But when he turned to his father, the child’s eyes were black, the empty black of nothingness, of the end of all things.

Simon tried to scream, but couldn’t. Suddenly the boy, his son, began to vanish, draining away into the ground like dark water from a leaking cistern. Only as Simon clutched at the vanishing essence did he finally discover his voice, crying his only child’s name over and over even as John Josua became nothingness.

•   •   •

He was surrounded by lights, flickering, unsteady lights. The torches were all around him and more were coming, like fiery birds hastening to a shared meal. So bright! He blinked, and realized he was holding something in his hands. He looked and saw his fingers were clutching a scrap of white fabric.

“Simon!” It was Miriamele from somewhere behind him. The light was in his eyes, and he was confused, aching. John Josua! He had held him, had if only for a sliver of an instant touched his dead son again, and here was proof . . . ! “Simon,” his wife cried, “wake up!”

She stood before him now, her familiar face the only ordinary thing in a mob of strangers. He was surrounded, and for a startled moment he felt like a beast at bay, crowded by the hunters who would take his life. Then he saw that one of them was a woman, her arms around a boy of no more than six or seven years, a slender child with something of John Josua’s leanness but darker hair. The child was crying and his nightshirt was in tatters. Simon realized with growing horror that the child’s gown was made of the same material as the torn scrap in his hand.

“What . . . ?” Simon looked around, saw Tiamak and a few others he recognized, found Miri again. “What happened here?”

His wife took his arm and led him away from the great double doors, back into the depths of the hall. “You had a dream, husband, a very bad dream.”

“John Josua . . . I thought he was John Josua, come back. Leleth tried . . .” Simon could not remember all that had happened, but he was certain it was important. “It’s the children. Leleth tried to tell me . . .”

“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.