The ones who sing beneath the waves… Listen!

It was like standing in a temple bell tower while the great bronze bells thundered the call to prayer. The voices seemed to shake him to his bones-but at the same time the attack was as silent as a subtle poison. "Oh, gods. I can't… stand it."

"But why did she do it?" Saqri scarcely seemed to hear him, looking up to the cloud-painted sky as if the answer might be swirling there. "I can understand Ynnir giving the Fireflower to a mortal, mad as it is-my husband would have taken any gamble, no matter the danger, to try to craft peace. But why would Yasammez mock him with that which she herself holds most dear? Why would she send you to him in the first instance?"

Her great age, voices suggested. Even the mightiest can decay…

Hatred, said others, full of anger themselves. Yasammez has built her great house on the rock of her hatred…

Barrick couldn't understand why none of them, not Saqri, not the even the Fireflower voices, suggested that which was so obvious to him. Did they really understand so little of despair, these people who should have understood it better than any-who saw their lives as an inevitable defeat lasting thousands of years?

"She wasn't… mocking the king," he said, struggling to make words out of the cacophony of his thoughts and senses. "She was mocking… herself."

Saqri whirled to stare at him. For a moment, by the weird, stony look on her face, Barrick thought she would strike him, or call her Ice Ettins to take off his head. Instead, she tilted her head back and laughed, a throaty burst of anger and amusement that caught him utterly by surprise.

"Oh! Oh, manchild!" she said. "You have taught me something. We must not let such a rarity end too quickly! I will honor my great-grandmother's wishes, no matter how obscure their origin, and we will try to find a way to mute the Fireflower, at least until you have learned to live with it."