look through his palms and see the carvings on the stone walls of the corridor. It was only a matter of time, he thought, until he rose beyond himself.
All the more reason for the thirteenth stone, for the power over life and death. For when the prophecy was fulfilled and Firebrand led the Que-Tana back to the surface, he would rule over all the Plainsmen as history renewed itself.
Slowly Firebrand rose from his throne. The Que-Tana below him continued in their tasks, tirelessly combing the stones for the godseyes. He turned from them, his bearskin robe stirring the lifeless air in the Porch of Memory, rocking the flames of the candles, and he climbed up the stairs that were carved in the sheeted stalactites above the throne. He entered the corridor that took him past the Hall of Chanting, where the women recited the Song of Firebrand continuously.
Two miners met him in the corridor, carrying the stone-crushed body of a child between them. They stopped and knelt before the Namer. Firebrand touched his eye patch absently and stepped over the boy's broken body.
One of the miners thought of a curse as the Namer passed, but he cowered, and the words died in his throat.
Past the library Firebrand proceeded, where at his orders, the children had removed the last of the books and destroyed them, because soon all history, all thought and science and poetry-all of anything worth knowing-would reside in the stones on the silver crown.
He stopped and touched the carved writing on a torchlit wall. A poem in Old Que-Nara-a love poem to a dark-haired woman.
Blue light flickered in the Namer's hand. His fingers coursed over the words of the poem, and the stone smoked: beneath them. The words vanished, and in their stead, the wall was glassy and black like obsidian.
Firebrand admired himself in the reflection.
Deeper into the caverns he went, his duties calling him to his own cubicle, where the warriors had taken the kidnapped cleric. He came to the Gates of Flame, the yellow row of stalactites and stalagmites that marked the boundaries of his private quarters. They were long, sharp, and irregular, like teeth of fire.
Stepping through the gate, Firebrand entered the long, narrow part of the underground cavern wherein he resided. He was no longer surprised at the uncanny warmth of this part of the caverns, the wind as regular as a heartbeat, soft against the face of those who approached, carrying upon its back the cloying smell of decay, the floors and the walls of the corridor wet with centuries of sediment.
The voice in the stone has told me how it will come to pass, Firebrand thought as the opals began to glow more brightly, guiding him gently toward the cubicle. I shall rise at the Telling, the Que-Tana at my command, and I shall have not only the Crown Fulfilled-the twelve stones that store the memory of the People-but the forbidden thirteenth stone, forbidden, the voice has told me, because it steals the memory of others.
And there on the Telling Ground, I shall take the years from the People who took years from me. With all of our history in my thoughts, I will start it again. I shall remember what needs remembering, forget what needs forgetting, and history will begin and end in Firebrand.
I shall become a god, no doubt. I expect that now in the Bright Lands there is a starless gap in the skies, awaiting my constellation. And once those stars are placed there, shining like opals in the black heart of the heavens, not even Sargonnas himself will govern me.
Two of the younger warriors helped the captive travel the shifting passageway from the Porch of Memory to the library, where they seated him among empty shelves and desolate tables littered with old manuscripts. They had combed the straw and dust from his hair, mended his tattered red robe, then brought him to the Namer's quarters for an audience with Firebrand. Finally convinced that it was no longer the afterlife in which he found himself, Brithelm had returned to his favorite pursuits: eating, sleeping, and odd studies. Even now he was poring over a zoological volume brought with him out of the wreck of the library.
Within days, Brithelm had become firm in his conviction to study the tenebrals he had observed dangling from the ceilings of the caverns and corridors. He was convinced that the creatures were a lost species of raptor.
Firebrand stooped at the door to the cubicle and entered. Brithelm did not stir, his face above the book, an odd pair of triangular spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.
Firebrand cleared his throat. 'So it was an abbey you were building up there? Up in the Br-the Vingaard Mountains?' he asked, leery of this eccentric young man in front of him.
The fellow continued to ponder the text, which he had spread on his lap, the red thicket of his hair bent over the pages, his ruddy hands coursing rapidly over the text. Scrawled Plainsman letters reflected nervously up into the glittering triangles at his eyes.
'The book says, Father Firebrand, that these…
'Indeed it is far worse than that, Brother Brithelm,' Firebrand explained, seating himself with a rustle of robes and furs in the single, hardbacked chair in the sparsely furnished quarters. 'The sunlight kills them, shrivels them at once, burns their wings. I would imagine it is a horrible death. But I asked about your abbey. Tell me of your abbey.'
'What do they live on?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'The tenebrals.' Brother Brithelm's face was aglow, fastened on a peculiar interest that he did not want to abandon just now.
Firebrand's memory stirred, returning to the image of a frail young boy, intent on the first hunt. The Namer frowned and wrestled his thoughts back to the time at hand, to the disheveled lad seated on the floor in front of him.
'What do tenebrals eat?' Brithelm asked.
Firebrand shifted uncomfortably on the chair. Apparently the captive would not be satisfied until he knew all about tenebrals. Nor would Firebrand be satisfied in turn, not until he knew all about this mysterious sanctuary in the mountains, about the Knight who was coming with the opals in question.
He longed for the ceremonial stool, the soft, crackling give and take of its woven reed.
Already, it seemed, they had reached an impasse.
'I don't know what they eat, Brother Brithelm. Now as to your-'
'Do you suppose tenebrals could live on the surface after nightfall?' Brithelm interrupted. 'That's why I asked about their feeding habits, for if whatever they eat can be found above ground, why, then…'
Firebrand did not hear him.
Instead, he was remembering something else: the ill-fated assault of the night before. He had tried to wrest the stones from the one who brought them, and to do so by surprise. It would have been safer that way, before the young Knight and his entourage drew near enough to the entrance to find their way down among the Que- Tana.
Firebrand had ordered the Que-Tana warriors not to fear killing the Knight nor any who rode with him. No time could have been better than the time they attacked, when a twist of the knife in the foothills of the Vingaards could have done the business quickly and easily. He would have had the opals by now.
And the young man seated before him would be disposable.
But even the moon was a treacherous light for the subterranean Que-Tana. Lurking in the dark woods, they had ambushed Sir Galen and his followers, but the light was confusing, threatening, and they had failed at their mission.
Those who had failed paid the price. They now dangled by their braided hair in the Chamber of Night, the deep and enormous cavern that underlay the Porch of Memory. There they awaited the vespertiles, the huge flightless bats that roamed the darker margins of Firebrand's kingdom.
The vespertiles were always hungry.
I am a vespertile myself, Firebrand thought with a smile. No. Better yet, I am a spider. Dark and subterranean, weaving elaborate webs in my chambers, my only companion a daft captive cleric who is bait and brother to the approaching quarry.
To Sir Galen Brightblade, the bearer of the opals.
'Tell me,' Firebrand repeated, his mood much better now, 'of your sanctuary, Brother Brithelm.'
