“Leleth is more than two score and ten years gone,” Miri said, and although she sounded angry, Simon could hear something else in her voice, too, something like fear, almost terror. “Never mind her. You scared that poor child to death. He was only coming into the hall to see if there was any food left from supper.”
“Oh, sweet Usires,” Simon said, his gut suddenly icy cold. “What did I do? Did I hurt him?”
“Just tore his nightclothes. He said you called him ‘son.’ That’s how I knew.” She helped him to lie back down on Baron Narvi’s well-stuffed bed. “A bad dream. I am more angry with Binabik for giving you that thing than I am with you.”
Simon shook his head. Part of him was relieved it hadn’t been real, but part of him was not willing to let go. “It wasn’t all a dream. I don’t think it was. I think . . . what did Leleth say? The children are dead. I think that’s what it was. Or was it, the children are summoned . . . ?”
“Sssshhhh.” Miri put her hand against his lips. The fingers were cool and soothing, but her voice was less so. “No more talk, husband. You have frightened everyone quite enough.”
“I will not sleep,” he said. “How can I? That was no mere dream—”
“It was one of the baron’s little grand-nephews,” said the queen. “How could it have been anything else? Our John Josua is gone—by the Aedon’s sweet mother, you know that, Simon! John Josua is in Heaven with Usires and God’s angels. Why would he be roaming the earth? You know he is at rest.” She reached for his hand, pried open his fingers. “Give that to me.”
She took the talisman of feathers and flowers that Binabik had made him and threw it to the floor, then ground it beneath her heel, the small bones crunching like twigs. “I will burn it in the morning,” she said.
Simon wanted to argue, but he felt as though he had fallen asleep in one country and awakened in another. “But I saw our son!”
“Demons can take familiar shapes. Enough. Go back to sleep.”
Simon let his head fall back against the pallet and tried to concentrate on Miri’s fingers stroking his brow. He could feel her fear and wondered why she was so frightened. Just a dream, she says. He was already feeling muddled in the dark behind his closed eyelids. She’s right. What else could it be . . . ?
When he fell back into sleep, Simon did not dream again, or if he did, there was no trace of it in his memory when he woke.
20
His Bright Gem
The swarm of chittering, biting things seemed to have no ending. Nezeru cut them down like a slave mowing barley, but new Furi’a kept scrambling toward her across the tiny corpses of their fellows.
She had called out to Makho and her other companions a dozen times, even to the Singer Saomeji, but if any of them answered she could not hear it above the thin screeching of the goblins. The creatures seemed to be everywhere, boiling out of the ground like maggots from a rotting animal carcass, as if beneath its hard skin of snow and ice the earth itself was all putrefaction.
Where had they come from so suddenly? She remembered the giant Goh Gam Gar walking, then a moment later he had disappeared when the ground seemed to fall away beneath him. The earth beneath their feet must be riddled with Furi’a burrows, and the weight of the great beast had simply been too much.
She thought she heard Makho’s shout, “Here to me!” but couldn’t be certain where it came from. In any case, at that moment it was all she could do to keep the scuttling goblins from overwhelming her where she stood. Although dozens lay slaughtered around her feet, half a dozen of the hideous, manlike beasts were climbing her body, some with sharp stone blades in their tiny, malformed hands. Nezeru knew that if not for her jerkin and trews made of armored hide, the creatures would already be stabbing their crude knives into her flesh.
With a great shake, she managed to dislodge several of the things at once. “Makho!” she screamed. “Where are you? I am here!” But no one answered. The hand chieftain was either too busy defending himself or dead. The words of the first Queen’s Stricture came to her, as if she were a child again.
Mother of All, give strength to your servant. My life is yours. My body is yours. My spirit is yours.
A desperate, blasphemous thought followed the prayer, as if someone else entirely had spoken in her mind. But it was the queen who sent us here to die! Even in the grip of fear, Nezeru was ashamed by this proof of her own cowardly mortal blood. Was she not a Queen’s Talon, sworn and death-sung? If the Mother of All needed dragon’s blood, then it was the Talons’ holy task to provide it. If they died trying to do so—if Nezeru herself died here, overrun by these squeaking nightmares—what would that matter? Others would come to serve the queen. The Hikeda’ya would survive and the Garden would be remembered. Only the queen could promise that.
All this sped through her mind in a fraction of an instant, then Nezeru felt a pain sharp as fire—something was biting her wrist. She thrashed her arm but could not dislodge it. One of the Furi’a had managed to find a bare space between her glove and the sleeve of her jerkin, and now it hung there like a large rat that she could not shake loose. The rest of the goblins took advantage of her distraction to throw themselves at her, so Nezeru hammered the matted little head as hard as she could with the pommel of her sword until she felt the skull crunch. The digger dropped away from her now-bloody wrist, but another half dozen were already climbing up her legs; even as she pulled some off, others scrambled to reach her face. Every time she snatched one away, two more seemed to take its place, and the snowy ground all about was alive with Furi’a—more than she had ever seen, more than she had believed could exist in one place. Nezeru knew she was looking at her own death. Even an entire squadron of Sacrifices could not have prevailed against such vast numbers.
She began to chant her death-song, the one she had sung in the arena on the day she had become a Queen’s Talon.
Hea-hai! Hea-hai!
Yes, I live for the Garden,
But I died when the blessed Garden died.
Yes, I live for the Queen,
But I died when her son the White Prince died . . .
Suddenly, she saw a bright light sputter across the gray sky, then a burning ball of flame roared down into the center of the goblin swarm only a dozen paces from where she stood. Fire splashed over the swarming creatures as the arrow struck ground, in an instant changing their hungry chattering into shrieks of terror so high-pitched she could barely hear them. Another burning ball came hurtling down, striking closer to her this time. Nezeru threw herself to one side and began crawling. The digging creatures spattered by the fiery bolts shrieked and ran in all directions across the snow, blinded by pain and terror; a substantial number never moved again, but lay blackened and burning in the spots where the fire had struck them, their ugly little bodies twitching like the legs of dying insects. This was no ordinary fire, Nezeru recognized, but something thicker and hotter, a fire that clung where it fell and kept blazing.
As most of her enemies scattered, at least for the moment, she scraped with her knife at the clawing Furi’a that still clung to her, sawing loose some who would not release their grip, even in death. As she did, she saw a shape sliding down the nearby hill, a white figure against a white slope, carrying something that burned far brighter than the dim dawn skies. It was a flaming arrow, and even as the white-clad figure slid, the arrow flew from his bow like some mortal fable of an angry god flinging thunderbolts. The arrow splashed fire through the ranks of diggers still climbing from the hole in the ground. At first Nezeru thought this must be Saomeji wielding the powers of his order, but the figure did not have the Singer’s compact size and, even in the weak light just before sunrise, his partially hooded face seemed oddly dark.
Nezeru felt the rumble beneath her feet a long moment before she heard it, then turned in time to see something huge erupt from beneath the snow like a mountain created in a single moment. It was Goh Gam Gar, roaring as he thrashed his way free of the broken ice, his fur matted all over with blood.
“To me!” someone shouted again, and Nezeru recognized the voice as Makho’s. He was alive, although she still could not locate him. She could see the white-clad newcomer, who had a blazing arrow balanced on his bow and had almost reached the bottom of the slope; for a moment she could see the stranger’s face clearly.
Their would-be savior was a mortal.