underfoot.
I suppose a blow job’s out of the question, he says at last.
She turns to look at him, glitter-eyed. You said what to me, mortal?
You’re not going to take me to Grashgal’s city. I get it.
I cannot.
Cannot or will not?
Cannot. The codes the Book-Keepers wrote are very specific. Though I may grant wishes, they must be genuine, they must come from the heart and soul of the supplicant. There’s a soft, persuasive urgency to her words now. I read your mind for you—now I will read you your heart. Look inside yourself, Hero of Gallows Gap, Dragonbane unacknowledged—look deep, find the flame inside, and tell me what you really want.
He stares into the crash and foam of the waves below, for what seems like quite a while. Long, vertiginous moments of letting go. Grashgal’s vision of a city at peace receding, sucking back and sliding away, leaving hard wet rock gleaming beneath.
Finally, he sees what she’s talking about.
I want them dead, he says quietly. I want them all fucking dead.
Ah. The Mistress of Dice and Death puts a companionable arm around his shoulders. Her touch bites through his clothes like freezing iron. Now that’s more like it.
F ROM THE TOP OF THE LONG SLOPE HE’D CLIMBED, THE LANDSCAPE SPRANG into some comprehensible focus. Familiar folds in the rolling terrain. Off to the west, the long, slumped spine that led up to the cliffs where they’d dug out the grave. He pivoted about, gauging the angles in the wind and the pallid light. He squinted—could just make out the spike and tracery of mast-tips beyond a fold in the land to the east.
Dragon’s Demise, moored where they’d left her.
It seemed he hadn’t been away for long.
L ET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING, SHE TELLS HIM, AS THEY EMERGE FROM A grotto of tumbled granite blocks onto another beach. Perhaps it will help.
They leave the shadow of the rocks behind, pass over low white sand dunes and down toward a broad waterline that curves away to the horizon. The waves run in to meet them, soft and muted, lapping up the beach with creamy tongues. But farther out they’re breaking twice the height of a man, and the sound of it echoes off the cliffs behind them like distant thunder.
Something flickers past Ringil’s shoulder.
He tears loose of the dark queen’s arm. Flinches around, fingers twitching.
Sees only a leaf of pale light, something like a candle flame detached from its wick and grown to the size of a man. It skitters around them for a moment, then darts away along the beach.
Fuck was that? he asks, watching it go.
One of the locals. Firfirdar presses on down the slope of the beach toward the waves. She calls back to him. Don’t worry, they’re not interested in us.
True enough—as he follows the dark queen down, he sees a dozen or more of the same living flames flickering about on the sand, gathering briefly then scattering apart again, sprinting short straight lines, then dodging playfully aside, skidding out over the creamy broken surface of the water in broad curves, then skimming back again. Some of them make wobbling circuits around him or Firfirdar or both, but it’s fleeting, as if there’s simply not enough in either visitor to hold their attention, and soon they’re gone again, out across the water, away …
It’s a little like watching energetic moths at play on some lamplit balcony.
He joins the dark queen at the waterline.
So what are they interested in? he asks her.
She gestures out over the ocean. See for yourself.
Out where the waves are breaking big, the same flickering lights dance up and down, back and across the smoothly rising, advancing face of each breaker. It looks weirdly as if some naval vessel has left small patches of float-fire burning fiercely on the surface of the waves—but patches that slide giddily around on some unfeasible clash of currents beneath.
Nalumin, says Firfirdar, as if this is explanation enough.
Ringil watches a pair of the glimmering things race in
I suppose a blow job’s out of the question, he says at last.
She turns to look at him, glitter-eyed. You said what to me, mortal?
You’re not going to take me to Grashgal’s city. I get it.
I cannot.
Cannot or will not?
Cannot. The codes the Book-Keepers wrote are very specific. Though I may grant wishes, they must be genuine, they must come from the heart and soul of the supplicant. There’s a soft, persuasive urgency to her words now. I read your mind for you—now I will read you your heart. Look inside yourself, Hero of Gallows Gap, Dragonbane unacknowledged—look deep, find the flame inside, and tell me what you really want.
He stares into the crash and foam of the waves below, for what seems like quite a while. Long, vertiginous moments of letting go. Grashgal’s vision of a city at peace receding, sucking back and sliding away, leaving hard wet rock gleaming beneath.
Finally, he sees what she’s talking about.
I want them dead, he says quietly. I want them all fucking dead.
Ah. The Mistress of Dice and Death puts a companionable arm around his shoulders. Her touch bites through his clothes like freezing iron. Now that’s more like it.
F ROM THE TOP OF THE LONG SLOPE HE’D CLIMBED, THE LANDSCAPE SPRANG into some comprehensible focus. Familiar folds in the rolling terrain. Off to the west, the long, slumped spine that led up to the cliffs where they’d dug out the grave. He pivoted about, gauging the angles in the wind and the pallid light. He squinted—could just make out the spike and tracery of mast-tips beyond a fold in the land to the east.
Dragon’s Demise, moored where they’d left her.
It seemed he hadn’t been away for long.
L ET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING, SHE TELLS HIM, AS THEY EMERGE FROM A grotto of tumbled granite blocks onto another beach. Perhaps it will help.
They leave the shadow of the rocks behind, pass over low white sand dunes and down toward a broad waterline that curves away to the horizon. The waves run in to meet them, soft and muted, lapping up the beach with creamy tongues. But farther out they’re breaking twice the height of a man, and the sound of it echoes off the cliffs behind them like distant thunder.
Something flickers past Ringil’s shoulder.
He tears loose of the dark queen’s arm. Flinches around, fingers twitching.
Sees only a leaf of pale light, something like a candle flame detached from its wick and grown to the size of a man. It skitters around them for a moment, then darts away along the beach.
Fuck was that? he asks, watching it go.
One of the locals. Firfirdar presses on down the slope of the beach toward the waves. She calls back to him. Don’t worry, they’re not interested in us.
True enough—as he follows the dark queen down, he sees a dozen or more of the same living flames flickering about on the sand, gathering briefly then scattering apart again, sprinting short straight lines, then dodging playfully aside, skidding out over the creamy broken surface of the water in broad curves, then skimming back again. Some of them make wobbling circuits around him or Firfirdar or both, but it’s fleeting, as if there’s simply not enough in either visitor to hold their attention, and soon they’re gone again, out across the water, away …
It’s a little like watching energetic moths at play on some lamplit balcony.
He joins the dark queen at the waterline.
So what are they interested in? he asks her.
She gestures out over the ocean. See for yourself.
Out where the waves are breaking big, the same flickering lights dance up and down, back and across the smoothly rising, advancing face of each breaker. It looks weirdly as if some naval vessel has left small patches of float-fire burning fiercely on the surface of the waves—but patches that slide giddily around on some unfeasible clash of currents beneath.
Nalumin, says Firfirdar, as if this is explanation enough.
Ringil watches a pair of the glimmering things race in
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