“I don’t… I don’t think I understand.”
One of our oracles tells us, ‘Rain falls, dew rises. Between is mist. Between is all that is.’ Let that be your answer, manchild. Do not brood too much over what went before or worry too much over what is to come. Between those two is everything that matters—all that is.
Ynnir knotted his blindfold again and walked on. Barrick hurried after him, then accompanied the king in silence for a long while, thinking.
“Could you do this even if I didn’t want you to?” he asked at last. “Could you force it on me?”
I do not understand. Could I force you to take the Fireflower?
“Yes. Could you give the Fireflower to me if I didn’t want it?”
What a strange question. Ynnir seemed tired: he was even more slow in his movements than he had been in the first hours of Barrick’s arrival. I cannot imagine such a thing—why would I do that?
“Because you need to do it for your people to survive! Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
If you take the Fireflower, Barrick Eddon, that does not mean my people themselves will survive—only what they have learned.
“But could you force it on me?”
Ynnir shook his head. It… I do not… I am sorry, child, but thoughts colored by your language will not carry the meaning. The Fireflower is our greatest gift, the thing that Crooked gave us that sets us apart from all others. Those who will carry it wait our whole lives for it, and we gain it only when our mothers or fathers are dying. Then, when we have it, we spend the rest of our lives contriving to pass it along to our heirs, the children of our bodies. To force you to take it—I cannot find the words to explain, but it is just not possible to my mind. Either you will accept it, and then we will see what comes, or you will not, and my people will continue to an end that no longer contains the Fireflower. And thus roll the days of the Great Defeat unto Time’s sleep. He stopped. We have reached the hall where Saqri waits.
The huge, dark doors were open. The king stepped through and Barrick went with him, but none of the creatures following them crossed the threshold. The hall was lit with many lights, but it was the darkness that lingered beneath the carved beams despite candles and lamps that made the strongest impression on Barrick—the darkness and the mirrors.
On either side of the hall, stretching so far that Barrick thought he must have fallen into a dream as he walked, the walls were lined with oval reflecting glasses in countless sizes, with as many different frames as there were mirrors. In each both light and shadow made a home, and in each they produced something different, so that Barrick felt he was seeing not reflections but windows which, though set closely side by side, opened into a thousand different places. He was confused and overwhelmed—but there was something more. “I have… I have been here before.”
Ynnir shook his head, but did not reply for a moment. When he did, his voice sounded weaker than it ever had. You have not been here, child. No mortal has…
“Then I dreamed it. But I know I’ve seen it—the mirrors, the lights ...” He frowned. “But it was full of shapes, and at the end of the hall… at the end of the hall ...”
It had all been so overwhelming that until this moment he had not noticed the figure at the hall’s far end. Now he and the king seemed to move toward her through a shimmer like that of the most blazing summer’s day, though the hall itself was cool and even a little drafty. When they had come near enough, Barrick saw that the queen had been set in one of two stone chairs, her body slumped like a corpse; the other throne was empty. It seemed macabre for the king to have left her this way, both odd and disrespectful. He felt an urge to go and lift her upright, to hold her in a position that befitted a creature of such singular, helpless elegance.
“Why is she… my lord?”
Ynnir had stopped and lowered himself to his knees. At first Barrick had thought he was making some ritual gesture of respect or mourning, but now he realized that the king was fighting for breath. Barrick scrambled forward and tried to help him rise but the king was too long-boned and his weakness was too great. At last Barrick just crouched with his arms around him, astounded to feel actual muscle and bone beneath the ragged clothes. The king, for all his weird majesty, was only flesh after all, and he was dying.
The world, the shadowlands, even the mirrored hall shrank away in Barrick’s mind and disappeared. There was nothing now but the king and himself and his choice. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve decided, and I say… yes.”
The king’s breathing eased. Still, you must be certain, Ynnir told him at last. Such a thing has never happened—receiving the Fireflower might kill you. And if it does cross to you, nothing will remove it from you but death. You will be a living memorial, haunted by the memories of all my kingly ancestors, until your last moment upon the earth.
Now it was Barrick’s turn to struggle for breath. “I understand,” he was finally able to say. “I am certain.”
Ynnir shook his head sadly. No, my son, you do not understand. Even I cannot fully understand what Crooked gave us, and I have lived with it all my long life. The king climbed to his feet, but when Barrick would have risen too, Ynnir shook his head and gestured for him to stay sitting on the floor. But that was what had to be, and this is all as it must be too—Saqri, myself, you, and the threads of foolish choice and strange accident that bound our families together.
“What do I have to do?” Fear swept over Barrick, not of the pain the Fireflower might bring him, but that he would fail Ynnir, that he would not be strong enough to receive what was given.
Nothing. An unusual glow filled the room, purple as the last evening light. A moment later Barrick realized that the glimmer was not so widespread as he had thought, but coming from very close—it surrounded Ynnir’s head like a mist around a mountain. The tall king bent down and took Barrick’s head between his hands, then pressed cool, dry lips against the young man’s forehead just above and between his eyes. For a moment Barrick thought that the soft light had somehow seeped inside of him, because everything around him—Ynnir, the dusty mirrors, the ceiling beams carved like hanging boughs heavy with leaves and berries—had taken on that same violet glow.
“What?” He blinked. A bell was sounding—it must be a bell, it was so loud, so deep! “What do I ...” The bell sounded again—but it could not be a bell, he realized, because it was silent. Still, he felt its tolling shiver down into his bones.
Sleep, child, Ynnir said, still holding his head. It has already begun…
And then Barrick could hear nothing except the slow sounding of his own thoughts, his heart beating as loud and strong as icy waters pulsing through the veins of a mountain, a pain like freezing fire, and his skull quivering with each echoing beat… beat… beat…
At last, exhausted from struggling, pierced by an infinite moment of agony, he fell away into a place of darkness and silence.
The hairless, manlike creature stood looking down at him, shadows cast by the flickering lamps swimming across his face. No, it was not just one creature, it was more, many more, all slightly transparent.
Something whispered to him then, a voice without sound, tickling at his thoughts: Harsar so faithful servant but never to be completely trusted the Stone Circle have lost too much in the Great Defeat…