Shadowplay

the most powerful thing that walks on the green world.

But we can’t do anything to stop him, Vansen said. Can we?

I fear we must, said Gyir.

Are you telling me it is up to us to defend all the world?

Vansen turned to Barrick to see if the boy understood Gyir’s riddling words, but the prince only stared back at him balefully, still struggling for breath.

Of course—but also to save our own lives. Great magicks —the oldest, most powerful magicks —need blood and essences—what your kind call the souls of people or animals—to succeed. They need sacrifices. The word came like the tip of a dagger, cold and sharp, almost painless at first. Especially the sacrifice of those who are themselves powerful in some way.

What are you talking about? But Vansen had already guessed.

I suspect now that we have not been worked to death like the other poor creatures poisoned by the gateway to the gods’ realm because Jikuyin needs one of us—most likely me, since I am of the Encauled—or perhaps even all of us to unlock the way into Kernios’ throne room. He needs our blood. He needs our souls.

One thing you had to say for Ferras Vansen, Barrick decided. The guard captain never stopped...trying. If his stolid normality and his rude health had not already been sufficient reasons to hate him, then his relentless willingness to keep pushing and fighting—as if life were a game and there would be some ultimate tally, some adding-up of accounts—would have more than sufficed. Barrick had always thought optimism was another name for stupidity.

But the dark-eyed girl would admire him, he realized with a pang.

“So what do we do?” Vansen asked Gyir quietly, speaking aloud so the prince could hear. The man was also thoughtful. Barrick wanted to hit him with something. “Surely we cannot simply wait for them to...to burn us on some barbarous altar.”

“You might want to consider the small matter of a mad demigod and all the demons and beasts who serve him and who would happily tear us to shreds,” Barrick pointed out with more pleasure than one would normally expect to accompany such a sentence. He was tempted to help Gyir and the soldier anyway, just so they could discover the futility of all such scheming. He supposed it wasn’t entirely their fault. They had not felt, as he had, the true strength of this place, the horrific, overwhelming power that remained in Greatdeeps even if the god himself was gone—if he was truly gone. Whatever made Barrick sensitive also clearly made him wise: he alone seemed to understand the pointlessness of all this discussion.

But would she think it was pointless? Barrick knew she wouldn’t, and that made him feel ashamed again. Shame or certain death, he thought —what splendid choices I am always given.

Of course, said Gyir. We would be fools if we thought our chances anything but bad. However, we have no choice. As I told you, I have something here which must be carried to the House of the People at any cost, so we must resist Jikuyin and his plans.

“It’s all very well to talk,” Barrick said. “But what can actually be done? What hope do we have?”

There must be no more talking in spoken words, Gyir told him, even if it causes you pain. I will speak to both of you, and I will translate what each of you say to me, back and forth. It will be slow, but even though I do not feel anyone spying on us, if we are going to talk about what we might do, I can no longer risk being wrong.

Very well, Barrick said. But what point is there in talking about fighting Jikuyin, anyway? He’s a giant—a kind of god!

Gyir slowly nodded. Pointless? Likely. It will take preparation and luck, and even so we will probably gain nothing but a violent death—but at least the death will be of our own choosing, and that is worth more than a little.

However, first I must find the serpentine, and think of a way to lay my hands on it.

The what? Barrick did not recognize the idea that went with the snaky word- picture—a trail of fire, a sudden expansion like a pig’s bladder too full of air. What do you mean?

Gyir paused for a moment as if listening. I spoke of it before. The burning black sand, the Fire of Kupilas. Ah, Ferras Vansen reminds me that your people call it “gunflour.”

Gun-flour? How would we get our hands on such stuff, locked in this cell? demanded Barrick. Might as well ask for a bombard or a troop of musketeers while we’re at it— we won’t get any of them.

They are using the swift-burning serpentine in the earth below us every day, Gyir told him. They pack it into the cracks and speed their digging that way, by smashing apart the stones. It is here in Greatdeeps, somewhere. We have only to find it, and steal some.

And then fly away like birds, said Barrick. How will we do any of those things? We are prisoners, don’t you realize? Prisoners!

Gyir shook his head. No, child. You are only a prisoner when you surrender.

32. Remembering Simmikin

The renegade gods Zmeos the Horned One and Zuriyal the Merciless (who was his sister and wife) were banished to the same Unbeing which had swallowed Sveros, father of all, and for a while peace reigned on heavenly Xandos. Mesiya, the wife of Kernios, left him to shepherd the moon in the place of dead Khors, and Kernios generously took Zoria to be his wife, caring little what dishonor she had suffered.

—from The Beginnings of Things, The Book of the Trigon

It was odd, Briony reflected, how much traveling with a troop of players was like going on a royal progress. In each town you stopped for a night and entertained the locals to keep them sweet, pretending as though you had never been in a more delightful place until they were safely behind you, then complaining about the take and the poor quality of local food and lodgings.

The main difference between this journey and her father’s occasional jaunts through the March Kingdoms was that as part of the king’s progress you stood a smaller chance of having stale vegetables thrown at you if the local citizens didn’t like the way you spoke your piece. That, and the royal faction brought along enough armed guards that no one cheated anyone too obviously.

Tonight, this thought occurred to her with some force. Although the hour was long past midnight, instead of sharing a comfortable hayloft or even a spare tavern room, they were making their way along a rutted roadway through southernmost Kertewall in a drenching rain. It had turned out that the keeper of Hallia Fair’s biggest tavern, which they had just left, was also the brother of the local reeve, and when he had claimed that the Makewell troop had cheated him on the takings from the night’s performance— although Pedder Makewell’s sister Estir swore it was the other way around—they got no support from the reeve and his men, and in fact were stripped of an even larger pile of coin than the innkeeper had claimed in the first place. Thus, here they were, poor and hungry again despite an evening’s hard work, soaking wet in the middle of the night as they trudged off in search of a town more congenial to the playmaking arts.

Briony was walking in the cold rain because the giant Dowan Birch was unwell and she had given him her place in the wagon. She did not mind doing so—he was a kind person, and even when he wasn’t ill walking made his oversized feet ache—but she wished this adventure could have begun in a friendlier month of the year, like Heptamene or Oktamene, with their bonny, balmy nights.

“Zoria, give me strength,” she murmured under her breath. Finn Teodoros lifted the shutter and leaned his head out the tiny window of the wagon. “How are you faring, young Tim?” It amused the poet to call her by her