Down he threw himself in the road beside her and said, “Old woman, you have defeated me where a hundred strong men could not. I give myself into your power, to be killed, enslaved, or ransomed as you see fit.”
At this the old woman threw back her head and laughed. “Still you do not know me!” she says. “Still you do not recognize your own greatgrandmother!”
He looked at her in amazement. “What does this mean?”
“Just as I said. I am Emptiness, and your father was one of my grandchildren. You could pour all the oceans of the world into me and still not fill me, because Emptiness cannot be filled. You could bring every creature of the world and still not lift me, because Emptiness cannot be moved. Why did you not go around me?”
Crooked got to his knees but bowed low, touching his forehead to the ground in the sign of the Dying Flower. “Honored Grandmother, you sit in the middle of a narrow road. There was no way to go around you and I did not wish to turn back.”
“There is always a way to go around, if you only pass through my sovereign lands,” she told him. “Come, child, and I will teach you how to travel in the lands of Emptiness, which stand beside everything and are in every place, as close as a thought, as invisible as a prayer.”
And so she did. When Crooked was finished he again bowed his head low to his great- grandmother and promised her a mighty gift someday in return, then he went on his way, thinking of his new knowledge, and of revenge on those whom had wronged him.”
It was strange, but Vansen was wondering if being lost again behind the Shadowline was not stealing his wits. Even after the raven’s harsh voice had fallen silent Vansen could feel words in his head, as though someone was muttering just out of earshot.
“Foolishness,” Barrick said after a long pause. “Gyir says the bird’s tale is foolishness.”
“All true it is, on our nest, us swears it.” Skurn sounded more than a little irked.
“Gyir says that it is impossible that the one you call Crooked would not know his great-grandmother, who was the mother of all the Early Ones. It is a foolish raven story, he says, told from between two leaves.”
“What does that mean?” asked Vansen.
“From where a raven sits, in a tree,” Barrick explained. “We might say it is like groundlings discussing the deeds of princes.”
Vansen stared for a moment, wondering if he were being insulted, too, but Barrick Eddon’s look was bland. “The fairy talks in your head, yes?” Vansen asks. “You can hear him as though he spoke to your ears?”
“Yes. Much of the time. When I can understand the ideas. Why?”
“Because a moment ago I thought I heard it. Felt it. I don’t know the words, Highness. A tickling, almost, like a fly crawling in my head.”
“Let us hope for your sake that you did indeed sense some of Gyir’s thoughts, Captain Vansen. Because there are other things behind the Shadowline, as you doubtless already know, that you would not want crawling around in your head, or anywhere else on you.”
Will you tell me now who this Jack Chain is that the raven has been prattling about? Barrick asked Gyir. And the Longskulls? And the things he called Night Men?
You are better not knowing most of that. The fairy-man’s speech was growing more and more like ordinary talk in Barrick’s head. It was hard to remember sometimes that they were not speaking aloud. They are all grim creatures. The Night Men are those my folk call the Dreamless. They live far from here, in their city called Sleep. Be grateful for that.
I am a prince, Barrick told him, stung. I was not raised to let other people do my worrying for me.
He could feel a small burst of resigned frustration from Gyir, something as wordless as a puff of air. “Jack Chain” is a rendering of his name into the common tongue, he explained. Jikuyin he is called among our folk. He is one of the old, old ones—a lesser kin to the gods. The one in the bird’s story, Emptiness, she was his mother, or so I was told. In the earliest days there were many like him, so many that for a long time the gods let them do what they would and take pieces of this earth for their own, to rule as they saw fit, as long as they gave the gods their honor and tribute.
The gods? You mean the Trigon—Erivor and Perin and the rest? They’re truly real? Not just stories?
Of course they are real, Gyir told him. More real than you and I, and that is the problem. Now be quiet for a moment and let me listen to something.
Barrick couldn’t help wondering exactly what “be quiet” was supposed to mean to someone who wasn’t talking out loud. Was he supposed to stop thinking, too?
There is nothing to fear, Gyir said at last. Just the sounds that should be heard at this time, in this place.
But you’re worried, aren’t you? It was painful to ask, painful even to consider. He was still uncertain how he felt about the fairy, but in these few short days he had grown used to the idea of Gyir as a reliable guide, someone who truly knew and belonged in this bizarre land.
Anyone who knew what I know and did not worry would be a fool. Gyir’s thoughts were solemn. Not all lands under the Mantle are ruled from Qul-na-Qar, and many who live in them hate the king and queen and the rest of the... People. One word was a meaningless blur of idea- sounds.
What? What people? I don’t understand.
Those like myself and like my mistress. Can you understand the idea of High Ones better? I mean the ruling tribes, those who are still close to the look of the earliest days, when your kind and the People were not so different. As if without witting thought, his hand crept up to the tight drumskin of his empty face. Many of the more changed have grown to hate those who look similar to the mortals—as though we High Ones had not also changed, and far more than any of them could understand! But our changes are not on the outside. He dropped his hand. Not usually.
Barrick shook his head, so beset by not-quiteunderstandable ideas that he almost felt the need to swat them away like gnats. Were...were you mortals once? Your people?
We Qar are mortal, unlike the gods, Gyir told him with a touch of dry amusement. But if you mean were we like your folk, I think a better answer is that your folk—who long ago followed ours into these lands you think of as the whole world—your folk have stayed much as they were in their earliest days walking this world. But we have not. We have changed in many, many ways.
Changed how? Why?
The why is easy enough, said Gyir. The gods changed us. By the Tiles, child, do your people really know so little of us?
Barrick shook his head. We only know that your people hate us. Or so we were taught.
You were not taught wrongly.
Gyir’s thoughts had a grim, steely feel Barrick had not sensed before. For the first time since they had begun this conversation he was reminded of how different Gyir was— not just his viewpoint, but his entire way of being. Now Barrick could feel the fairy-warrior’s tension and anger throbbing like muffled drums behind the unspoken but still recognizable words, and he realized that what the faceless creature was thinking of so fiercely was about slaughtering Barrick’s own folk and how happily he, Gyir, had put his hand to it.
Very few of my people would not gladly die with their teeth locked in the throat of one of your kind, boy—sunlanders, as we call you since our retreat under the Mantle. Startled by the force of Gyir’s thought, Barrick turned to look back at the fairy. He had the uncomfortable feeling that if the Storm Lantern had anything like a proper mouth, he would have grinned hugely. But do not be frightened, little cousin. You have been singled out by the Lady Yasammez herself. No harm will come to you—at least not from me.
In the days they had traveled together, Barrick had tried to winkle information about the one called
