by Tad Williams
Vansen leaned close so only Chert could hear him. “Someone must hurry to Cinnabar below Five Arches. Tell him that if he and his men don’t come quickly we are lost—the Qar have broken through above the Festival Halls. But do not go yourself, do you understand? I need you to stay and make sure Copper and any others who come back are also sent to help us as quickly as possible. It must be you, Chert—I do not trust these priests to understand the danger.”
Chert frowned, considering. “I’ll send someone after Cinnabar right now, Captain, I promise. But it will be hours before he can reach you at the Stair, even if he starts when the messenger finds him.”
“Can’t be helped.” Vansen shook his head. “Ah, I almost forgot. Go to Chaven and ask him . . . no, lean closer, I must whisper it to you.”
When Vansen had finished Chert looked at him with wide eyes. “Truly? Poison?”
“Quiet, I beg you! I am afraid so.”
“Then we must pray that the Earth Elders are sleeping no longer—that they will wake and help us.”
On an impulse, Vansen thrust out his hand for the small man to clasp, surprising Chert more than a little. “Farewell, Master Blue Quartz. I hope I will see you again, but if the gods wish otherwise, take care of your family—and watch out for that boy of yours, especially. I wager he will play an important part before this is all over.”
Chert nodded. “And be thrifty with your own life, Captain Vansen. We need you. Don’t sell yourself for the first nuggets out of the seam.”
Ferras Vansen had no idea what that meant, but he squeezed Chert’s hand once more, then turned and motioned for his ragtag troop to follow him.
“The Earth Elders protect you!” Chert called after him, and several of the older brothers gathered on the steps echoed him, their voices dry and whispery as mice scuttling in a hay barn.
Chert found one young acolyte who seemed to have more sense than some of his fellows. “Go find Magister Cinnabar down below Five Arches,” he said to the youth. “Tell him the fairies have broken through near the Festival Halls and Vansen needs every man he can get. Go, lad, and hurry.”
A furious Brother Nickel was waiting as Chert passed the chapter house on his way to find Chaven.
“What do you think you are doing?” Nickel demanded. “You cannot give orders to my acolytes. I was given the authority during this crisis. I act for the abbot, not you!”
“Captain Vansen is in charge of defending this place and all of Funderling Town,” snapped Chert. “Cinnabar and the guild told you so. The Qar have broken through and Vansen needed a message sent. There wasn’t time to find you and ask your approval.”
Nickel scowled, but seemed unable to find a response. “Just don’t get too big and shiny, Townsman Blue Quartz,” he said at last. “It was you and your mongrel son who started all this trouble—little people, fairies, outsiders in our Mysteries. Some others may have forgotten that but I haven’t. And now I’m told your monstrous child has caused even more trouble for me.” Nickel stuck a bony finger in Chert’s face. “If it is as bad as I suspect, I will see him sent back to Funderling Town—and you, too, no matter what the guild and your Captain Vansen say.” The monk stamped off like a man intent on crushing every insect in his path.
Chert was in a hurry to find Chaven the physician, but it sounded as though the boy had got himself onto some kind of scree slope again. Could the errand to Chaven wait? He did not want to leave the boy to be bullied or worse by Nickel—the monk was clearly developing a grudge against him. And what if the monk frightened the boy off somewhere? What if Flint fled the temple entirely? It was too dangerous now for the child to be outside on his own.
“Fracture and fissure!” Chert smacked his hands together in frustration: Vansen’s errand would have to wait, at least for a while. He set off after Brother Nickel.
The loud voices seemed to be coming from the library and they sounded angry indeed. As Chert crossed the front hall he had a sudden premonition of what he would find there.
To his sorrow, he turned out to be right: Flint stood in the middle of a crowd of furious, dark-robed monks, half a head taller than most of them and as serene as a tall stone in the middle of a rushing river. The boy’s eyes met Chert’s for a moment and then continued roaming the walls as though he were sizing up the stone before carving a stringcourse.
“What’s going on here?” Chert had to struggle to keep his temper. He knew the boy was unusual—it made his stomach churn sometimes just to think of how carelessly he and Opal had brought the child into their lives—but had never seen a scrape of harm in him. The Metamorphic Brothers were acting as though they had caught a thief or murderer.
Brother Nickel turned toward him, face flushed. “This is beyond all bounds, even for you, Blue Quartz,” the monk said. “This child walked into the library—the greatest library of our people left in the world!—and began to put his hands on the texts! His filthy hands!”
Despite his own rage, Chert was shaken: trespassing in the library was no simple prank. It was worse even than entering the Mysteries, because the books in the library—some of them ancient prayers scratched into fragile slate in letters so shallow that they had become almost entirely unreadable, or etched on parchment-thin sheets of mica—were rare and easily damaged. The great Funderling library in Stonebeneath, a settlement that for centuries had lain beneath ancient Hierosol, had been destroyed along with most of the city in the floods of four centuries earlier, along with almost half of the lower city’s inhabitants, and the library had been lost completely. The dreadful toll of the Stonebeneath Floods had been taught to Chert since he had been big enough to walk—the single greatest tragedy of Funderling history. No wonder the monks were so upset.
“Flint,” he said as calmly as he could. “Did you go into the library? Did you handle the books?”
The pale-haired boy looked as if Chert had asked whether it was good to eat when you were hungry. “Yes.”
“Do you see?” Nickel cried. “He feels no shame! He breaks into the Mysteries like an invader and then, not content with that outrage, comes to play his wicked tricks in the very heart of our people’s memory.”
Chert struggled for composure. “I’m sure with all those clever words you truly will be abbot one day, Nickel, but let’s not completely lose our heads. Flint, why did you do it?”
The boy now looked at him as though he were actually a bit surprised, something Chert had scarcely ever seen from him. “I needed to learn something. I went to look at the oldest books. It’s important.”
“What? What did you want to learn?”
“I can’t tell you.” He said it with such clarity that Chert knew arguing would be useless. The assembled brothers were no longer just murmuring, but crowding forward as though they meant to lay hands on the boy and administer punishment. Chert stepped in front of Flint and held up his hands.
“He didn’t understand. He doesn’t mean harm, but he . . . he’s different.” He was ashamed to capitulate to the monks so easily, but there was no time to waste. “I’ll take him with me. You won’t have any more trouble with him—I promise that on my honor as a Guildsman. Just . . . just go about your business.”
“How can we trust you?” Nickel demanded. “You have let him run wild, let him meddle in the affairs of holy men . . .”
“This temple and Funderling Town are under attack,” Chert said loudly. “And you know it as well as I do, Brother Nickel. We all have far more to fear than this boy—you should be organizing these men to defend the temple, not to attack a child. Now, will you let me go? I am very sorry Flint touched the books but it looks like no harm was done. I’ll take him with me and he’ll get into no further mischief. Please, let us all remember what’s important now.”
Nickel was scowling, but one of the other monks said, “Antimony told me that Chert Blue Quartz is a good man.”
“He’s right about defending the temple, that’s certain,” said another. “If Chert gives his word, perhaps we shoul
d allow him this one chance.”
“Thank you.” Chert looked around. The anger on the faces of the other monks had begun to fade like the disappearing sheen of water as it dried on a rock face: talk of an attack had reminded them of the true danger. Nickel, though, did not look satisfied. “Come along, Flint,” Chert told the boy. “Say you’re sorry and we’ll be going—I have important errands for Captain Vansen.” He grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him away from the library.
Flint did not say sorry, of course, but Chert hoped that in the racket of the monks beginning to argue among themselves they hadn’t noticed the boy’s silence.
He found the physician upstairs in his small dormitory cell and told him what Vansen had asked. Chaven thought about it for a moment before saying, “I think that the best solution in the short run would simply be to tie a cloth soaked in water across their faces. Anything more complicated will take me some time.”
Chert stood, amazed at his own stupidity. “Cloth—water! By the Elders, I have been so preoccupied it is like I did not even hear Vansen. If there is one thing we Funderlings have, it is dust masks! With a little stuffing around the edges they should keep out the fumes of the Qar’s poison dust.” He began to pace. “In fact, the craftsmen who do the near-work, as we call it, the sanding and polishing, even wear hoods with mica over the eyes. What a fool I am!”
“Do not condemn yourself,” Chaven told him. “We are all much distracted. Is there anything else I can do for you? If not, I have a few matters of my own . . .”
“Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is.” Chert grabbed the boy. “Keep an eye on this young scamp for me—I must try to find some dust masks for Vansen. Even now he and Jasper’s men are trying to keep the Qar out of the Festival Halls, if you haven’t heard. But don’t let this fellow out of your sight! He has been up to all kinds of outrage and mischief according to Brother Nickel. And especially keep him away from the library.”
Chaven seemed to notice the boy for the first time. His round face relaxed into a smile, but Chert fancied he saw something else there, too, something more . . . calculating? “Ah, Master Flint, I hear you have been up to all kinds of interesting things since I saw you last. A visit to the Skimmers, was it? And now the library. Perhaps you can tell me about all of it while we keep each other company.”
Flint was persuaded into the room with the bad grace of a cat being coaxed down off a high place.
“Remember,” Chert said as he went out, “you can’t let him out of your sight!” The physician waved a hand in acknowledgment.
Chert’s search of the small forge where the temple smith repaired tools and other simple household objects turned up two fire-hoods, one of which the temple smith himself was wearing, pushed back on his bald, sweating head. The large-armed monk objected angrily to giving up either of them, but Chert asserted Vansen’s guild-given authority and grabbed the unused hood, then scampered out before the smith lost his temper entirely.
In the temple undercroft he found some heavy cloth dust masks, the remains of an old rebuilding project. There were only a dozen, but he thought they might at least keep those in the front safe against the fairy poisons. He was about to go when he saw something else, a stone chest with a heavy wooden lid. Chert opened it and stared for a while at the wedge-shaped iron objects carefully stacked inside.
Why not? he thought to himself, and carefully lifted one out and tucked it into his belt. It was heavy and it dug into his belly, but Chert tightened his belt and decided it would have to do. He replaced the lid on the stone box, then cut some cord from a loop hanging from a peg on the wall before closing the storeroom door.
He put water in a bucket for the dust masks and hurried back across the temple and out the front hall, pleased to see that the monks seemed finally to have understood the danger: half a dozen of them were dragging the most valuable statuary inside, and the temple’s ancient iron siege doors were being swung into place. Chert doubted the temple had ever been besieged—certainly it hadn’t happened within his memory—but the Funderlings’ native dislike of windows and other such upground fripperies would serve them in good stead now. As with most large Funderling buildings, the temple’s air and water came in by ducts from other parts of the great limestone labyrinth beneath Southmarch and its storerooms were kept full of food even in lean times. An enemy would find it hard to drive them out quickly.
Chert met two of Sledge Jasper’s warders on the far side of the Curtainfall. One was all but senseless and being dragged by his comrade, who was bleeding in a half-dozen places.
“Go back!” the upright warder said, gasping. He shook blood out of his eyes. “The wardthane and the big man, the upgrounder, are surrounded. The fairies made a cloud of blindness around them. They’ll reach the temple any moment—they’ll kill us all!”
Chert could get nothing else of use from the man and let him drag his wounded fellow toward the temple. Terrified by the thought of what lay ahead, he wondered for long moments whether he should not follow them back, but the sloshing bucket in his hand, carried so wearyingly far already, helped him make up his mind. Captain Vansen was in trouble. Only Chert could help him, at least until Cinnabar showed up with more men.
By the time he had gone another few hundred steps he could hear shrieks of pain and anger in the distance and his heart was pounding faster than a craftsman’s hammer.
Forgive me, Opal, he thought. In that moment he missed his wife so fiercely that it felt like a hole, like cold wind blowing right through him. Forgive me, my old darling, I’m doing it again.
Ferras Vansen was in the middle of a waking nightmare—strange shapes, guttural cries, and mad shadows cast by the flickering light of torches. Vansen, Sledge Jasper, and five of the remaining warders had barricaded themselves as best they could in the narrow hallway between the last two of the Festival Halls in an effort to keep the attackers from breaking through—at least two or three dozen Qar, he felt sure, although it was hard to tell in the darkened passages. He doubted the fairies had expected so little resistance or they would have sent more than this scouting party. But the number of invaders wasn’t important: if Vansen and the others failed, nothing would remain between the Qar army aboveground and the temple caverns.
And then they will be through into Funderling Town, Vansen thought, wiping at his stinging eyes. Innocents—women and children. And from there the fairy folk would find it easy enough to break through into the castle above.
Five of us. And even if we somehow stop them for a while, there’s no guarantee they won’t send reinforcements pouring down from above. Vansen did his best to catch his breath, squatting behind the barrier of rocks Jasper and his men had thrown across the narrow passage to give them protection from the occasional arrow that came hissing out of the hall beyond. But why so much effort to take the underground part of the castle? They’ve lost near a hundred of their fighters here in the past days. The battle had gone on for hours today, but the Funderlings and Vansen had the advantage of defending narrow tunnels: they had killed far more than they had lost. The Qar must know that the gates of Funderling Town can be shut on the castle side, sealing it off from the rest of Southmarch. Did they honestly think they could sneak through without resistance? It made no sense.
He wiped at his eyes again. The invaders, primarily the ugly little imitations, the drows, had almost filled the far chamber with the choking dust they blew out of tubes, a weaker mixture than they had used on the acolytes in the Boreholes, but still enough to make it hard for Vansen and the others to fight. Even in small amounts it not only filled their eyes with tears but made their heads reel and their chests hurt with every breath. Vansen prayed that Chaven could come up with something, although there was scant chance it would do them any good now. The Qar were too close to breaking through.
Vansen took a breath and coughed, his throat stinging. “Could we get more of your people here to wall off this passage completely?” he whispered to Sledge Jasper.
Jasper st
arted to speak, then ducked his bald head as an arrow snapped past overhead and rattled away behind them. “Can’t do it, Captain. Anything we could throw up that fast they could pull down. Those are drows—likely they know near as much about stone as we do.”
“Perin’s Hammer,” Vansen swore bitterly. “What a place to die!”
Jasper laughed, a harsh bark that turned into a cough. “None better, Captain. With the earth herself beneath you and around you.”
“Ho, Thane.” One of the Warders was peering over the makeshift barrier, taking advantage of the lull between arrows. He turned to Jasper, eyes wide and white in his dust-smeared face. “I think they’re coming at us again.”
“Out of arrows,” said Jasper, rising to a crouch. “Now they’re going to try to finish the job. Up and show them, boys—if we die, we die like stonecutters!”
Vansen put off standing as long as possible. The corridors were low for him anyway, and the thin cloud of the poison dust still hovering in the air was less overwhelming behind the barricade.
He climbed to his knees and peered through the angle where the makeshift barrier met the corridor wall. Not all the Qar could see as well in the dark as the drows and Funderlings, and he was grateful for that: some of the attackers carried torches, which allowed Vansen to make out what was going on. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fight for his life in total blackness.
The torches were bobbing and fluttering now, but their light was mostly blocked by the dark shadows of advancing Qar. They knew Vansen and his defenders had no arrows: they were not afraid of making themselves targets.
They’re just going to rush us and rely on numbers, he realized. All or nothing.
“Fight for your homes!” he bellowed, rising himself until he filled the passage almost to the top. “For your people and your city!” Then the enemy came rushing toward them, howling and shouting, and Vansen could not think anymore.