Tad Williams: Shadowplay

After wearily puzzling over this for a little while, Barrick finally decided that the little man was telling him they had to descend from something called Rootsman’s Nayste—or maybe Nest?—because he had climbed up in it too high to go straight to the gate that led out of the mines. If it was true, the little bearded man was playing him fair and he might actually soon be out in the air again.

Even as hope surged, he could not help thinking of his lost companions. There were many times he had felt sure he would die in these tunnels, and he was still far from certain he would survive, but he had never once imagined the possibility of getting away without the other two. Now, even if he managed to escape the mines, he would still be alone in a murderous, bizarrely unfamiliar place.

He pushed the thought away, knowing that if he didn’t the last bit of his strength would leak away and he would tumble to the ground and never get up.

As they crossed a wide chamber lit with a thousand small tapers, which burned on the walls and ceiling like the light of the stars themselves, the little bearded man slowed and stopped. “Here beyst,” he said breathlessly, his voice hoarse with fear. “See. Fore yow beyst the dayburn.”

Barrick stared. At the far end of the chamber there was a glimmer of light—a crack at the bottom of a door leading to freedom, perhaps—or might it be merely an illusion? “That?”

“Ayah.” The creature stirred nervously in Barrick’s grip, but it was quite possible the Drow’s fretfulness signified only that he did not know whether or not Barrick would prove trustworthy and release him as promised.

“Let’s go ahead, then, and see if it opens.” Barrick laughed, although he did not know why. He was light-headed at the thought of getting out, but half-certain the little man was trying to trick him. “We’ll do it together.”

Joy washed over him as he drew closer and could see that it truly was the great front doors of wood and metal, the light spilling in where they had been left a little way open, perhaps by deserting guards. With the surprisingly strong arms of the Drow helping him he managed to tug them wider, until he thought the space was big enough for him to slip through. At another time he might have been interested in the figures and runes that had been cast in the black metal and carved into the dark wood, but now he was overwhelmed by the light of day spread before him, sumptuous as a meal.

It was day only in the most basic sense, of course—the gray, sunless day of the shadowlands—but after his imprisonment in the depths it felt like the brassy blaze of a Heptamene afternoon.

So much light was also far too much for the Drow, who stepped back from the doorway waving his hands before his face and hissing like a serpent. Easing himself sideways into the gap, Barrick ignored the creature—the Drow had fulfilled his bargain, after all—but a moment later the little man staggered back into view and tumbled at Barrick’s feet, three feathered arrowshafts quivering in his back and the wounds already soaking his ragged, dirty shirt. The little creature was not dead yet, but judging by his harsh, whistling breath, he had only moments.

“You are perfectly framed in the doorway,” a stony voice declared, stirring up echoes. “If you do anything but move slowly back toward me, my guards will shoot you. You will not die as fast as your small friend, however.”

Barrick knew that even if he could force himself through in one try, the invisible archers would have plenty of time for an unimpeded shot. Even if he got out, he had no strength left to outrun anyone, let alone evade the arrows of trained bowmen. Barrick slowly eased himself out of the doorway and stepped back into the cavern. Standing before him, at the front of a mixed pack of apish guards and bony, quietly gabbling Longskulls, several of whom held longbows, stood the cadaverous figure of Ueni’ssoh, his eyes gleaming like blue fires.

“You were Jikuyin’s,” the gray man said in his cold, uninflected voice. “But now you are mine. We will dig out the gateway chamber once more. Nothing has changed except who will own the god’s treasures.”

“I’d rather die,” Barrick said, then turned and leaped toward the doorway, but something hit him in the leg like a club and he tumbled to the floor, half in and half out of the room with an arrow through his boot and a searing pain across his calf. Despite the queer, breathless ache of the wound he could feel the cool, gray light of the outside world on him like a balm, smell the sweetness of the air. Only now did he realize how foul were the stenches he had been living in so long, the smoke and blood and filth.

So this was the ending. After all that he had done, after all the people he had tried to please...well, he had told them he wasn’t up to it, hadn’t he? He had told them he would fail —or if he hadn’t actually told them, they should have known.

The gray man stood over him now, the bright eyes watching Barrick intently. Ueni’ssoh’s tongue flicked out, lizardlike, to touch his dry lips. “There is something ...Yes, you have something. I feel it now. Something... powerful . Things begin to make more sense.”

Barrick snarled at him, but it was hard to make words, at least any words that mattered. Then he remembered.

The mirror. Gyir’s mirror, the sacred trust of Lady Yasammez! Barrick could feel it against his breast in the pocket of his shirt. He could not let this hairless, corpselike thing take it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

“Silence.” The gray man reached out a bony hand that paused just above Barrick’s chest. The Longskulls and hairy-pelted guards crowded around their master, staring down like the demons in a temple fresco. “Give it to me.”

Barrick tried to deny him again, but although the gray man was not touching him, he could feel a force tugging at the mirror under his shirt. An intense agony blossomed in his chest, as though the mirror had sunk roots into his skin and bones, as though it would not be pulled away without tearing the greater part of Barrick away as well. He shrieked, but the gray man did not even flinch; except for those moonstone eyes, Ueni’ssoh might have been carved stone.

Barrick gripped the mirror through his shirt, but a curious weakness was already starting to spread through him. What use resisting? This creature, this gray demon, was stronger than he could ever hope to be— so much stronger... “No!” He knew that voice in his head. It was not his own but the gray man’s. “I won’t...!”

A smile curved the stony lips. The pull on the mirror seemed as though it would yank Barrick’s entire body inside out. Ueni’ssoh was kneeling above him, hand held a foot above Barrick’s breast. “But you will, sunlander—of course you will. And when I have this secret thing in my hand, I will know why One-Eye was so interested in you...”

“You can’t...!” But they were nothing but gasped words. He could not resist the gray man’s power. He would lose the mirror and lose everything.

“Stop fighting,” said the Dreamless. His teeth were clenched, and Barrick suddenly realized that beads of sweat had formed on Ueni’ssoh’s ashy forehead.

But I’m not fighting, Barrick thought. I wouldn’t know how, not against something like him. Still, something was resisting the gray man’s power—something was holding the Dreamless at bay.

A great heat suddenly filled Barrick. It was the mirror itself, blossoming with power even as Ueni’ssoh tried to make it his. A light flared around them, warm and almost as brilliant as the sun itself, so strong that Barrick himself screamed out, though it caused him no pain. As the light burst forth all the guards screeched and fell back, waving their clawed hands before their eyes. A moment later the light fell back on itself, but Barrick could still feel it even so, a tingling like sparks all over his skin. Someone else was howling now, too. Like a spider that had caught a huge, murderous wasp in its fragile web, it was now Ueni’ssoh who was trying to break contact—Barrick could feel the gray man’s mounting terror, could almost smell it, or hear it like a shrill noise—but the mirror or whatever empowered it would not let the Dreamless go.