Shadowplay

although one laughed uproariously as he said it over and over, as though it were the first jest ever to be told in the grim, blood-colored city. After a while his laugh turned to a choked sob. The Pig’s snout will sniff out every lie, every cheat, and then we will be swallowed down... As the voices rose around him the darkness rose too, like a pall of smoke, until Ferras Vansen could see nothing. Even his father’s shade was gone. He was lost in black emptiness, and the voices of the crowding dead had become animal noises, braying, snorting, barking, as if the ghosts of men had become the ghosts of beasts. It was a terrible din, harsh, desperate, and full of terror. He could not help thinking of the farm creatures he had driven to the slaughterer. The darkness seemed infinite, empty but for himself and a choir of horrifying echoes.

But that is truly me, he thought suddenly. Herding the animals with a switch. Walking down the road to Little Stell. That is a memory of me, of my life.

I am Ferras Vansen, he told the void. I have a name. I am a living man.

Something came nearer to him then—he could feel its approach, slow and ominous as a thundercloud. It seemed bigger than the darkness itself, and it stank. It also seemed...amused?

Living man.

They were not words, not even thoughts, really, but something larger, like shifts in the weather, but somehow he could understand them. He was in the grip of something so much larger than himself that he could scarcely think. He was beyond fear—he was not significant enough to be fearful.

At last it spoke, or the weather changed, or the stars revolved in their black firmanent around Ferras Vansen.

Pass. I will speak for you and He will decide. You will die, or you will live...at least for a little longer.

And then he was in the midst of the strangest place yet—a festive hall that was also a monstrous pit, a solemnly beautiful throne room whose ceiling was the vault of black and endless night. It was the crumbling root- raddled ground, a silver fantasy of towers, the slow-beating heart of all sad music, it was all those things and none of those things. He was alone, his father’s phantom gone, but a million shadows swirled around the great throne at the center, on which sat the greatest shadow of all.

The voice he had heard before spoke to him.

The master of this place says you do not belong in his dream.

I am Ferras Vansen, he said humbly. Of course he did not belong, here at the end of all things. I am a living man. I only wanted to help my father.

The voice of the Gatekeeper spoke again, slow as the slide of glaciers and just as deadeningly chill.

You cannot. It is impertinence to try. His fate is between him and the gods—which is to say, between him and his own heart. And that is why you must go. You are a hindrance, however small, to What Should Be.

Vansen quailed at the anger in that titan voice. I meant no harm! But he felt ashamed of himself for his fear. Even if it meant he must live here forever, eating clay and drinking dust with these sad shadows, he still did not need to crawl. I tried to help. Surely even the gods themselves cannot condemn that?

There was a pause before the Gatekeeper spoke again. He did not seem to have heard what Vansen had said.

Be grateful you did not hear the Earthfather’s voice. Even the murmur of his sleeping thought would send you mad. Instead, he permits you to leave—if you can cross the rivers and come safe out of this land once more. If not, then you will become one of his subjects earlier than you might have otherwise—but it is only a short time to lose, after all, the butterfly-life of your kind.

But why can you speak to me? Why aren’t you asleep, like the Earthfather?

Make no mistake. I also sleep, said the Gatekeeper. In fact, it could be that you and all these dead, and even the Earthfather himself, are part of my dream.

The voice laughed then, and the world shook.

Go now—return to the land of the living, if you can. You will not receive such a gift a second time.

And then the great hall of madness, of sleep and earth and the deep song of the globe itself, was gone. The Gatekeeper was gone. Nothing remained in all the cosmos but Ferras Vansen, it seemed, standing in sudden alarm on an achingly narrow arc that stretched above a massive nothingness, a white stripe over an abyss. He could not see an end to the slender bridge in either direction, and the span was scarcely as wide as his own shoulders. There was nowhere to go but forward into the unknown or backward into quiet, undemanding death. His father’s shade was gone, left behind in the sunset city to face its own fate, and the living could mean nothing to Pedar Vansen anymore. His son had not been able either to save the old man or forgive him, but something had changed and his heart was lighter than it had been.

“I am Ferras Vansen,” he called as loudly as he could. There was no reply, not even an echo, but that did not matter: he was not speaking to anyone except himself. “I am a soldier. I love Briony Eddon, although she can never love me. I’m tired of being lost and I’m tired of dying, so I’m going to try something different this time.”

He began to walk.

40. Offered to Nushash

Crooked labored long for Moisture’s children, shaping their kingdom in all its greatest glory, making things of great craft for those who had destroyed his family—palaces and towers, Thunder’s irresistible hammer, Harvest’s basket that was always full, the deadly spear of Black Earth, and more.

But in his heart he had become as crooked as his name, his song not just somber but sour. He plotted and he dreamed, but could see no way he could equal the power of the brothers, whose songs were at their mightiest. Then one day he thought of his grandmother Void, the only creature whose emptiness was like his own, and he went to her and learned all her craft. He learned to walk her roads, which no one else could see but which stretched anywhere and everywhere. He learned many other things, too, but for long he kept them hidden, waiting for his moment.

—from One Hundred Considerations, out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

The stranger who had captured her was working very hard to open the rusted lock, his bland face intent as he probed the slot in the gate with the strip of metal he had produced from the sleeve of his shirt. A little sweat had beaded on his lip. Qinnitan turned away as casually as she could, trying not to look directly at the troop of guards moving rubble at the base of the wall a hundred yards away. She and Pigeon and the stranger were crouched in the shadows of an aqueduct near the base of Citadel Hill.

“You’re wondering whether you could call to those guards and get help,” said the stranger in his weirdly perfect Xixian, although he had not looked up from the lock. “Where I grew up in Sailmaker’s Row, near the docks, the fishermen could take an oyster out of its shell with their knives, flick it up in the air, then catch it on the blade, all with just one hand.” He opened the fingers of his free hand to slow her a small, curved blade nestled there. “If you move, I will show you the trick—but I will use the boy’s eye.”

Pigeon clutched Qinnitan’s hand even more tightly.

“You grew up in Xis?” If she could get the man talking some good might come of it. “How could that be? You look like a northerner.”

He still did not look up, and this time his only answer was the rasp and click of the metal strip as he at last defeated the lock. The gate swung open and they passed under the stone arch, then the stranger dragged them to their feet and hurried them down a ramshackle stone staircase which hugged the side of the steep Citadel Hill. Qinnitan was tripped several times by the cord around her ankles. The air on the seaward side of them was dark with what she thought at first was fog, but then realized was smoke. In the distance cannons rumbled, but it