One moment Ferras Vansen was there and the next moment the guard captain was gone, tumbled into nothingness without even crying out, torn away so quickly that, like a man whose leg had been blasted off by a cannonball, Barrick Eddon had only perceived the shock but not the loss itself.
The demigod Jikuyin was bellowing with both his voice and his thoughts, making the air of the cavern shudder and Barrick’s bones throb inside his flesh. “OH! OH, THEY ARE FREE, THE CURSED LITTLE TRICKSTERS!” The giant swung his shaggy head toward Barrick, who crouched panting at the base of the massive doorway, dropped by his guards as they fought Vansen. The demigod’s great eye narrowed and he turned to his lieutenant, the gray man; even the Dreamless seemed to have been caught by surprise. “Ueni’ssoh!” Although he spoke less harshly, the demigod’s words still rattled Barrick’s skull. “Carry on, you bloodless fool!” For the first time, Barrick could hear the actual words Jikuyin spoke, a rumbling, spiky tongue that bore no relation to what he heard in his head. “The gate is still open! Finish the invocation!”
Ueni’ssoh glided toward him and Barrick stumbled to his feet, but three more guards had fallen in behind the Dreamless, two of them armed with jagged-bladed axes, and he knew it was only a matter of moments until they would have him bleeding like a hung pig all over the threshold of the god’s gate. But his shackles were gone, he realized in wonder: somehow Vansen had struck them off before the darkness took him.
Down! The warning in his head seemed so close, so powerful, that for an instant he thought it must be the voice of the demigod himself pounding in his skull. Get down! Now!
Barrick looked around in confusion. Gyir was free of his shackles, too. The fairy-warrior stood on the top of a small rise of stone with half a dozen dead guards sprawled at his feet and something burning brightly in his hand—a flaming skull...?
If you want to live another moment, boy, the fairy’s voice trumpeted through his thoughts, THEN LIE DOWN!
Barrick threw himself toward the ground even as Gyir’s arm swept forward and what seemed a tiny comet hurtled across the cavern. For a moment everything seemed to stop—the faces of guards and prisoners lifted and turned like sunflowers as they followed the path of the blazing thing —then a blast of heat and light crashed across the cavern and rolled Barrick violently before dropping him again. He lay in a vibrating silence, unable to get up, as if lightning had struck only a short distance away.
The rush of ideas into his head was so violent that at first Barrick could make no sense of the demigod’s angry burst of words and thoughts—he felt only a huge hammer of noise pounding at his ears and mind until he felt sure his head would collapse like an eggshell.
“...HOW DID THAT MONGREL CREATURE, THAT FACELESS SLUG, GET HIS HANDS ON MY PRECIOUS FIREPOWDER...?”
Stunned and limp, Barrick thought it might be easiest simply to lie here on his back and let the world end, but a small, nagging voice in the back of his mind kept suggesting that perhaps a prince should meet his death sitting up. He rolled over, trying to get his legs under him.
Another thunderous crack, farther away this time and followed not by ringing silence but by hoarse screams, proved that at least there was still sound and direction and distance. Barrick sat up and brushed something wet off his arm—a rag of bloody skin, but not his own. The rest of the shaggy guard and his two companions, victims of the first of the flaming things Gyir had thrown, were scattered across several yards of cavern floor. Even in such chaos, Barrick was glad the lights were dim: it was madly strange to see things that were so small and yet obviously part of a person who had been alive only moments before.
Gyir, who had been surrounded by guards and prisoners, now stood alone in a widening circle as creatures scrambled away from him in all directions. The fairy held a dirt-smeared death’s head in each hand, and Barrick wondered what strange magic the faceless warrior had summoned.
Get up and run, Barrick Eddon. Gyir’s words echoed in his head and he clambered to his feet almost without realizing.
I will keep them back as long as my fireballs last.
Barrick could not frame the words, but Gyir must have sensed his confusion.
Exploding devices. I had those I could command pack skulls with gun-flour, seal them with mud, and leave them here for me. This way Jikuyin’s victims will get at least a little revenge! Gyir’s thoughts billowed like windblown flame —he was laughing! For the first time Barrick could feel that the fairy had truly been raised in battle, that it was his element in a way it would never be Barrick’s. Now go, while I hold them at bay! Strike for the surface!
But Vansen...!
Is gone, likely dead. All that is certain is that he is lost to us now. You must go. Do you yet have the thing I gave you?
Barrick had forgotten the mirror. His hand crept to his shirt.
Yes.
Think of it no more. Flee! I will do what I can here. But you have to come with me...!
It is more important that at least one of us escapes, Barrick Eddon. Take it to the king in the House of the People. Now go. But...!
“ENOUGH!” The demigod Jikuyin rose up above a screeching herd of prisoners with flames running in their fur or their ragged clothes. The ogre seemed to grow like a ship’s bellying sail until his head threatened to bump the roof of the cavern. “YOU HAVE WASTED ENOUGH OF MY TIME, STORM LANTERN. THE DOOR TO THE EARTHLORD’S HOME IS OPEN. NO LAW, NOT EVEN THE BOOK OF THE FIRE OF THE VOID ITSELF, SAYS I CANNOT SEAL THE CHARM BY SQUEEZING THE BLOOD OUT OF THIS MORTAL CHILD LIKE WATER FROM A BAG OF WHEY!” Jikuyin took a stride toward Barrick, but Gyir bent and lit another muddied skull from the torch by his feet, then straightened and flung the fizzing, sparking ball toward the towering shape. It spat a great gout of fire and hot air as it flared at the giant’s feet and knocked him staggering, but it flung Barrick back onto his knees as well.
Run, said Gyir in a small, insistent voice, and then he lit two more skulls and flung them at Jikuyin. Before they had even struck, the fairy was running toward the roaring demigod with a spear he must have taken from one of the guards. Then the giant and Gyir both disappeared in the doublecrash of light and sound: Barrick could feel the skin on his cheeks blistering in the heat.
Barrick got up again, dizzy, with head throbbing and eyes blurred by stinging tears. He was almost blind, anyway—the cavern was full of billowing dust. He stumbled toward what he hoped was the way out, stepping over bodies that squirmed slowly, like dying insects. One of the hairy guards, its face nearly burned away, clutched weakly at his shin with charred fingers. Barrick crushed the creature’s skull with his booted foot, then pulled an ax out of its clawed grip, a weapon he could wield with his one good hand. He half climbed, half stumbled up the slope toward the doorway leading out of the great cavern. All the other prisoners and guards who could do so seemed to have fled through it already: nothing blocked his way but corpses and whimpering near-corpses.
When he reached the opening, Barrick turned back to see the demigod Jikuyin outlined by the flames in which he stood, grinning and roaring so that his cracked face seemed about to split open, with Gyir clutched in his great hand. The fairy, who should have been crushed by that awesome grip, instead stabbed and stabbed at the giant’s chest with his spear, each thrust followed by a spurt of black blood, each spurt only seeming to make Jikuyin laugh louder.