Barrick sat quiet for a while, thinking. Why is all of this happening now? he finally asked. Not what I was just asking about, but…everything.

Narrow your question, please.

Everything that hasn’t happened before, or at least not for hundreds of years—the Shadowline moving, your people attacking Southmarch and warring against my people. And this demigod Jack Chain, or whatever he is, digging up the palace of Kernios. You can’t pretend those sorts of things happen all the time.

Gyir let out the gust of bitter amusement that Barrick had come to recognize as a laugh. Your people and my people at each other’s throats is not so unusual. You slaughtered us for years. And, to be fair, we have attacked you twice since then.

You know what I mean.

Gyir stared at him, then nodded. Yes, I do. There are things I cannot tell you even though circumstances make us allies—promises I have made to others and oaths I have sworn. But here are some things I can tell, and should. Your companion must hear this, too. The fairy paused. Barrick turned and watched Ferras Vansen slowly push himself into an upright position, woken by the Storm Lantern’s silent call.

Our time is short, Gyir said. You both must listen well. He spread his pale fingers. There are two ways other than experience that wisdom comes to the People. One is the gift of the Fireflower—this made a an idea in Barrick’s mind he could barely contain, something that was as large and complicated as anything Gyir had ever said—and the other is the Deep Library.

In the most hidden places within the House of the People, the wisdom of our oldest days remains mostly in the form of the Preserved and their Voices—that is the Deep Library. These Voices speak the wisdom of the Preserved and thus are the People taught and reminded. Gyir’s thoughts were rhythmic, almost singsong, as though he passed on a story that he had learned in childhood. These Voices, along with the wisdom of the Fireflower, which is sometimes called the Gift, are what lifts the High Ones above the rest of the People and what has brought us dominion over our lands and songs.

You have heard that the gods have been banished from this world into the realms of sleep. That was the work of the god we call Crooked, and about that mystery I can say little, but it is the foundation of all that comes afterward. The place where those events burned brightest, and where they still smolder thousands of years later, is at the place we name Godsfall—the place your people call Southmarch. Yes, Prince Barrick, your home.

Barrick stared at him, confused. Was the fairy trying to say that the gods had lived in Southmarch? Or died there? It was so bizarre a thought that for a moment he feared he was dreaming again.

Only a few years ago, Gyir continued, the Voices began to warn us that the slumber of the gods in their exile had grown very shallow, very fragile. Just as the moon may pull on the earthly tides when he swings close, creating perturbations in the blood of those most sensitive, so the gods, even in sleep, are closer to us now than they have been since they were driven from the waking lands. Gyir paused to listen to something Vansen asked. No, I cannot say more about it now. It is enough to know the gods were driven out of the waking lands, that for a long time they have been gone, almost as though they were dead.