Tad Williams - Shadowheart

He did his best to uncurl his hand. Why should it happen again? Was it just the discomfort of being back among the people of Southmarch? Or of having to argue with his sister, who wanted so much more from him than he had to give… But she had always done that, always demanded his love even when he was too weary of life to give it.

The pain struck him so quickly and so suddenly that he dropped to his knees with a gasp.

She is your past, the Fireflower voices told him, but they seemed almost fearful. Forget her. Forget this place. Be strong for your new people…

Barrick sat on the stony floor and rubbed his aching hand.

The Sleepers took something from me in order to heal me, didn’t they?

Saqri’s sleeping face showed nothing—she was beyond that now, nearly as lifeless as Qinnitan—but he felt her words in his thoughts, thin as a breeze. Everything has its price—life, love, even death. You know that. You know that better than almost any of your kind.

But the price was my family! My love for my sister! He understood that now, although his feelings for Briony remained curiously distant. They took it from me without asking!

They did not take it. Her thoughts already grew faint again. They used it. As a river dammed by stones will rise and flood in other directions, they only changed its flow. Love is a thing that cannot be destroyed, you see, only altered…

Barrick knew he could not wait much longer. The queen of the Fay’s strength was failing very swiftly now. He pushed the Sleepers’ gift from his thoughts and knelt by her bed and took her hand. Sunset Pearl and the other healers stood back, doing their best to seem as if they did not disapprove of the strange thing he planned to do.

Enough of these other matters ,” he said. It is time for me to make that journey we spoke of , he told her. To try to save what we can… if you will let me.

He felt a faint sensation of amusement. Why should I not, dear manchild… ?

Two pale warriors of the Unforgiven tribe carried Qinnitan’s bed into the rock chamber and set it beside Saqri’s. The dark-haired girl seemed even smaller than before, as if with every passing hour she shrank farther in on herself, like something being slowly burned away. Her skin was as cold as if her spirit had already fled.

Leave us alone, he told them.

No questions, no argument—the Qar immediately left the chamber, leaving only Barrick, the two motionless women, and the unsteady candlelight.

He thought carefully about what Saqri had taught him back in Qul-na-Qar, as well as what Ynnir had said: “ The Fireflower is more than the knowledge of those who went before. It is the map of their journeys, the book of their rituals. But you cannot simply consult it as if it were a dusty scroll in a forgotten niche. You must make it a part of you.”

Barrick fell back into the darkness inside himself; for a long span he simply floated in that emptiness. When he felt he was ready, he thought about Crooked, who had found a way to travel through so many different kinds of darkness, and then thought of himself and the blood they shared, however distantly.

I am a great-grandchild of Sanasu , he announced. I travel where I wish in the lands beyond, the dreamlands of the sleeping gods. My blood is my safe-conduct. There would be many in the darkness, though, who had no respect for such rituals.

A faint light kindled and began to form the void into recognizable shapes—into here and there , up and down . The light was his own, the gleam of the Fireflower on his brow. His feet touched the grassy ground, although he could see little of what was beneath him—two feet, no, four , his weight carried on hard hooves and powerful legs. As Ynnir here in these dreaming lands wore the form of a stag, and Saqri a swan, Barrick found himself in the semblance of a horse—a pale stallion. Overwhelmed by the new sensations, he began to trot, then to gallop.

Where am I? he wondered. Are these Crooked’s roads through the void, or is it the land of dreams where the gods still live? The country of the dead? Or some other place entirely… ?

Barrick Eddon did not understand enough of the Fireflower heritage to know the answers, but he knew he was doing what he needed to do. He pushed his fears aside and kept moving, racing from shadow to shadow, through tangles of darkness so thick he thought he would never unmire himself, out into moments of blinding light that dazzled and confused him. Other shadows haunted that place, too—other beings like him, perhaps, or older, stranger things—but he dared not speak to them. It was too easy for a traveler to become lost here, to stray from the path, and although those that flitted around him now might mean no harm, there were others here that fed on solitude and suffering—he could hear them whispering to him as they followed, like the scrabbling of rats behind wooden walls: Barrick Eddon, you owe the People nothing. We will give you the strength to do anything. Raise the girl from the dead. Command the allegiance of every creature you meet. Make yourself the greatest king that ever walked the earth! All will be yours ... Just wait on the path for us. Let us join you ...!

He hoped the Fireflower’s light would be enough to keep them at bay.

Barrick grew weary, but still the shadows seemed never-ending. He had encountered many sights he did not understand—doorways into nothing, moaning shapes like ghosts caught in their own dreadful dreams, even things that looked to be the ruins of ancient temples, monstrous slabs of tumbled stone as old as the stars. Once a great shape passed over his head, obscured by ragged vertical shadows that might have been trees. He looked up and thought he saw a ship far above him, half-hidden by silvery clouds, with a skeletal crew and only one passenger, a woman as perfectly pale as a full moon, sitting in a high throne upon the deck, but he could study it for only a few instants before it faded away again into the murky skies.

He traveled on until his weariness threatened to overwhelm him. The voices waiting in the shadows became louder, promising more but also demanding more, as though they scented his growing weakness.

You are nothing to me, he declared, and showed them the sign of White Walls , the inner swallowing the outer. They fell back, abashed but furious.

We will find you again , they promised, and he knew they spoke the truth: the things that lived in these places were like forgotten prisoners, with nothing to do but brood on escape. We will find you when you are too weary for such wards. What then, manchild… ?

He had traveled much farther now than he had ever gone with Saqri, but although he was not exactly certain what he sought, he knew he had not found it yet.

You have gone too far beyond the light , the shadows mocked him. We will not just feed on you when you fall at last—we will make a doorway of you, so that we can feed on everything that lives. We will spread ourselves across the night, live in the owl’s cry, hide in a baby’s sudden stillness. We shall leap from this place in our countless numbers like bats flooding from their nests as the dark swallows the dusk.

He knew that at least one thing the shadows told him was all too true: he no longer had the strength to turn back. If he failed in this gamble, every fearsome thing that hid in the darkness beyond sleep and life would fall on him and that would be the end; there was no one left who could save him.

As he stumbled ever more slowly through the outer reaches of dream, followed by a growing crowd of hungry shadows, he finally saw something that brought him hope: a pale, heather-colored glow in the distance (if such a word as “distance” could be used in this place) gave weight and solidity to the dreamscape: where that light lay upon it, the land had substance. A grassy hill now loomed before him, crowded with angular shapes, each with a crown of antlers as wide as a man’s arms.