Shadowplay

clammy sweat to his skin. Searching for what?

Gyir shook his head. The weight that Barrick felt, the despairing thickness that seemed to lie on him like a net made of lead, seemed to weigh on the fairy even more heavily. Gyir’s head was bowed, his back bent. He walked like a man approaching the gallows, struggling to get the smoky air in and out of his lungs. The fairy’s thoughts were heavy, too, like stones—it made Barrick weary just to receive them. I cannot...speak to you now, Gyir told him. I must understand what all this means, why...I must think... Barrick turned to Ferras Vansen. “You said you thought you remembered, Captain. Do you know anything of this Greatdeeps?”

“A memory, and only a faint one. Something—a story we children told to frighten each other when I was young, I think...” He frowned miserably. “I cannot summon it. What does the fairy say?”

Barrick glanced quickly at the fairy, then back to Vansen.

“Something about the gods breaking the earth here, but I can make little sense of it and he won’t say more.” The prince rubbed at his face as if he could scour away the discomfort. “But it is a bad place. Can you feel it?”

Vansen nodded. “A heaviness, as if the air was poisoned —and by more than smoke. No, not poisoned, but bad, somehow, as you say—thick and unpleasant. It makes my heart quail, Highness, to speak the truth.”

“I’m glad it’s not just me,” Barrick said. “Or perhaps I’m not. What will happen to us? Where do you think we’re being taken?”

“We shall find that out sooner than we want to, I think. What we should consider instead is how we might get away.”

Barrick held up the shackles, which although not too large for an ordinary person his size, were cruelly heavy on his bad arm. “Do you have a chisel? If so, I think we’d have something to talk about.”

“They haven’t tied our feet, Highness,” the soldier said. “We can run, and worry about freeing our arms later.”

“Really? Just look at them.” Barrick gestured to the nearest pair of Longskulls pacing the line with their strange, springy gait. “I don’t think we’ll outrun those, even without our legs shackled.”

“Still, The Book of the Trigon bids us to live in hope, Prince Barrick.” Vansen looked curiously solemn as he said it—or maybe it was not so curious, under the circumstances. “Pray to the blessed oniri to speak for us in heaven—the gods may yet find a way to save us.”

“Speaking frankly,” Barrick said, “just at the moment, it is the gods themselves I fear most.”

The prince seemed a little more like his ordinary self again, which was the only hopeful thing Vansen had seen all day. Perhaps it was because Gyir the Storm Lantern had almost stopped talking to him.

Judging by the usual run of his luck and mine, he’ll come back to himself just in time to be executed by our captors, Vansen thought with bleak amusement. At least I’ll probably be killed, too. Anything would be better than to face Barrick’s sister with news of her brother’s death.

Where is she? he suddenly wondered. In the castle, perhaps under siege? There’s no chance that Gyir’s people would have beaten us so badly and then just stopped in the fields outside the city... He felt a moment of terror, worse than anything he had felt for himself, at the idea of Princess Briony being threatened by monstrous creatures like these, perhaps a prisoner herself. He could not let the thought run free in his head—it was too horrible.

Perhaps she fled, along with her advisers. Wherever she is, Perin grant she is safe. And who was it the princess herself had sworn by so often? Zoria—Perin’s merciful daughter. He had never thought to pray to the virgin deity before, but now he did his best to summon the memory of her kind, pale face. Yes, blessed Zoria, put your hand on her and keep her from harm.

Does Briony ever think of us? Of course, she must think of her brother all the time—but does she think of me at all? Does she even remember my name?

He forced such foolishness away. If there was anything more pitiable than mooning after an unobtainable princess, a young woman as high above him as the gods were above humanity, it was mooning while they were captives in the Twilight Lands, being marched toward the Three Brothers only knew what doom.

You think too much, Ferras Vansen. That’s what old Murroy told you, and he was right.

The sprawling avenue of broken stones and gigantic leaning statues had become even more desolate as they marched on, most of the plinths empty, the stones themselves few and far between, as though scavengers had carried them away. Even the trees had been cleared here; the valley floor, sloping up on either side, seemed as stubbly as the face of an unshaved corpse.

Vansen was also becoming more and more aware of a smell beyond that of the smoke, a strong, sulphurous odor that seemed to lie over the valley like a fog. The worst of it came from holes in the ground on either side of the road, and Vansen could not help wondering what could be under the ground that stank so badly.

“Mines,” said Barrick when Vansen voiced his question out loud. “Gyir said these are the first mines his people built, a long time ago, although the digging here began even earlier. They go down into the ground for miles.” “What did they mine here?”

“That’s all I know.” Barrick gestured with his good arm toward the faceless fairy. Gyir’s eyes were almost closed, as though he slept on his feet. “He’s still not talking.”

The road, which Vansen thought must once have been the path of an ancient streambed, began to rise as the valley floor rose. Even as they climbed the smoke remained thick in the air, turning the cheerless vista of tree stumps and broken stones into something even more dispiriting, if such was possible. They were nearing the far end of the valley, and even though the road continued to mount upward, it became clear that unless it ended in a ladder half a mile tall it would never climb high enough to take them over the jagged face of rock that hemmed the valley.

Barrick looked up at the looming peak in dismay. “There’s nowhere to go. Perhaps we’re not to be slaves after all. Perhaps they’re just going to kill us here.”

“It seems a long way to march us simply to do that, Highness,” Vansen reassured him. “Likely there is some secret pass ahead—a path through the heights.” But he also wondered, and fear began to poison him again. Soon they would be pressed against the stony cliffs with nowhere to go, the Longskulls hemming them in with sharp spears... If others had not been trudging through the growing dark ahead of him, Vansen would have tripped on the first impossibly wide, high step. As the prisoners in front clambered up, Vansen followed, turning to help the prince climb despite Barrick’s fiercely resentful looks. One massive step ran into the next, one wearying climb after another.

“It’s...a...cursed...staircase,” Barrick said, fighting for breath. They had been marching without a rest for hours, and each step was a formidable obstacle. “Like the one in front of the great temple back home—but monstrously big.” He fell silent except for his ragged breathing as he labored up two more steps behind Vansen. All around him the other prisoners were struggling at least as badly—some were simply too short to get up without help. The Longskulls clambered in and out of the procession, jabbing with their sticks and making irritated honking noises. “Gyir says that this is it,” Barrick reported at last.

“This is what, exactly?”

“Greatdeeps. The entrance to the ancient mine.” Barrick closed his eyes for a moment, listening to that silent voice. “He says we must hold hands, because to get separated here might be worse than death.”

“A cheery thought,” said Vansen as lightly as he could, but his own heart was like a stone. They continued up the great staircase, which seemed wider than the Lantern Broad in Tessis. At the top yawned a great doorway, high as a many-storied house. Compared to the twilight in the valley and on the stairs, its interior was dark as night.

“There will be a fight here, mark my words,” Vansen whispered to Barrick. It felt strangely natural to hold the boy’s hand, as though this topsy-turvy land had given him back one of his younger brothers. “No creature would let itself be driven into that without a struggle.”

But there was no struggle, or at least not much of one. As the prisoners bunched in the doorway, some moaning and slumping to the ground, some actively trying to turn back, the Longskulls charged. They had been prepared, and now they leaped up the stairs and onto the landing as a unified force, shoving, kicking, poking, and even biting until all those who could do so clambered to their feet and staggered through the door. Many were