Mortal men also fight along with the Funderlings below us," Saqri continued, "and thousands more have fought and died in the castle above, protecting the G.o.d who saved us all, though they did not know what they did or what it meant. Nevertheless, all debts will be paid by this last battle," Saqri declared. "Whether we succeed or fail, live or die, our invasion of mortal lands is over."

Somewhere Lady Yasammez heard that, and the clutch of anger and sorrow that came back, the feeling of being forced into dishonor, was so strong in his thoughts that Barrick almost fell over.

"Now we must plan," Saqri said. "The ritual this autarch wants to perform in the Last Hour of the Ancestor must take place at Midsummer, and that is only days away. If we can somehow help the Funderlings to hold him back, he will miss his opportunity, and then have to hold his gains for a year before he can try again. Anything might happen in that time. Make no mistake-his army is vast and fierce, and he will sacrifice them to the last man if necessary to reach his goal, because once he has the powers of Heaven at his command he will no longer need an army. He will be unvanquishable."

Only days, Barrick thought, looking around the cavern. Even counting those who were invisible in the shadows, they had only a few hundred fighters and not much more than a thousand Qar all together. Aesi'uah had told them that the Funderlings numbered perhaps two thousand, but likely much fewer.

"We will make our numbers felt," said Saqri as if she had heard his thoughts. "But not down here-not at first. To make ourselves feared by the men in the earth, we must first strike in the open air. The southerners are used to seeing their own soldiers disappear into the tunnels. They will not be prepared for what comes out of them."

"What do you mean, Mistress?" asked old Turley, his hairless face wrinkled in puzzlement. "The Xixies are digging down into the earth like worms."

"Yes," said Saqri. "But more than half their soldiers, their supplies, and ships remain on the surface. So we are not going down-we are going up."

Barrick thought the idea was bizarre. Surely they did not have time to waste fighting on the beaches of Brenn's Bay! And what hope did they have in any case-a few hundred fairies, fishermen, and creatures no bigger than mice? Either the Xixians' cold steel or the coming of Midsummer would destroy them all. He felt cold and withdrawn at the thought. Saqri's plan seemed nonsense.

And you will see it all, a voice sighed inside him, rising up from his thoughts like a single wisp of smoke. You will see many die. You will see many die.

Ynnir? Lord, is that you?

Yes, but you will lose me again. This I can see . . . The voice barely whispered in his thoughts, like a priest relating an old tale of outrage, one whose purpose had long since become obscure. The voice barely whispered in his thoughts, like a priest relating an old tale of outrage, one whose purpose had long since become obscure. I fear you are to lose everything, manchild. Everything . . . I fear you are to lose everything, manchild. Everything . . .

By the time he returned to his tent in the Qar camp, Barrick found someone had laid out a suit of fine Qar armor for him made of a type of pearly gray plate he had never seen before, as well as a high helm with a crest in the shape of laurel leaves. The armor was not new-it had many tiny scratches that had not been entirely polished away-and he could tell by the buzzing in his head that the Fireflower voices recognized it. Still, at the moment Ynnir or some other agency was keeping the Fireflower thoughts from Barrick himself, so the only memories it awakened in him were distant and unclear.

The armor was beautifully made and he knew he would need it, but something about the gift remained hidden from his understanding and that troubled him.

21.

Call of the Cuttlehorn Zmeos, whom many named the Horned Serpent, retreated into mourning in his brother's castle and thereafter kept the sun's light to himself. For years the northern lands remained lost in winter.

-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

"WHEN THEY COME AGAINST YOU," his sergeant Donal Murroy had told him, "you'll think at first they're endless and all the same, like waves breaking against the causeway. Don't let that fool you."

It had been one of Ferras Vansen's first nights alone on sentry duty with the old soldier. He could still remember every word.

"Did you really fight them?"

Murroy had spit over the edge of the wall, then ducked back when the wind changed. "The Xixies? Aye, lad. Two years fighting for King Olin when he was a young man-and I was, too! Siege of Hierosol. That old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Parak. He was autarch then. Parnad's his son."

Now it was Parnad's son, Sulepis, that Vansen in turn had to face. The names changed, but the aggression of the Xixian army seemed to go on and on.

"What do you mean, don't let that fool you?" the young Vansen had asked.

"They're not all the same. Our armies here in the north, we pull them together when we need them. We're lucky if we can run a few kerns with spears out first to trouble the other side's horses. The autarch keeps a hundred thousand men under arms at all times. He has to, to keep down all those Xandian countries he's conquered. Biggest army since the great days of Hierosol itself, and each soldier has a different place in it. By the b.a.l.l.s of Volios, boy, did you know there's an entire company that does nothing but feed and water the autarch's elephants?"

Vansen had never even seen an elephant. "Truly?"

"Truly. Pray you never have to come up against those beasts, lad. Big as a house and they can take arrows like a miner's mouse. I've seen them pluck up a grown man and throw him a hundred feet through the air, like Bram Stoneboots in the old stories. They are demons to fight." Murroy had paused to spit again. "Here was how the autarch's army came at us at Hierosol." Unlike most soldiers, old Murroy had believed in knowing his enemies well, something he had done his best to teach Vansen. "First were the Naked, as they're called-infantry, armed with spears and shields. Most of them are from the subject countries, Sania, Zan-Kartuum, Tuan, Iyar, but their officers are all Xixies. They come like the waves on Brenn's Bay-the autarch will throw them at the enemy for hour upon hour. Behind them were the Hakka Slingers, the gunners, and the Great Thunder, his cavalry-desert riders on horses fast as the wind. When they charge, all you can do is wait and trust your spears and your shield-wall.

"And of course," the sergeant had continued, spitting over the side once more as if to rid himself of the memory of waiting for the Great Thunder to strike, "the G.o.ds-cursed autarch has his special troops as well, his White Hounds, who are captured Trigonates from the north, and his Leopards, his personal riflemen and bodyguards. Each trained Leopard guard, they say, is worth a full rank of lesser soldiers."

"If the autarch's army is so vast and so powerful, then how did Olin defeat him?"

"He didn't, not truly," Murroy had admitted. "The siege failed, but only because the walls of Hierosol are so strong. If the day comes when Hierosol falls to Xis-well, I hope I am not alive to see what happens to the rest of Eion."

"They're bringing back the fire!" bellowed Sledge Jasper as he pushed against Vansen's belly, tumbling him backward. The cry was still echoing past the rest of the Funderling defenders as the advance guard tried to squeeze themselves back into the tunnel at the same time as the men with the fire shields were trying to push forward. "Hurry!" Jasper screeched.

The shield-troop got there only moments before the Xixian artillery dragged their fire-cannons into place, weird, octopuslike arrangements of bellows and plastered barrels and flexible piping that more closely resembled the instruments played by Settland hillmen than weapons of war. Still, it was only the swift erection of the Funderling fire wall, each re-curved shield nearly twice a Funderling's height and covered with a fiber they called "rock wool," that saved the lives of those behind them because the pa.s.sage into which they had fallen back was too narrow to allow a swift retreat. The liquid Xixian fire, ignited as it leaped from the gunlike pipes, washed over the shields. Some drops got through and splattered on the troops cowering behind the shield bearers, causing men to scream in terrible pain; even several rows back from the front, the heat made Vansen's hair and eyelashes crackle.

"Crossbows!" Vansen would have given everything he owned for a single company of Kertish longbowmen, but no one had given him one, so he was making do with the dozen or so old crossbows the warders had owned since King Ustin's time. Still, he had to admit the warders had acquitted themselves well.

As the first casks of Xixian fire emptied and the flames reached their greatest strength then began to fall off, Vansen hurried his crossbowmen down the crowded pa.s.sage and had them stand behind the protective shields. As the Xixians rushed to replace the spent casks with full ones the Funderling shield bearers lowered their great curved shields and crouched so that the archers could fire over their shoulders. Screams and a great gout of fire from a burst bladder on one of the fire-cannons gave Vansen the courage to call for a charge.

The Funderlings poured out of the narrow pa.s.sage and into the cavern like rats out of a hole, their axes and hammers swinging as they shouted, "The Guild!" and "Earth Elders!" They fell on the dozen Xixian fire-makers and their guards in a moment and curses and shouts and the ring of steel on steel filled the small chamber. But the rest of the Xixians, hundreds of well-armed infantry-"the Naked"-surged forward.

"Grab that fire-cannon and fall back!" Vansen shouted.

As his men stumbled back into the pa.s.sageway he made them drop the cannon in a heap of bent and scorched parts at the place where the pa.s.sage opened to the main chamber. He found the matchlock and trigger for the fire-cannon and spiked the end of the smoldering match on a stray cross-bow bolt. He grabbed a bow from one of his retreating archers and then scrambled with them back up the pa.s.sageway. When Vansen saw the Xixian infantry beginning to shove their way into the pa.s.sage, he took careful aim and put the sparking match into one of the fire-cannon's larger bladders.

The gust of hot wind and flame and the terrible screams of the Xixians drew cheers from the retreating Funderlings.

"Back to Pilgrim's Reach," Vansen called. "They won't soon get past the Midsummer bonfire we've made for them here!"

"We haven't even dug in," said Jasper. "They struck so quickly they must have known we were here. But we should be able to hold them here for a long time."

"We can't afford to," said Vansen. He pointed to the uppermost of Chert's maps. "Look. If we choke off Pilgrim's Reach here, then they will just go around us. They'll likely find their way down by one of the spur tunnels. See, this laborer's pa.s.sage doesn't even have a name, but it's certainly wide enough for the Xixians to use."

"Chert's maps are more useful than I had thought," said Cinnabar, breathing heavily as his son helped him take off his helmet. "I did not know there were so many unknown pa.s.sages."

"He studied the library in the temple, but he has also been down here himself, remember?" Vansen shuffled through the pile until he found the map of the level below them. "All the way to the island in the Sea in the Depths."

Sledge Jasper, who had all but appointed himself Vansen's personal bodyguard, let out a low whistle. "That Blue Quartz fellow was on the island? With the Shining Man himself?" He shook his head. "Never would have thought it of him."

"Don't underestimate him," said Cinnabar, drinking water from a moleskin bag. "Chert is a rare and clever fellow. I hear more good sense spoken at his and his wife's table than I do in the Highwardens' chambers, and I don't care who hears me say it."

"But where is he?" asked Sledge. "I thought he stayed back in the temple with the priests and the others who can't fight . . . or won't fight." His face told what he thought about those who would not take up weapons for Funderling Town.

"Don't underestimate our allies, either, friend Jasper." Vansen told him. "We have an entire platoon of monks standing bravely with us even though they have little training for it. By the G.o.ds, man, most of them have no better weapon than hoes and hammers and walking sticks!"

"Sorry, Captain. I meant no insult. I just wondered why he wasn't here."

"I know, Jasper. Chert Blue Quartz has a plan-an idea of his own, a big and desperate one-and we've told him to make what he can of it. It won't help us, but if we fail it might at least help to save the rest of Funderling Town."

"What's he doing, Captain?"

Vansen shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I can't speak any more about it. The Guild seal is on it-is that spoken aright, Cinnabar?"

The magister nodded and sighed. "That's it, exactly. It's Guild business now, mad as it is."

"You sound as though you think it will fail," said Jasper.

"I do." Cinnabar, with his young son Calomel's help, lowered his armored back end onto a rock. "But I agreed to it, promised I would help, and I've done so. Now enough of this. We can do nothing more to help Chert, so let us think about what we can do here."

Vansen pulled the map around. "As everyone knows, we'll give ground as slowly as we can manage, but we will have to give ground. From the Counting Room and on down the tunnels. We'll hold them for a long time in the Cavern of Winds, I hope, but our real stand will be in the Maze, I think. We'll make then earn every inch there."

"But they have their own miners, not to mention those weird little creatures covered in tortoisesh.e.l.l." Malachite Copper had joined them after seeing to his men. "Surely the southerners can find other ways around us?"

"Eventually, no doubt," Vansen agreed. "But whenever they seem frustrated, we're going to give a little. We'll keep sentries in the other tunnels, so we'll know if they find any of those routes. But if we fight as hard as we can and seem to give back only when we have to, then the autarch will keep his patience, and we'll draw him downward as nicely as can be."

"But that way we'll lead him right into the Mysteries!" protested Sledge Jasper.

"We can't beat them, Sledge. I know it sounds mad, but the fairies swear that what the autarch wants is to be there on the night of Midsummer's Day to perform some black magic. That's what we have to stop."

"Well, you're right, Captain." Sledge Jasper nodded. "It does sound mad. But you've led us right so far, even in the beginning when I thought you'd have us all killed. Me and my men will do what you say."

Vansen smiled. "We couldn't manage it without you." He turned to the others present, Cinnabar and Copper and the other Funderlings, some of them hereditary leaders of their own troops, some selected from the ranks of the warders by Vansen and Jasper. "This is a fight to the death . . . but it is also a dance. We must learn our partners' movements and mood as well as we know our own."

Jasper's confidence disappeared in an instant. "A . . . dance? My men don't dance, Captain."

"Then think of it as a story being performed. Do you Funderlings have plays and players?"

Cinnabar frowned. "Of a sort. Some of the Metamorphic Brothers who conduct special rituals . . ." he hesitated for a moment," . . . in the Mysteries, they are players of a sort."

"Well and good," said Vansen. "Think of it that way, then. It is up to us to put on a good show of resistance, but the only way we can do that is to fight and perhaps lose. And then, even if we manage to hold off a much greater force, when they begin to tire, we must give ground, however weary we are ourselves, and however good the position we must abandon." Ferras Vansen spread his hands to show that he had nothing else to give. "That is our task, gentlemen. Perhaps the most difficult thing fighting men could be asked to do, and we must work this miracle with untrained troops and many new commanders. Could the odds be longer?" He turned to Jasper. "So don't fear, friend Sledge. We may die in obscurity but there are many worse ways to do it-and many worse reasons."

"It will be an honor to break my spade in obscurity with you, Captain." Jasper sounded as though he was ready to run out and throw himself on a Xixian spear this very moment.

"Just the same," Vansen said, "it is an honor I would have been happy to turn down."

Pinimmon Vash was terrified by how much stone now lay above his head, of how far beneath the sky-and even beneath the sea!-he had come. It was all that he could do not to leap out of his litter this moment and force his way back past the soldiers in their strung-out camps until he had fought his way back to the surface. It wasn't the knowledge of the permanent and fatal humiliation that would bring that kept him in place. Even the idea of losing face wasn't enough to overcome the horror of these miles of stone weighing down upon his thoughts and feelings. Instead it was the face of the autarch himself, staring at him across the smoke of the ceremonial brazier, that kept Vash seated and smiling vapidly when he felt as though any moment his skin might yank itself free from his bones and run away without him.

Sulepis could go nowhere without the brazier, because it represented the fire of his G.o.dly ancestor, Nushash. It was the kind of thing Vash himself approved of: ancient, orderly, ceremonial, respectable-and exactly the sort of things his young master was emphatically not.

"Your face seems sour to me, Paramount Minister," said Sulepis. "Has your keen eye spotted some weak spot in our a.s.sault?"

He hated it when the autarch made light of him in front of the soldiers, but even the polemarchs knew better than to show too much amus.e.m.e.nt. Whatever they might think of him in private, they all knew that Pinimmon Vash's reach was second only to the Golden One's. More officers than were gathered here today had incurred the paramount minister's ire, and all of them were gone now, the luckiest in ign.o.ble retirement.

Vash did his best to smile. "Sour, Golden One? How could anyone be sour in the midst of such a splendid adventure? I but reflected on worries of my own."

"Ah, did you? How selfish you are, old man. All those concerns and you would not share a single one?" Sulepis turned to his prisoner. "Come, Olin, wouldn't you like to hear what is worrying my good servant?"

To Vash's eyes the northern king looked even paler than usual. His brow was damp, as if a fever were coming upon him. "I beg pardon," Olin said. "I did not hear."

"Never mind. Tell us why you are worried, Minster Vash."

Vash took a breath, held it a moment. "I worry about you, O Golden One, that is all. I fear for your safety so far below the ground, in such a dark and treacherous place, and with such uncanny enemies."

"But you told me only yesterday that I would triumph against any odds-that Heaven had ordained my victory, so how can you doubt me today? Do you doubt me, Minister?" The autarch was smiling, but the yellow lights of his eyes seemed as deep as the vast fires in the temple of Nushash.

He's angry about something, Vash suddenly realized. Vash suddenly realized. Not me, but I was fool enough to let him notice an expression on my face Not me, but I was fool enough to let him notice an expression on my face. "I am sorry, Golden One. I try never to doubt your victory, but your enemies are so treacherous, so wicked . . . !"

Olin turned with a look of clammy disbelief on his face. "What? My poor people, wicked? Is it not enough to kill innocents without slandering them, too?"

"He does not mean them, Olin," said the autarch, his mobile face suddenly full of n.o.ble feeling. "Although n.o.body who allows that Tolly creature to rule them can be truly innocent. Old Vash refers to my real enemies-the G.o.ds. And, yes, they are strong and cruel, but they do not have what I have . . . the blood of humanity flowing in my veins!"

The northern king, who unlike Vash himself seemed to have no reason to fear aggravating the autarch, asked, "What do you mean, humanity? It's the blood of G.o.ds you're always talking about-the blood that supposedly runs in my veins."

Sulepis smiled with pleasure. "Ah, but that is just the point. The blood of the G.o.ds has grown thin and tired, but it is still the key that will unlock the door I need to open . . . and when the door is open, power will come through it. That power-the might of Heaven itself-will be mine. But my blood may be entirely mortal, or if Nushash is indeed my ancestor, it may have become an even thinner soup over the years than your own. What's important about me is that I have the blood of human conquerors running in my veins-hard, silent men of the desert who seized what they wanted and held it by wits and bravery and nothing more. Who else would even think to s.n.a.t.c.h Heaven's power? I am the closest thing this world has to a G.o.d, and it is exactly because of my mortal ancestors that the circle will be closed and I will inherit the greatest power imaginable."

Olin looked at him for a long time. "Every time I think I have plumbed the uttermost depths of your madness, Sulepis, you surprise me yet again."