Shadowrise

by Tad Williams

  The cripple pulled something from his robe and held it out, waggling his clublike, bandaged hand until the boy took it from him. After a whispered instruction the child brought it to Theron.

  “He says it is all he has left. You may have it all.”

  Theron stared at the dirty-faced boy for an uncomprehending moment, then took the sack. It was heavy, and by the time he tipped its contents into his palm Theron’s hand was shaking, not from the weight but from his sudden realization of what he would see.

  Gold coins. At least a dozen. And silver and copper to the amount of another two or three dolphins. He looked up in astonishment, but the crippled man was staring silently out across the valley again, as if he had not just put a sum great enough to turn someone like Theron from a comfortable but hardworking caravan master into a gentleman of leisure with a house, land, livestock, and several servants.

  “What is this for? Why does he show it to me?”

  “He says he must go to Southmarch,” the boy said after a short, whispered convocation. “That is why the gods have brought him back. But he cannot go without someone who knows the way—he cannot find the way, even . . . even with me.” The boy scowled as he said it; clearly the words stung. “His eyes are still seeing the world of the dead as much as the world of the living. He fears he’ll get lost and arrive too late.”

  Theron realized his mouth was hanging open, like a door someone had forgotten to close. He shut it, then immediately opened it again. “Late?”

  “After Midsummer. Then he will be too late. On Midsummer’s Night all the sleepers will awake. He heard this when he was in the gods’ lands.”

  The caravan master could only shake his head. When he spoke his words bumped against each other. “L–let me . . . understand, boy.” He had never imagined holding so much money in his hands and doubted any of the other pilgrims had, either. They were all good, gods-fearing folk as far as he knew, but he didn’t want to test their honesty too harshly. “Your master wishes to pay all this money . . . for what, exactly?”

  After a short conversation with the hooded shape, the boy said, “To get to Southmarch. To be led there, and protected along the way. To be fed and to have a horse to ride.” He turned back at some urgent murmuring from the crippled man. “Not just Southmarch, the country, but Southmarch Castle. In the middle of the bay.”

  Even with this incredible bounty in his hands, Theron still hesitated—not at the idea of deserting the pilgrims, but at the prospect of crossing the lands to the north, full of unknown dangers, and traveling right into the midst of what was said to be a war between the Marchfolk and the fairies out of legend. The weight of the gold in his hand, though, made a powerful argument.

  “Avidel!” he called. “Come here!”

  Theron slid the coins back into the sack and tied it to his belt with an extra knot, just to be sure. His apprentice was about to become a caravan master.

  The procession that moved down the corridors behind the Guild Hall was a large one. Briony, Eneas, and the prince’s guards were led by Highwarden Dolomite and several other guildsfolk—including, Briony was pleased to see, at least one Guildswoman—and wrinkled little Whitelead, who it turned out was a sort of priest. Whitelead was accompanied by two huge acolytes—huge by Kallikan standards, in any case—who walked behind him carrying an object made of pots and sagging leather pipes, the whole thing steaming gently. When Briony asked politely what it was, Whitelead cheerfully told her it was a ceremonial replica of the Sacred Bellows.

  “Sacred Bellows?”

  “Ah, yes.” Whitelead nodded vigorously. “The god used it to create all earthly life.”

  “Which god?”

  He looked at her gravely for a moment, then smiled and winked. “I’m not allowed to say it out loud, Highness . . . but the Syannese celebrate him every year during the Kerneia.” He winked again, even more broadly, just to make certain she understood.

  The strange parade wound its way down what seemed at first to be only a series of corridors behind the Guild Hall, but Briony soon noticed that the bends and turns were not tight enough to be confined within the space of a normal sized building, even a large one. Also, in many places the passage sloped down at a distinct angle.

  Eneas had noticed also. “How far does this go, I wonder? ” he said quietly to Briony. “Some of my ancestors tried to prevent the Kallikans from digging in the stone underneath Tessis, but it seems they did not do a very good job of stopping them. They must have been at this for years!”

  Indeed, it was clear that the walls, which near the Guild Hall had been paneled in dark wood, were now naked stone, beautifully polished and carved, sometimes inlaid with many different types of rock, work Briony could tell even by lamplight was exceptional.

  “By the Three Brothers,” Eneas said wonderingly after they had walked even farther, “have they burrowed all the way to Esterian?”

  “Don’t say anything to them!” Briony pleaded, then felt ashamed. “I’m sorry—I have no right to tell you how to treat your subjects, but it was me who forced them to take us here. I would hate to think I’ve repaid them with trouble.”

  Eneas laughed, but he did not seem happy. “Fear not, Princess. I will not make myself a troublesome guest, but it does set me wondering. If the mild Kallikans can flout us so, right under our noses, what other surprises will I find on the day it becomes my task to put Syan’s house in order?”

  Staring at his face, so sharp and intent in the lamplight, Briony was taken again by a strange, contradictory impulse.

  Ferras Vansen. Were you real? Did I see what I thought I saw—did I see your feelings as clearly as I felt I did? What if it was only a phantom of my own mind? And even if not, she asked herself, what about this man, Eneas, this good man struggling to be fair? He cared for her—he’d said so—and he was exactly what Southmarch needed just now . . . It was too much to think about. Her feelings were as confused as the bubbles in a boiling kettle, first this one rising, then that one, then both at once and a dozen more.

  At last, after long walking and many turns, and after descending what Briony guessed must be at least a dozen fathoms beneath the Guild Hall, the procession reached a place where the corridor widened out into a sort of broad staircase with shallow steps clearly cut for Kallikan feet that led to a door in the far wall decorated with carved designs that stretched weirdly in the flickering lamplight. Briony could see an image of a man riding a fish and another tying a vast serpent into a complicated knot, but most of the carvings were harder to make out.

  Several of the Underbridge folk sprang forward and banged on the metal of the door with sticks. After a long wait, the great portal swung open, revealing more lamplight inside. Highwarden Dolomite stepped forward and led them all through the doorway.

  Even as the last of them stepped through into a room only slightly smaller than the great hall outside, and the door clanked shut behind them, a group of Kallikans in black robes like Whitelead’s appeared from a passage at the back of the room, scuttling and slipping on the polished stone floors as they hurried forward, as though on an icy lake. They prostrated themselves before the highwarden and the priest, and then one rose and made a series of ritual gestures, although with a certain anxious haste. He was almost as small as Whitelead but a great deal younger, very thin, and his eyes bulged in his face as though he was terrified.

  His eyes only grew wider as he finished his ritual and looked up from Dolomite and Whitelead to the others who stood watching. He goggled at Briony, Eneas, and the prince’s guards, all towering over the Kallikans like ogres; for a moment Briony thought the little man might faint dead away. “Oh, Great Anvil,” he said at last to Dolomite, “Great Anvil of the Lord, how did you know? How did you know?”

  The highwarden stared at him for a long moment, then snorted in annoyance. “How did I know what, Chalk? What in the name of the Pit are you babbling about? We’re here to use the drumstones. The prince of Syan himself has commanded it!”

&nb
sp; Chalk looked at him in surprise, then back at the imposing visitors before suddenly bursting into tears.

  When Chalk had composed himself he led them all back into the inner recesses of what was clearly some kind of temple, although the Kallikans were very reluctant to talk about it.

  “It’s just . . . well, we haven’t had a message through the stones for decades—not since my father’s day,” Chalk explained, “and that was when he was nearly a boy! So you can imagine, Great Anvil, that when we heard . . . well, I was just on my way to tell you and the others!”

  “Hold your tongue a moment, man, you are making my head ring,” said the highwarden. “Are you saying that someone else has been using the drumstones?”

  “Who could do that without authority? ” demanded Whitelead, his little beard bristling like the ruff of an angry rooster. “We will have him in front of the Guild immediately!”

  “No, no, my lords!” said Chalk so miserably Briony feared the little fellow would start weeping again. “The drumstones spoke! They spoke to us! For the first time since my father’s day!”

  “What? What do you say?” demanded Dolomite, truly surprised for the first time. The revelation sent a flurry of whispers and gasps through all the other assembled Kallikans. “Who speaks to us?”

  Chalk pushed open the door to a final chamber, darker than any of the others. A great circle of smooth but otherwise unworked stone dominated the high wall before them, the space around it filled with other kinds of stone cut in fantastic shapes. “The folk of Lord’s House—our kin in Southmarch.”

  Briony could not stay silent any longer. “Are you saying that you’ve had a message from the Funderlings in Southmarch? For the love of the gods, what did they say?” A kind of giddy excitement almost but did not quite overcome the chill that swept over her. As Dawet had reminded her, strange things were happening—more of them every moment. She had dreamed a demigoddess and her dream was taking shape in the waking world.

  Chalk looked to his masters for approval before speaking. “The others . . . the ones in Southmarch said . . . it is hard to put it exactly in ordinary speech, because the drumstones speak in a tongue of their own—our old tongue, but shorter of speech.” He furrowed his pale forehead, staring at his hands as he did his best to remember correctly. “The message was, ‘A Highwarden of the Big Folk has come back alive from the Old, Dark Lands. He leads us now. Outside the walls, the Old Ones oppress us and we cannot hold out long. We call on you to honor our shared blood and our shared tale. Send help to us.’ ” He looked up, blinking his large eyes. “That was more or less the whole of it.”

  Briony shook her head. “But what does it mean? ‘Highwarden of the Big Folk’—Big Folk is us, yes? That’s what you call us. But we have no Highwarden, only a king.” Her heart suddenly beat faster. “Do they mean my father? Has my father come back? Where are the Old Lands?” Her pulse was racing, but Dolomite was shaking his head.

  “I do not think it means your father, Princess—everyone knows he is held in the south, in Hierosol. The Old Lands are what we call the country that lies behind the Shadowline. The lands of those you call the fairy folk. The Qar.”

  For a moment she felt only disappointment, then it came to her suddenly, startling as a sudden blare of trumpets. “A Highwarden of the Big Folk has come back from the lands ruled by the fairies?” Her heart began speeding again. “My brother—it can only mean my brother, Barrick! He has come back to Southmarch! He has come back! Oh, praise Zoria!” And to the tiny man’s surprise and terror, she suddenly bent and kissed little Chalk on the head. Prince Eneas laughed, but the rest of the Funderlings were quite astonished. “Quickly, quickly!” she said to Dolomite and Whitelead, “Can we send a message back? Tell them I am here—tell them I must speak with my brother!”

  With the permission of their leaders, Chalk and his comrades got out ladders and long striking-wands, objects that had obviously been used only for ceremonial purposes for some time (and not even that very frequently as suggested by how hard it was to find some of them—Chalk started sniffling again, this time in mortification, as the temple was ransacked for the last ladder, which had been used to refill a ceiling lantern and not returned). At last everything was in place. Chalk sat by Briony’s feet with a tablet of clay and a stone stylus as he wrote down her message and did his best to translate it into words the drumstones could carry.

  Underbridge to Lord’s House, Hail! We hear your words and praise them! Our Highwarden and Hierophant attend. Also a Highwarden Mother of the Big Folk of Lord’s House, who comes here but seeks her brother there. Please drum to us his words. We greet you, brothers, and will try to help you, but must know more.

  “Highwarden Mother?” asked Briony as Chalk relayed these words to his underlings, who then began to beat at the circle of stone set into the wall as though it were a true drum, their stone-headed, wooden wands plinking and plunking a strange, arrhythmic music. “It seems a touch confusing.”

  “They have no word for ‘princess,’ it seems,” said Eneas, amused. “I wince to think what they would call me.”

  When the message had been drummed and then drummed a second time, they waited, but although they stood—and then, after a long while, sat down where they could find places to do so—no message came back.

  “Either they are gone,” said the hierophant, “which seems strange when they had just sent a message to us, or something has broken the chain of drumstones. We will try to drum to them again tonight, and send word to you in the castle if we hear anything.”

  “You are very kind,” said Briony, but the dizzying happiness of only a little earlier was fading. Perhaps she had been wrong about what the message meant. Perhaps the Kallikans themselves were wrong somehow about receiving it at all.

  “Come, Princess,” Eneas told her. “It’s time to go back now.”

  She allowed herself to be led back through the maze of corridors toward the real world and the late afternoon sun.

  24

  The Failure of a Thousand Poets

  “The Book of the Trigon states that the Godwar took place during the time of the Xixian Sea-Kings, many centuries before the founding of Hierosol.The battle of Shivering Plain is also the first mention in history of the legendary queen Ghasamez (or Jittsammes as the Vuts call her), who led an army to fight on the behalf of Zmeos and the other rogue gods.”

  —from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”

  “THEY’VE BROKEN THROUGH! The Twilightfolk have broken through!” One of Sledge Jasper’s warders fell through the doorway of the drumstone chamber, bleeding and staggering like a drunk.

  Ferras Vansen leaped to his feet so quickly he almost knocked over the monk beside him. Luckily, the Funderling had just finished pounding on the drumstone wall with what looked like the ramrod for a cannon and Vansen’s message had been sent out into the earth—and more important, he hoped, to the Funderlings of Tessis. “Where have they broken through?” Vansen demanded. “And how many of them?”

  Two of the other temple brothers were now holding up the bleeding guard. “Just above the Festival Halls,” gasped the wounded man, “but they’re almost to the temple cavern. Wardthane Jasper and the others have fallen back to the narrows in front of the Curtainfall, but they . . . will not last long . . . you must . . . must send . . .” The man wobbled and his head sank.

  “Leave him with the older Brothers to be cared for,” Vansen said, “and if he is well, let him rest a while and then send him back—we need every hand. Where is Magister Cinnabar?”

  “Cinnabar took a troop of warders to look at a suspicious cave-in below Five Arches,” said Brother Nickel. “He will not be back for hours.”

  “Then I need someone else. I need men to go with me to the Festival Halls. I cannot find my way around without a Funderling guide.” He had learned from harsh experience that any tracking skills he possessed meant nothing in these lightless tunnels. He turned and surveyed the drumstone chamber. “In fact, w
e need all these men, Brother Nickel. Half our guards or more are out of the temple, as well as Copper and most of the men he brought. If the Qar break through, we shall be separated from them and under siege.”

  “These are religious men, not fighters,” said Nickel angrily, waving his hands at the half-dozen fearful-looking Brothers listening to the argument. “In any case, it is their task to listen for the drumstones—especially now, when we have just sent messages! What if our kin in Underbridge or Westcliff reply to us?”

  “Then leave one, preferably someone too lame to fight. Send me all the rest and tell them to bring any weapon they can find—hoes and shovels from the gardens if there is nothing else. They must meet me in front of the temple as quickly as they can—we have no time to lose.”

  It was a ragged crew, there was little doubt of that: Ferras Vansen had only a dozen men, most too old or too young, and none of them looked as if he had ever raised a hand to fight before. Vansen had the armor the Funderlings had made for him, but none of his volunteers had anything to protect themselves but the mica goggles, leather helmets, and thick blousy jackets they wore for digging in the wet and dangerous depths.

  “Nothing to be done about it,” he told himself, but his heart was heavy. When had troops like these ever won a battle? They were sacrifices, not soldiers. “Where is Chert Blue Quartz?”

  “Here,” the Funderling said from the doorway of the temple. The small man hurried down the stairs. “What do you need, Captain?”