Shadowplay

Why? Barrick asked, making the thought as bitter as he could. You don’t even eat, do you? Besides, this is a god who has captured us. What can we do?

No, I said Jikuyin was a demigod, not a god. Trust me, there is a world of difference. What can we do? Wait and watch—and, especially, think. They have taken our weapons but not our wits. The fairy hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then, to Barrick’s astonishment, Gyir’s face peeled away from the bone, rolling up from his chin to just below his eyes.

No, that wasn’t it, the prince realized after a boggled moment. The featureless skin between what would have been the chin and nose on an ordinary man had folded back, flexible as a horse’s upper lip, exposing even paler flesh beneath, shiny with damp, and a small, almost circular mouth. Vansen was staring now, too. Ignoring them both, Gyir pushed a piece of bread into the toothy hole. Bones and muscles worked beneath the second layer of skin—his jaw was clearly hinged in a different way than theirs—as he chewed, then swallowed. The fairy stared back at his two companions as if daring them to speak.

Yes, your question is answered now, Gyir said at last. He seemed almost angry. This is how one of the Encauled eats. It is not pretty, But how do you breathe? Barrick asked. You keep it... your mouth...covered all the time.

Gyir brushed his lank, dark hair back from the side of his head. There are slits here behind my ears, like a fish’s gills. When necessary, I can close them. The next thought was a curious, wordless burst of something Barrick could not at first grasp. That way, I do not drown when it rains hard, he finished. The wordless sensation had been a laugh, Barrick realized, although not a happy one.

Gyir ate the rest of his piece of bread, then the flap of skin folded back down again, curling just beneath his chin like the skin of a drum, leaving him smooth as ivory once more beneath the red eyes. So, he said. Your curiosity has been satisfied. That is what it means to be born with the Caul. Now perhaps we can go back to thinking about what is truly important. Gyir rose and stretched. Several of the other prisoners scuttled away, but he ignored them. I feel stronger than I did—I think the power of our enemy’s voice has affected me, somehow—but I could not directly challenge a force like Jikuyin on my best day. Still, if he is as careless as he has been in the past, we have a chance.

“What do you mean?” Vansen said aloud.

Do not use your voices, Gyir ordered. I will interpret between the two of you when necessary.

Barrick scowled. Only a day before it had been him alone to whom Gyir would speak, but now the soldier was included in everything. What good was suffering as Barrick had suffered if it did not make him special?

The immortals, for all their power, always had one weakness, Gyir said. They do not change and they do not learn. Jikuyin is fearsome but he was always a fool—one who thought himself greater than he was. Gyir spread his fingers in an unfamiliar gesture, something that smacked of ritual. He took the side of the Onyenai—our side, I can call it, because my folk also fought with the Onyenai—in one of the last great battles of gods, monsters, and men. But Jikuyin did not attack when he should have, thinking perhaps to let both sides damage themselves to his own betterment. Even then, he was ambitious.

When he did come to the field with his legion of Widowmakers, it was too late. The Onyenai had been defeated, but the Surazemai—Perin and his brothers and their allies—were still strong. Jikuyin was trapped and could not retreat. In his foolish pride, he attacked great Kernios himself, killing one of the Earthfather’s sons, the demigod Annon. But Kernios in his rage was far beyond Jikuyin. One cast of his great spear Earthstar shattered Jikuyin’s shield, broke his helmet, and destroyed his face. He would have died then but his Widowmakers, seeing that there would be no spoils for them, managed to drag their wounded lord from the field. Many thought him dead afterward, but the People have always said that no one knew Jikuyin’s true fate. We were right to be cautious.

So what does he want? Barrick could make little sense of the story itself, which seemed like a confused shadowversion of what Father Timoid had taught them about the gods. Why take us prisoner? What does he mean to do with us?

Gyir lifted his hand, his eyes suddenly grown tensely alert in his featureless face. Say no more. Someone is coming.

Creatures of various sorts had been passing in and out of the huge prison cavern for hours—guards leading individual captives and groups away or bringing them back, the limping, overburdened goblins with their buckets of food. A few times the Longskulls had even showed up with ragged bands of new prisoners, but this was the first time Gyir had appeared to take any notice. Barrick felt his heart speed.

The heavy bronze door of the cell swung open and a squadron of the bristling, apelike guards came in, their menacing appearance and heavy clubs quickly clearing a space as prisoners hurried to get out of their way—even those still bickering over food went still and shrank back against the walls. Silence fell over the chamber. Was the giant demigod himself coming? Barrick suddenly found it hard to breathe. Would the monster even fit through the massive cell doors without getting down on his hands and knees?

Instead, the individual who entered the prison chamber was of ordinary man-size, wearing a hooded robe so black that the light of the torches seemed to fall into it and die, as if someone had taken a knife to the fabric of what was visible and simply cut out a piece. Hands so fleshless they seemed nothing but bone, sinew, and skin pulled back his hood, revealing a shaved head and a face as gaunt as a Xandian mummy, nearly every line of his skull visible beneath pearly gray skin that was thin as a lady’s fine silk stocking. He might have been a corpse just beginning to putrefy but for his eyes, which glistened silvery blue-green like twin moons in the depths of his dark sockets.

“My master told me to make sure you were comfortable.” The terrifying stranger’s voice was as expressionless as his face. He did not blink. As far as Barrick could tell, he did not even have eyelids, his gaze as fixed and unchanging as that of a fish. “Comfortable...and secure. But I think with such a one as the Storm Lantern in your company, you should have more private accommodations.” He raised his bony hand and beckoned them. “Follow.”

The brutish guards stepped forward, tiny eyes almost invisible beneath their thick brows, stone clubs lifted menacingly. Barrick tried to rise, but he was trembling uncontrollably and managed it only with Vansen’s help. He shook the soldier off and fell in behind Gyir, who was following the black-robed figure toward the back of the long, high-ceilinged chamber. The stranger moved in a disturbingly graceful glide, as though his feet did not quite touch the floor.

Who is this gray man? Barrick asked, fighting down terror. What is he going to do with us?

Gyir did not turn his head. Do not speak—aloud or otherwise—and do not resist. This is Ueni’ssoh of the Dreamless. He is not a god but he is very old and very powerful. Silence!

Barrick stumbled after Gyir, hemmed in by the shaggy giant Followers. Even with his stomach all but empty the sour stink of their fur made him feel ill. The three prisoners were forced into a narrow stone room that had been carved into the naked rock at the back of the vast prison chamber, closed off from the rest of the cavern by another heavy door with a barred window. This smaller cell was empty except for a single stinking hole in the floor for waste, dark except for the torchlight leaking in through the window in the door. Barrick had to breathe deeply simply to keep down the scream that was building in him.

The gray man appeared in the doorway. For long moments he stared at them in silence.

You have come down in the world, Ueni’ssoh, said Gyir. Once you were mighty among your own people. Now it seems you have become court conjurer for a bandit- lord.

If this was meant to goad or distract the gray man somehow, it failed. His voice remained as bloodless as before. “The master said you were a strange little company, and he spoke truly. Your presence here makes no sense to me. That is something I do not like. You—the young one. Come here. Storm Lantern, if you try to interfere these brutes will kill you.”

Tell him nothing! Gyir’s words flew into Barrick’s head like arrows. Think of other things. Tell nothing!