Shadowplay

She hazarded a guess. "Was it Lord Brone? Avin Brone?"

His eyebrows rose. "How would you know of such things?"

"If I can save us, I will, and then you will learn more. Were you to meet with Dawet dan-Faar on Brone's behalf? Drakava's man?"

This time Fi

Briony stood up, walked to the door. "I wish to talk to the guard cap¬tain, please," she called, "or anyone in authority. I have something to say that the king himself will want to know."

This time there was a much longer wait before the door opened. Sev¬eral guards came through, followed a moment later by a well-dressed man in the high collar of a court grandee. He had gray in his pointed beard, but did not otherwise seem very old, and he moved with the grace of a young man. He reminded her a little bit of Hendon Tolly, an unpleasant associa¬tion. "Do not rise," the noble said with perfectly pitched courtesy. "I am the Marquis of Athnia, the king's secretary. I understand you believe you have

something to say that is worth my listening. I'm sure it goes without s.iv ing that there is a very unpleasant penalty for wasting my time."

Briony sat up straighter. She had heard of Athnia-he was a member of the old and wealthy Jino family and one of the most important men in Syan. Apparently the guards had taken what she said seriously. On the bench Fi

"I do." She stood up. "I can do no good to anyone by proceeding with this counterfeit. I am not an actor. I am not a spy. I do not believe this man here or any of the other actors are spies, either-at least they meant no harm to Syan or King Enander."

"And why should we believe anything you say?" the marquis asked her. "Why should we not take you down to the brandy cellars and let the men there extract the truth from all of you?"

She took a breath. Now that the moment had come, it was surprisingly difficult to put off the cloak of anonymity. "Because you would be tortur¬ing the daughter of one of your best and oldest allies, Lord Jino," she said, straightening her spine, trying to will herself taller and more imposing. "My name is Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M'Co

It's my dream, he thought. I'm trapped in my own nightmare!

Shouts and screams surrounded him like strange music. The corridors were full of fire and smoke and some of the ru

Is that what it meant, then? He staggered to a stop in a wide place at the junction of several tu

A small, clumsy shape staggered past him, keening in a shrill, mad voice. Barrick tried to rise, but couldn't. His heart was shuddering and tripping like a bird's, and his legs felt as though they would not support a sparrow, let alone his own weight. He let his head sag and tried to breathe.

I don't want to die here. I won't die here! But what was the sense of such

foolish statements? Ciyir hadn't wanted to die here either but that hadn't saved him-Barrick had felt the fairy's dying moment. Ferras Vansen hadn't wanted to die here either, yet he had still fallen down to certain destruc¬tion in the stony black depths. What made Barrick think he would be any different? He was lost in the deeps of an old, bad place, trapped in the dark, surrounded by enemies…

But I have to try. Must. I promised…!

He wasn't even sure any more what he had promised or to whom: three faces hovered before his eyes, shifting and merging, dissolving and reforming-his sister with her fair hair and loving looks, the fairy-woman with her stony, ageless face, and the dark-haired girl from his dreams. The last was an utter stranger, perhaps not even real, and yet in some ways, at this moment, she seemed more real and familiar than the others.

Push against it, she had told him on that bridge between two nowheres. Escape it. Change it.

He had not understood-had not wanted to understand-but she had insisted he not give up, not surrender to pain.

This is what you have, she had told him, eyes wide and serious. All of it. You have to fight.

Fight. If he was going to fight, he supposed he'd have to get up. Didn't any of them understand he had a right to be bitter-to be more than bit¬ter? He hadn't asked for any of this-not the terrible injury to his arm or the curse of his father's blood, not the war with the fairies or the attentions of an insane demigod. Didn't all the women who were demanding he do this or that-go on a mission, come home safe, fight against despair-didn't they know he had a right to all that misery?

But they just wouldn't leave him alone.

Barrick sighed, coughed until he doubled over and spat out blood and ash, then climbed back onto his feet.

Many of the tu

perhaps an hour ago. Sometimes he actually had to wade through a tide of maddered shapes, some of them as big as himself, all hurrying as fast as they could down toward what must be certain death. He had lost the ax when the ceiling fell; now he found a spadelike digging tool that someone had dropped, and used it the next time the tu

As he climbed higher through the mine the stairwells opened onto rooms and scenes of which he could make no sense whatsoever. In one broad cavern which he had to traverse to reach the bottom of the next stairwell, dozens of slender, winged creatures were savaging a single squat one, their voices a shrill buzz of angry joy-their victim might have been one of the small Followers like those that had attacked Gyir in the forest, but it was hard to tell: the silent creature was too covered with blood and earth to be certain. Barrick hurried past with his head down. It reminded him of his own vulnerability, and when he saw the dull glow of a blade lying on the stairs where its owner had dropped it, presumably in panicked flight, he dropped the digging tool and picked this up instead. It was a strange thing, half ax, half poniard, but much sharper than the spade.

A couple of floors up the stairwell suddenly filled with small, pale skit¬tering things which seemed to care little whether they were upside down or right side up; just as many of them raced across the ceiling and walls as along the floor. Their bodies were bone-hard, round and featureless as din¬ner bowls, but they had little splay-toed feet like mice. The scrabbling, clinging touch of those tiny claws disturbed Barrick so much that after the first one landed on him he hurriedly brushed off all others.

Barrick Eddon was staggeringly weary. He had climbed several staircases, some taller than anything back home in Southmarch, and also two high, terrifyingly rickety ladders, yet he still seemed no closer to the surface: the air was still as dank, hot, and choking as before, the other slaves and work¬ers just as confused as they had been a half dozen levels lower. He was lost, and now even the strength that terror had brought him was begi