“ ‘Here is your mother,’ said Stone Man, ‘who I brought into my house but who repaid me with treachery.’ Stone Man had her grasped tight in his arm and held the point of his spear against her throat. ‘If you do not surrender to me, binding yourself with the same spells of Emptiness that have allowed you to murder my brothers, she will die before your eyes.’
“Crooked did not move. ‘Your brothers have been shown more mercy than they showed my kin. They are not dead, but only sleeping in cold, empty lands, as you soon will, too.’
“Stone Man laughed. They say it were like a wind from a tomb. ‘How is that better than death? Sleeping forever in emptiness? Well, you shall have no such gift, as you deem it. You will destroy yourself or your mother will bleed out her life, then I will kill you anyway.’
“Crooked lifted up Tricker, still choking in the grip of his bronze hand. ‘And what about your son?’
“Stone Man’s voice was the unkind rumble of the earth shaking. ‘I have had many sons. If I survive I can make many more. If I do not, I care not what survives me. Do what you will.’
“Crooked threw Tricker aside. For a long time he and Stone Man looked at each other like wolves over a kill, neither willing to take the first step. Then Crooked’s mother raised her trembling hands to the sharp point of the spear and slashed her own throat with it, falling to the floor of Stone Man’s chamber in a great wash of blood.
“Stone Man did not wait. Even as Crooked stared at his mother gasping out her life on the floor, the lord of the black earth flung his great spear, still wet with his mother’s lifeblood, at Crooked’s heart. Crooked tried to make Earthstar obey him but Stone Man had laid his own words of power upon it and Crooked could not bend it to his mastery. Crooked only had time to step sideways into the empty lands. The spear flew past him and struck the wall so hard half the palace fell down and all the lands around shook and quivered.
“When Crooked stepped back out the roads of Emptiness, Stone Man was on him. They wrestled then for a long time as the palace itself fell around them, their strength so great and their contending so mighty that the very stones of the earth were all broken and crushed, so that what had once been a rocky fastness of peaks above Stone Man’s house fell down into dust, and the land sunk, and the ocean rushed in all around them, so at last they were fighting on an island of stone amid the waters.
“At last the two of them caught at each other’s throats. Stone Man was the stronger, and Crooked could only step into the ways of darkness, but Stone Man held on and was carried with him. As they fell through emptiness, Stone Man bent Crooked’s back until it was nearly breaking. Crooked could not draw another breath, and neither could he think as Stone Man crushed out his life.
“ ‘Now look into my eyes,’ Stone Man said. ‘You will see a darkness greater than anything Emptiness can make or even imagine.’
“Crooked was almost caught, for if he had looked once into the eyes of the Lord of the Black Depths he would have been pulled down into death, but instead he turned his head away and sank his teeth into Stone Man’s hand. Stone Man was so pained that his grip loosened and Crooked was able to shake him off, then Stone Man fell away and away into the cloudy, cold dark.
“Crooked wandered a while in the most distant lands of Emptiness, dizzy and confused, but at last found his way back to Stone Man’s house where his mother’s body lay. He kneeled over her but found he could not weep. Instead he touched his hand to the place she had kissed him, then bent and kissed her cold cheek.
“ ‘I have destroyed your destroyers,’ he told her silent form.
“Without warning, a terrible pain went through him as Stone Man’s great spear pierced his chest. Crooked staggered to his feet. Tricker stepped from the shadows where he had hidden. The mischief-maker laughed and capered.
“ ‘And now I have destroyed you,’ Tricker Zosim cried. ‘All the great ones except for me are all dead, and I alone am left to rule all the world and the seven times seven mountains and seven times seven seas!’
“Crooked grasped with his hand of bronze and his hand of ivory at the spear Earthstar that had stabbed him. The great weapon burst into flames and burned away to a cinder. ‘I am not destroyed,’ he said, although he was sorely wounded. ‘Not yet… not yet…’ ”
It was only when the pause had gone on so long that Barrick found himself nodding toward sleep that he finally looked up. “Bird? Skurn? What happened next?” His eyes widened. “Where are you?”
A few moments later a mostly black shape flapped down out of the perpetual gray sky with a horrid something wriggling in its black beak.
“Urm,” it said, while most of the legs were still hanging out, kicking in hopeless protest. “Lovely. Us’ll finish the tale later. Spotted a whole nest of ‘these, us has. Taste just like dead mouse ‘fore it bloats too far and bursts. Shall us fetch you one or two?”
“Oh, gods,” groaned Barrick as he turned away in disgust. “Wherever you are, alive or dead or sleeping, please give me strength.”
The raven sniffed at his foolishness. “Praying for strength be not enough. For us to stay strong, us has to eat.”
Part One
VEIL
1. The Sham Crown
“As far as I can discover, there is no place upon the two continents or the islands of the sea that is without legends of the fairy folk. But whether they once lived in all these places or their memory was brought to the places by men when they came, no one can say.”
The temple bell was ringing for midday prayers. Briony felt a clutch of shame—she was already an hour later than she had promised, in large part because of Lord Jino and his shrewd, seemingly endless questions.
“Please, my lord,” she told him as she rose to her feet. “I apologize, but I truly must go to see my friends.” So hard after months of rough living to get the knack of ladylike movement and speech once more—it felt at least as false as any part she’d played for the theater troupe. “I crave your pardon.”
“By friends, you mean the players?” Erasmias Jino cocked a stylishly plucked eyebrow. The Syannese lord looked like a fop, but that was only the Syannese style: Jino was renowned for his shrewdness and had also killed three men in duels decreed by the Court of Honor. “Surely, your Highness, you are not still pretending that such as you could truly be friends with… such as those. They enabled you to travel in secrecy—a clever stratagem when traveling through unsafe country on dangerous roads—but the time for that imposture is over.”
“Nevertheless, I must go to see them. It is my duty.” She had to admit that much of what he said was true. She hadn’t treated the players as true friends, but had kept all that was most important about herself a secret. They had opened their lives to her but Briony Eddon had not reciprocated, nor even come close: they had been honest, she had been the opposite.
Well, most of them had been honest. “I understand you have released all except Finn Teodoros. He claimed to bear messages for your king from Lord Brone. I am Avin Brone’s true monarch and he would not have them kept from me, I know. I would like to hear those messages.”