Shadowheart (34 page)

No
, she said, as close as his own thoughts.
Move slowly, Barrick Eddon. There are many eyes watching.

He turned and, to his astonishment, saw that Saqri was now behind him—he had passed her along the way, somehow. She did not speak again when she caught up, but walked on through the grove of twisted, shaggy trees. When she reached the house, the door opened at her touch as though it had been waiting for her.

Barrick followed her inside, overwhelmed by the familiar, musty smells, but also by the exhaustion that dragged at him like a Skimmer net weighted with stones.

“Go and sleep,” Saqri told him, speaking words into the air like any ordinary mortal. “You are safe for the moment. There will be time later for everything else that must be. Sleep.”

Barrick did not argue. One of the beds was disarranged as though it had been slept in, although to judge by the sheets and blankets (which always stiffened in the salty air) that must have been weeks ago at least, but he couldn’t worry about it because sleep was tugging him down as powerfully as the waters of Brenn’s Bay had pulled him, and this time he did not have the strength to stay afloat.

So the bed was unmade. Just now he didn’t care if Kernios himself had slept in it. Barrick dragged off his wet clothes and climbed naked under the stiff sheets. In moments he had fallen into deep slumber.

 

“We have visitors,” Saqri said from somewhere close by.

Barrick struggled up from the tail end of a dream in which he had searched for Qinnitan up and down the streets of a desert city without ever catching up to her. He opened his eyes, uncertain at first of where he was, but then it all came back to him—the mirror, the green ocean, the god-haunted, dreaming depths. He sat up to find Saqri at the foot of his bed.

“What?” he said, trying to pull his thoughts together. “Visitors?”

He had been joking, but the fairy queen looked over her shoulder toward the main room of the lodge. “In truth, I suppose it is we who are the visitors and they have come to see whether we mean them any harm.”

Barrick could only shake his head, trying to clear out the confusion. “Visitors? Here on M’Helan’s Rock? But the place is empty . . . !”

Her pale, angular face seemed expressionless. “Do you think so?”

“Very well, then, I’ll come.” He waited for a moment, but she did not move. “Can you go out, please, so I can get dressed? I’m naked.”

Saqri gave him an amused look as she pulled the door closed behind her—but she was sort of his many-times-great-grandmother, wasn’t she? Surely it wouldn’t be proper to dress in front of her as if she were a servant? Barrick scowled as he wrestled on his Qar clothing. It was very odd for her to look so young and beautiful. It confused him.

When he stepped out into the main hall of the lodge, he was uncertain at first of what he was seeing. The very floor seemed alive with movement, as though a carpet had come to life. A hundred or more tiny people were waiting there, he realized with growing astonishment—people as small as the Tine Fay he had met behind the Shadowline, but dressed in hats and hose and jackets like ordinary folk. Their little faces, each smaller than a copper crab, turned toward him expectantly, but Barrick found himself speechless.

One of the tiny figures, a little bearded man, stepped out from the crowd. He was noticeably stout and looked very well dressed, with a fancy hat and minuscule gold chain draped across his chest that might have been part of a child’s bracelet, but which hung as heavily on him as a royal jewel. It was all Barrick could do not to bend down and pick him up to have a closer look.

“Duke Kettlehouse am I,” he said in a voice scarcely louder or deeper than a mouse’s squeak, “master by election of the esteemed Floorboard Assembly of Rooftop-over-Sea, as well as uncle of Queen Upsteeplebat (whom you may have encountered, may her grandiosity remain unambiguous) and I and my folk, whom you see gathered here most bravely before you, wish to welcome you, our lordly lords and ladies . . .”

A little man with a pointy beard standing next to him, only slightly less well-dressed, poked Kettlehouse with his elbow.

“. . . and, ah, of course.” Kettlehouse took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Yes. We welcome you to our country again, Queen Saqri. It has been long.”

“Since the war, or almost.” Saqri nodded her head seriously, as if she were not talking to a man smaller than a mouse. “Many times have the winds blown since then. I wish better days had brought us together.”

Kettlehouse looked pleased, if still tentative. “You are most kind, Majesty, most kind. We wish to speak with you about important matters—nay, incredulous matters! You know we have always, despite the difference in our onetime alliance, held the greatest and most tenacious respect for the old ones, our cousins, your people . . .” The pointy-bearded man gave him another nudge. “Ah. Your pardon. We wish to speak with you, if we may, about our peoples’ future disposition toward each other—if you understand our meaning . . . ?”

Saqri nodded in that smooth but abrupt and birdlike way she had. “I understand well. I say with only truth on my lips that if by some impossible chance our two peoples survive what is to come, there will no longer be a shadow between us. I say that from the very heart of the People’s House.”

Some of the little people let out a cheer at this pledge; others as far as Barrick could tell, were weeping and blowing their noses, or whispering in excitement. The Fireflower voices, mitigated by the apparent presence of Ynnir, gave him glimpses of the long centuries of estrangement that might end here today.

Was this why we came here?
he wondered.
Was there more to it than simply swimming to the nearest shore?
It was almost impossible to tell with Saqri, as it had been with Ynnir: with both of them, that which was real and fleshly quickly became that which was uncanny. Even simply watching the Qar in their everyday moments was like trying to understand a conversation in someone else’s tongue.

“I am certain I speak for the Floorboard Assembly, then,” announced Duke Kettlehouse after a moment’s consultation with the pointy-bearded man, “when I say that we would be most happy to see that shadow of estrangement gone. Most extremefully happy. But now I must let my secretary, Lord Pindrop, explain to you things of which you may perhaps, begging the pardon of your infallibility, Mistress, not be aware.” He took a step back and allowed the slender, pointy-bearded man to step forward.

“See what is written here,” said Pindrop, proffering a sheet of parchment that seemed as large in his hands as a window shutter. “All the words spoken by Sulepis Autarch and Tolly, the Protector of Southmarch, when they met here only hours ago.”

“What?” Barrick thought he had misheard the tiny man. “Here? The autarch? With a Tolly?”

Saqri took the note and read it, her face more like a statue’s than ever.

“We heard everything he had to say,” Duke Kettlehouse began. “We copied it most assiduously, in fair hand, so that we could make certain Your Majesty . . .”

Little Lord Pindrop interrupted his duke. “The danger is grave indeed!”

“When?” demanded Barrick. “When was the autarch here?”

“Yesterday evening.” Saqri looked up. “And if these written words report truly what was spoken here, then the southerner knows far more about this castle and its history than even the Fireflower and the Deep Library could guess. Even as we speak, this Autarch Sulepis is preparing to push his way into the deep places where the doorways are.”

“Doorways? Like the one that brought us here?”

“Yes, places where the world is thin. But the doorway beneath this place that has most recently been your family’s home is different than any other. It was opened by Crooked and then closed by him as well, and only his dying strength has kept it sealed so long. Through it, he banished the gods who had tormented him, and because of him they are still on the far side of that doorway, fettered by sleep. But even in that sleep they dream of returning and taking their revenge on the world. . . .”

Ideas drifted up to him from the Fireflower, ideas of such abstract but overwhelming horror that Barrick could scarcely remain standing.

Saqri, however, went on as though she had considered such things every day of her life. Perhaps she had. “Speaking of the places where the world is thin,” she told the Rooftoppers, “we must go now to talk to the other tribe that shares this place with you.”

“Of course! We are not the only exiles who would honor our ancient kinship,” piped Duke Kettlehouse.

“We must leave soon,” Saqri told him. “When darkness comes. Can you have those you would send with me ready by then?”

“We will have our embassy ready for you one hour before sunset,” he assured her. “We will wait for you at the dock.”

There were times when the Fireflower seemed to give everything shadows and reflections. As Barrick followed Saqri down the path from the lodge, it made all around him shimmer like a fever-dream. It was certainly easier to be here on M’Helan’s Rock, where most things did not have the significance that was layered everywhere in Qul-na-Qar, but Saqri herself, both as the queen and as the last in a long succession of women who had carried and then surrendered the Fireflower, was so full of...
meaning
that just being around her exhausted Barrick.

She talked calmly as they walked, as if by coincidence, about the Godwar and the Long Defeat that began when the Qar made the fateful choice to stand and fight with the heavenly clan of Breeze, earning the enmity of the Three Brothers and their Moisture clan and losing sovereignty over many of their own folk, including the very Rooftoppers Barrick had just met.

Even when it was not the explicit subject of Qar conversation or art, Barrick understood now, the Defeat was still part of them. It was there unspoken in all their poetry, a silent counterpoint in all their songs. The years since Barrick’s ancestors had stolen their princess and driven them back behind the Shadowline had confirmed to most of them that their end was near. That was why Yasammez’ crusade had found so many willing soldiers. If the end was coming in any case, why not face it with courage?

Saqri had turned off the main path to follow the curving track that led toward the sea-meadow where he and Briony had spent so many of their childhood hours. She passed across the meadow like a silk scarf being carried on the breeze, then stepped down onto a little winding path that Barrick remembered very well, a “fairy path” as Briony had called it, and which had amused Barrick and his twin because it led nowhere. He caught up with the queen as she reached the place where the descending track ended a little way above the waves of Brenn’s Bay. To his surprise, a smooth-sanded gray fishing boat was bobbing in the water there, with a bare-chested Skimmer youth sitting in it, moving his oars to stay in one place as he looked at Barrick with cautious interest. But when he looked past Barrick and saw Saqri, the young Skimmer rose to his feet, hardly rocking the shallow-drafted boat at all, and made an awkward bow toward her.

“Told it true, they did.” He sounded amused, but his face said his feelings ran much deeper. “Really are her, you are.”

“I am pleased you recognize me, Rafe of the Hullscrape,” she said.

His heavy-lidded eyes widened. “You know me?”

“I recognize all of our people, even those who grew up in exile . . . but I think you have already had some connection with these doings, have you not?”

He shrugged. “Suppose. Nothing to take home and feed the family, though, if you know what I mean, Mistress. But some . . .” He suddenly brightened. “Are you coming with all the rest? Is that what this is all about? ”

Saqri nodded. “As is Prince Barrick.”

For the first time the Skimmer really seemed to see Barrick. “And are you the true prince of Southmarch, then? Son of Olin the Good?”

For a moment Barrick was so tangled with thoughts of what he was and what he was not that he could hardly speak. “Yes, I am,” he said at last.

“Brought here by the holy hand of Egye-Var himself,” said Saqri.

The Fireflower voices whispered,
Erivor . . .

“Well, then, that is two in the eye for Ena’s da!” said Rafe with sudden exuberance and slapped at the water, although he was careful to direct the splash away from Saqri. “The Queen of the Ancient Folk and the prince of this castle both to ride in my boat! Old Turley will be sour as pickled shark when he finds out . . .” The young Skimmer stopped and flushed in seeming embarrassment, a strange mottled greenish brown that rose from his neck to his small ears. “Pardon, Mistress. You’ll not want to hear me croaking, and of course there’s work to be done. Please, Majesty, let me help you.”