Tad Williams - Shadowheart

At last he heard her voice, as if from a distance: “I’m here, Barrick. But you must go.”

“What do you mean? You have to come with me!”

“I cannot.” She sounded sad but certain. “I don’t have the strength to cross back over. I know where I am now, Barrick, and I know what is possible. You have brought me as near to the lands of the living as you can. Now you must continue on your own.”

“No! I’ll never leave you! I will stay here with you… !”

“You will not,” she said calmly. “We would have a little time, but then we would both have to cross the river and who knows what would happen after that?”

“But I won’t give you up to death. I won’t.”

“You are too fearful. I will be able to remain here, close to the lands of the living—our love has made that certain. What we made together is strong, my sweet Barrick, like a great stone set deep in the ground. I can cling to it for at least a little while.” She reached out then—he felt her fingers on his face, warmer now, as though some life had flowed back into them. “Go back now. I sense you had something planned—perhaps it will still save us.”

He tried not to sound bitter. “It will save others. You will suffer from it, as I have.”

She laughed, an astounding noise to hear in this place. “Then I will suffer, Barrick, and be grateful for it. What sort of life do you think I had before this? I would rather a hundred times the suffering if I also have your love.”

He didn’t even need to think. “You have it. You have it always.”

“Then go, and trust that.”

Never before had he felt so uncertain of anything. But never before had he known anything for which he was so willing to fight. Trusting, though—that was harder than fighting. “Wait for me, Qinnitan, my sweet voice, my dear one. Promise me that no matter how long it seems, no matter how impossible that I am still coming… that you will wait for me.”

And then he turned and hurried toward the land of the waking and the living. Unkind Fate denied him even a last look back.

Barrick knelt beside Saqri. He could not bear to look at Qinnitan’s face only a short distance away, so still, so much like death. “I have brought her as close as I can. Can you find her?”

Saqri’s eyes were half open, a trapped creature breathing its last desperate breaths. I… cannot… see… anything… beyond this…

“Then let me help.” He ignored his own bone-deep weariness to bend over. He lifted Saqri’s dry, cold hand and placed it on Qinnitan’s brow. A slight constriction of the muscles around Saqri’s eyes was the only sign that she still survived. At last, her voice came, a murmur, a defeated sigh…

I cannot find her…

Barrick set his own hand on top of the Queen of the Fay’s, then closed his eyes and let himself tumble down into the darkness he had just escaped. The Fireflower voices cried out in sudden terror:

Too weak, manchild! You are too weak…

You will die, too. You, Saqri, and the girl. Everything gone… !

Do not risk it!

But Barrick could do nothing else. Without Qinnitan, he would become something ugly—a cold, raging shadow of himself, a living ghost haunting his own life. Better to go now if he could not save her, to leap into the fire and make a quick ending.

Down, down Barrick Eddon fell. He could sense Saqri beside him, a white, winged shape diving beside him as though falling out of the clouds at the end of a long journey. The dark lands rose up and then rushed past as they skimmed over them, acres of silent forest and silvery meadows threaded with shining black streams. He led her as best he could, but it was not easy—her freedom returned and her crippled mortal body left behind, Saqri wanted to soar.

It was only as he realized he had reached the valley again that Barrick remembered he dared not look at Qinnitan, that like the Orphan, his eyes upon her would break the spell, and the black lands would claim her forever. He shut his eyes tightly, or dreamed that he did, but now he had to go blindly through a land far bigger than any earthly country. How could he find her? He reached outward, thinking that surely in this cold world she must be the only warm thing, the only thing that lived and cared…

I am here. The voice was faint as a cricket in a thunderstorm. I am waiting.

He turned toward her, letting the darkness shape itself as it would. He could only follow. He could only trust.

When he found her, he kissed her, his tight-shut eyes hot with tears. “Saqri!” he called. “She is here! Qinnitan… the one who also carries some of Crooked’s blood!”

The great shape dropped out of the sky like a white storm, wings cracking.

“Has he asked you, womanchild? Has he warned you what it will mean if you take the Fireflower?” Saqri asked in a voice like solemn music. “Will you take this terrible burden onto yourself?”

“Yes.” In that moment Qinnitan seemed to know all that she needed to know. “I will.”

“She still cannot return, Barrick Eddon, even with the Fireflower,” Saqri warned him. “In your world she will still sleep, even as I once did. She may never wake.”

“I will find a way to wake her.” He reached out to find his Qinnitan. He could feel the ripple and blaze of the Fireflower all around them, as if Saqri breathed cold fire. “If it takes me a lifetime, still I will do it. Do you hear me? I will wake you.”

Qinnitan lifted his hand to her lips. “I wait for no man to save me—even you, beloved. I will find a way to wake myself.”

Saqri laughed. “Well said, child—you may be a worthy successor after all. Take the Fireflower, Qinnitan, daughter of Cheshret and Tusiya. You and Barrick will hold all that remains of my family’s long, painful legacy. May the Book record a new future for both our kinds.”

And then it was done and Saqri was gone.

Barrick awoke slowly, as weak and sore as if he had been beaten. All around him the Qar were in active mourning, singing as they prepared Saqri’s body. He crawled to where Qinnitan lay ignored beside her and rested his head on the girl’s delicate chest to hear the slow but reassuring sound of her heartbeat. As he sat up he saw a faint silvery glimmer above her brow and the Fireflower inside him vibrated in sympathy like a plucked string. When he dragged himself to his feet, he was so unsteady that even the calmest of the attendants looked at him worriedly. “Fit a wagon to carry Queen Saqri’s body,” he said. “We will take her back to Qul-na-Qar so that she can lie with her ancestors, and so that her remaining subjects can mourn her as she deserves.”

“And the other?” asked one of the healers. “The girl?”

“Dress her in bridal raiment,” he said. “She is alive, although she sleeps. She, too, will go to Qul-na-Qar. See how the Fireflower glows in her? She is what remains of Saqri and all her grandmothers. Take care of her. Make her… make her comfortable.” For a moment he could barely speak. “She is my love.”

This has become a city of broken stone and silk tents—beauty amid the ruins. And what beauty… ! Ferras Vansen did not particularly like the new and unfamiliar, but he had already fallen out of the world he knew. There was no turning back—the impossible had become his lifeblood, and it seemed to froth inside him like sea foam. Did she mean what she said? Of course she did, you foolish man, and showed you with her lips and arms that she meant it! But would it make any difference when set against the hard facts of the world?