Briony. If Southmarch itself was no longer his home, if its passageways were full of fire and angry shadows and the galleries hung with leering, alien faces, his sister was something different. She would help him. She would hold him, remember him, know him. She would tell him his name-he missed it so much! — and put her cool hand on his head, and then he would sleep. If only he could find Briony the faceless men would not find him-they would give up and scuttle, slide, ooze back into the shadows, at least for a while. Briony. His twin. Where was she?

"Briony!" he shouted, then he screamed it: "Briony! Help me!"

Stumbling then, and falling; a bolt of pain shooting through him as he struck his injured arm-how could this be a dream when it felt so real? He scrabbled to lift himself from the hot stone, arm aching worse than even the burning of the skin on his hands. He could not stop, could not rest, not until he found his sister. If he stopped he would die, he knew that beyond doubt. The shadow-men would eat him from within.

He stood, even in this dream world forced to cradle his throbbing, aching arm, that thing he carried through his life like a sickly child, loving it and hating it. He looked around. A vast, empty room stretched away on all sides, dark but for a few slanting columns of light falling down from the high windows-the Portrait Hall, and it was empty but for him, he could feel it. The faceless men had not caught him yet, but he could smell smoke and sense the growing murmur of their pursuit. He could not stop here.

\

A picture hung before him, one he had seen before but seldom paid much attention to-some ancient queen whose name he could not re¬member. Briony would know. She always knew things like that, his beloved show-off sister. But there was something about the woman's eyes, her cloud of hair, that caught his attention…

The sound of his pursuers rose until it seemed they were just beyond the I'ortrait Hall door, but he stood transfixed, because it was not the face of some ancient Eddon pictured there, some long-dead queen of Southmarch, but his own, his features haggard with fear and terror.

A mirror, he thought. It's been a mirror all this time. How often had he passed through this place and its ranks of frowning dead without realizing that here, in the center of the hall, hung a mirror?

Or is it a portrait…ofme…? He stared into the hunted, haunted eyes of the sweating red-haired boy. The boy gazed back. Then the mirror began to dim as if clouds were forming on its surface, as if even from this distance he fogged it with his own hot, fretful breath.

The clouds dimmed and then dissolved. Now it was Briony who looked back at him. She wore a strange hooded white dress he had never seen be¬fore, something a Zorian sister would likelier wear than would a princess, but he knew her face better than his own-much better. She was unhappy, quietly but deeply, a look he had never seen so much as he had since first they had word their father had been betrayed and made a prisoner.

"Briony!" he shouted now, "I'm here!"

He could not reach her, and he knew that she was not hearing his words, but he thought she could at least feel him. It was glory to see her, cruelty to have so little of her. Even so, just the sight of her utterly familiar and per¬fect Briony-face reminded him of who he was: Barrick. He was Barrick Eddon, whatever might have happened to him, wherever he might be. Even if he had been dreaming this-even if he was dying and it had all been some strange illusion the gods had set for him on the doorstep of the next world-he had remembered who he was.

"Briony," he said, but more quietly now as the clouds covered the face in the mirror. For a moment, just before it disappeared, he thought he saw a different face, a stranger's face, astoundingly, a girl whose black hair was streaked with a red like his own. He could not understand what was hap¬pening-to go from that most familiar of all faces to one he had never seen before…!

"Why are you in my dreams?" she said in surprise, and her words pattered

in his head like cooling rain. Then the black-haired girl was gone too. and so was almost everything else-the faceless men gone, the Portrait Haill gone, the flames of the terrible conflagration grown as transparent as wot parchment and the castle itself going, going…

As the terror lost its grip a little he was startled, frightened, confused, and even excited by the memory of that new face-seeing it had felt like cold water in a parched mouth-but he let it go for the moment so he could cling instead to what was more important: Briony had touched him, some¬how, across all the cold world and more, and that great goodness had kept him in the world during a moment when he would otherwise have cho¬sen to leave. He was still footless and confused by the dream he was in, but he understood that he had chosen to remain for now on the near side of Immon's fateful gate, however wretched and painful living might be.

Like a man fighting upward from the bottom of deep water, Barrick Eddon began to thrash his despairing way back toward the light.

Vansen had just finished making a space for the prince and wrapping him in his own tattered, stained wool guardsman's cloak when Barrick's feverish murmuring quieted and the boy's body, which had been as tight as a bowstring, suddenly went limp. Even as horror flooded through Vansen…

I lost the prince! I let him die!

… The boy's eyes snapped open. For a moment they rolled wildly, fix¬ing on nothing, as if he tried to stare right through the stone of the long, low cavern cell in search of freedom. Then the young prince narrowed his gaze on Ferras Vansen. The soldier thought that the boy was going to say something to him-thank him, perhaps, for carrying him all this way, or curse him for the same reason, or perhaps just ask what day it was. Instead, the prince's eyes abruptly welled with tears.

Sobbing, snuffling, Barrick thrashed his way out of both the cloak and

Vansen's restraining grasp, then crawled across the floor to an empty spot

near the adjoining wall where he huddled with his face in his hands,

weeping unrestrainedly. Several of the other prisoners turned to watch

him, the expressions on their inhuman faces varying from mild interest to

uncomprehending blankness. Vansen clambered to his feet to follow the

prince.

/ suspect he will not thank you. Gyir's voice in his head was still a novelty, and not.in entirely pleasant one-like a stranger making himself at home in your house without permission. Let the boy grieve.

"Grieve for what? We're alive. There's still hope." Vansen spoke aloud- he didn't know the trick of talking without words and did not care to learn. Already this place, this shadowland, was doing its best to take away all that made him who he was. He was not going to help speed the process.

Grieve for all he has realized he is losing. The same thing to which you also cling so tightly-his old idea of who he was.

"What do you…? Get out of my head, fairy!"

/ do not dig into your thoughts, sunlander. Vansen could feel the irritation- no, it was something deeper-in Gyir's words. The featureless face showed no more emotion at this moment than the prow of a boat, but the words came with pulses of anger, as though each thought hummed like an apple wasp. Even as diminished as I am, I cannot help knowing a little of your strongest feelings, Gyir said, speaking ideas that Vansen somehow understood as words. Any more than if you were sick or frightened someone could avoid smelling the stink in your sweat. Another wave of contempt came from him. And in truth I can do that as well, much to my sorrow. You sunlanders all smell like cor¬ruption and death.

Struck by curiosity, Vansen ignored the insult. "How is it I can under¬stand you at all? I couldn't before."