“Skull Eater, destroy our enemies hiding beside the road;
Roots of the Immortal Pine, fill our nostrils so we do not smell demons!
Shepherd of the Mummies, lead us safely among the unquiet dead;
Black Bones, hold us tightly in the icy winds!
Cloak of Singing Dust, show us only to the stars!

The gray man gestured. Two huge, hairy guards pulled Barrick up onto his knees in front of Ueni’ssoh, who was still chanting, then one of them yanked Barrick’s head back so that the boy’s chin jutted out toward Vansen and the others watching. The other guard unsheathed a strange, terrible knife with a jagged blade half as wide as it was long, and set it almost tenderly against the white flesh of the prince’s throat. Frenzied, Vansentried to struggle to his feet, and just at that moment he felt the creature behind give a last wrench at the shackles and they tumbled off his arms. Knives of pain stabbed in his joints as he raised his arms and staggered toward Barrick and the guards.

“O Narrowing Way, open the gate!”

The chanting words of the Dreamless filled every part of the world, every part of Vansen’s thoughts. They were heavy as stones, dropping on him, crushing him—or was that the thunder of Jikuyin laughing? The prince, the guards, and the gray man were washed by torchlight but framed against absolute darkness as if the gods themselves had forgotten to provide a world for them to inhabit.

Ueni’ssoh’s voice surged in triumph.

“O Spiral Shell, lead us to the center!
O Cauldron Lord, give us back our names! Grass Chieftain, open the gate!
Earthlord, open the gate!
Black Earth! Black Earth! Open the gate between Why and Why Not…!”

Something was in the black space of the door now, something invisible but so all-pervasive and life-crushing that Vansen shrieked in terror like a child even as he threw himself at the shaggy guard who held the knife to Barrick’s throat. A shadowy recollection of Donal Murroy’s teachings came to him as if from another person’s life: he grabbed, braced, and snapped the guard’s elbow against its own hinge, so that the creature howled with pain and dropped the queer blade. Vansen snatched it up and whirled to look for Ueni’ssoh, but the gray man seemed lost in some kind of trance, so Vansen lunged at the other guard instead, knocking Prince Barrick free from the creature’s grasp as he did so and sending the shaggy beast skidding face first across the rocky floor. Vansen snatched up a stone from the floor and began pounding on the lock of the prince’s shackles, intent on freeing him, ignoring Barrick’s cries of agony as the boy’s crippled arm was rattled in its socket.

A moment longer, something whispered in his head. Ferras Vansen’s own thoughts were so tangled and diminished that for a long instant he could not understand who was talking to him, and even when he could, he could not understand it. Keep fighting a moment longer…!