by Tad Williams
“What are you doing?” asked Brone. For the first time she noticed the dark, circles under his eyes, the weariness on his pouchy face. He had probably not slept more than an hour or two.
“Just clearing things away. I was going to write a letter to someone, but it’s become clear that there’s not much point to it.” She paused. “Dead— Zoria preserve us! Poor Gailon. I never thought I’d say that.
For a moment she thought Avin Brone was shaking her chair for some reason—that he was angry and had been hiding it—but then she realized he was several steps away and swaying unsteadily too In fact, it seemed the whole world was shaking. A bench hopped on the floor like a skittish horse One of her jewelry chests jittered offa table and smashed on the flagstones. Across the room, Moina sat up and stared around. Wearily. By the time the trembling stopped little Anazona was awake too, frightened and crying loudly. Even heavy-sleeping Rose seemed to have been shaken almost to wakefulness.
“Just a tremor of the earth,” the lord constable said, frowning at his sluggard niece, who had only yawned and turned over, but his leathery face had gone pale. “I felt one like it when I was a boy. It is over now.”
Briony’s heart was beating very fast. “Is it, Lord Brone? Or is it that the world is approaching its end?"
“I must say that I have never known it so discomforted in my lifetime,” he admitted.
*
The Lord of the Hot Wet Stone had no face, or at least no face that Chert could see, only a murky, red-shot blackness between his gigantic shoulders and his shining crown Big as a mountain, he looked down from his throne but said nothing. The only sound in his immense throne room was the low groan of great stones shifting, the roots of the world still alive and unsettled even all these aeons after the Days of Cooling.
At last Chert could take no more. “Please, Grandfather, do not punish me!”
The groaning continued, but the mighty figure said nothing.
“I meant no harm I trespassed, but I meant no harm!”
The murk regarded him. A hand as vast as a wall slowly lifted and spread above him—a benediction? A curse? Or did his god simply mean to crush him like a fly? The groaning stopped for a moment, then began again, and for the first time Chert began to hear something like words in it, a dim, gnashing cadence.
He is speaking to me, Chert realized But it is too slow, too deep, for me to hear!
Too slow too deep. The light was flickering now, the massive shape hard to see. Too deep. He couldn’t understand the words His god was speaking to him, but he couldn’t make sense of what was being said.
“Tell me!” he shouted as the darkness closed in “Tell me so that I can understand . . .!“
But his god had no comprehensible tale to tell.
He woke up shivering from the oppressive dream—if dream it had truly been. For a moment he couldn’t remember what place he was in, but the boy’s body pressed against him brought it back. Shivering, Chert was shivering—no, shaking all over.
So cold he thought, but realized a moment later that the air was actually hot, hot enough to suck the sweat off his skin. Nevertheless an unpleasant chill was on him, an icy, bone-deep discomfort, nor could he stop shaking. Also, and far more frightening, the voice of the god still rumbled in his ears.
No, it was the earth itself growling—one of the tremors his people called a Wakeful Elder, unusual but not exceptional Chert himself was not trembling—the ground beneath him was moving. He darted a fearful glance up at the Shining Man, in size and threatening juxtaposition so much like the god in his dream, but where earlier it had flashed and smoldered it had now gone strangely dark at its center, only a few glimmers moving beneath the surface of the crystalline stone like silvery fish in a pool.
The ground shuddered again, then the groaning died and the greater movement stopped. For another heartbeat or two he could hear the hiss of the beach stones around him as they continued to slide, to find new arrangements, then everything was silent once more.
Flint whimpered Chert, who had been certain he held a dead child, almost dropped him in surprise, then his heart leaped with unexpected joy and a new terror. “Lad! Talk to me! It’s me, Chert!”
But the boy was still again, his skin still clammy-cold beneath the dirt and dust.
The tunnel. I must carry him back.
He tried to stand, but it was too much effort—he couldn’t even rise to his knees while holding the boy. He set Flint down as gently as he could and then clambered up to stand unsteadily over him. The boy was his own height, weighed almost as much as Chert did there was only one way to carry him, and that was to get the boy’s entire weight up onto his shoulders, as it was said that Silas of Perikal-—or was it one of the other heroes of the big folk’s tales?—had carried a young bullock every day, so that as the bullock grew into its maturity, Silas also grew more and more powerful, eventually to become the mightiest knight of his age.
Or was, that Hihometes the Kraaan? Chert wondered bleanly as he squatted beside the senseless child. Absently, he pulled the mirror out of the child’s grasp—the boy’s grip was fierce, even in near-death—and put it in his own pouch. It felt like nothing special, no heavier or lighter than it did before, no warmer, no cooler. Yes, it was the Kraaan. No, wait, Hihometes was a demigod—he needed no training to lift great weights. Chert could never keep all the stories of the big-folk heroes straight. So many of them, killing monsters and saving maidens, and they all seemed more or less the same.
He hauled the top of Flint’s body up onto his shoulder, then grabbed him around the thighs and lifted until the side of the boy’s belly was against his neck. Grunting, cursing under his breath, yet all the time able to watch his own ludicrous travails as though he were two people at the same time, Chert slowly rose to his feet with the boy’s legs dangling in front and his head dangling down behind. For a moment he was full of the glory of having accomplished the near-impossible, then he took a step and felt his legs already trembling with the exertion, his back knotting at the weight it must bear. Worse, he remembered that he did not know where he had come up out of the tunnel and onto the island. Chert knew he should put the boy down and search instead of trying to carry his weight any farther than necessary, but he also knew that if he did that, he would never manage to lift him again.
It was hard to be certain in the dim light which were footprints and which only shadowed valleys in the piles of smooth stones, but he turned his back to the darkened Shining Man and did the best he could. At the beginning each step was very hard, by the time he had staggered fifty yards and still had not found the tunnel mouth, each step was a sweating, wheezing agony.
Lie down and wait for help, a voice in his head instructed him.
Lie down and die, suggested another as he missed his footing and almost tumbled, almost dropped the helpless child.
The gods help those who help themselves, he thought, and then I hate the gods Why should the Elders torture me in this way? Why should they use the boy to hurt me and to hurt Opal?
Another step. Gasping, he almost fell. One more step. But what can you know about what the gods want? Who are you, little man?
I am Chert of the Blue Quartz clan. I know stone. I do my work. I take care . . . I take care of my . . . my own . . .
But then he did stumble, and fell, and lay panting on the stones with the boy on top of him. When he tried to make himself move again he could not because something dark was covering him, closing his eyes, stealing his wits.
He came up out of exhausted sleep to find himself face to face with horror.
Something was touching his chin and his cheek: a small but ghastly, malformed mask stared down on him from only a short distance away, flare -nostnled, fang-toothed, with leathery black skin. Chert squeaked—he had the breath for nothing more—and tried to beat away the looming, blurry monstrosity, but he was lying on his belly and something was pinning his arms.
“Demon!” he moaned, struggling. The thing retreated, or its
horrid face did, but he could still feel something scratching at his neck.
“Not pretty, mayhap,” a voice said, “but un’s carried me well. Seems sour t’name un so.”
Chert stopped fighting, astonished, wondering if he had lost his wits again or was wandering in the tunnels of dream. “Beetledown?”
“Aye.” A moment later the little man clambered down Chert’s shoulder and into his view.
“Why can’t I move? And what was that thing?”
“For movin’, well, it’s thy boy lying athwart ‘ee hampering thy arms. That thing, as tha says, well . . . a flittermouse, I calls it. Rode it back here, did I.”
“A flit. . . A bat?”
“Aye, likely.” Something dark leaped past Chert’s face. “There un goes,” said Beetledown a little sadly. “Gone now, afeared because tha would try to roll over un.” He shook his head. “Testing and fidgeting, thy flittermouse may be, but a treat to ride once going along proper.”
“You rode a bat?”
“How else to get over yon evil-smelling silver water?”
Chert slid out from under Flint, letting the boy down onto the stony beach as gently as he could.
“How fares thy boy?” asked Beetledown.
“Alive, but I don’t know anything more. I have to get him away, but I can’t carry him.” He wanted to laugh and cry. “Good as it is to see you, you won’t be much help there. And now you’ve lost your bat, so you’re stuck here, too.” It seemed impossibly sad. Chert sat on the loose stones, staring out across the Sea in the Depths.
“Mayhap if tha tell how tha came here, yon temple fellows who followed me can come across and help carry thy boy.”
“Temple fellows . . . ?” He looked up.There were shapes on the far side of the quicksilver sea, small dark forms moving atop the great balcony of stone. Chert’s heart sped. “Oh, Beetledown, you brought them! The Elders bless you, you brought them!” He cupped his hands around his mouth, tried to shout, coughed, then tried again. “Hoy! Nickel! Is that you?”
The temple brothers voice came down to him, faint but echoing with urgency. “In the name of the Elders, how did you get across?”
Chert started to reply, then stopped. When he did speak, he couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice, for surely it was the Metamorphic Brothers’ own tunnel he had used. “Do you mean—do you mean to say you don’t know . . . ?”
There were more surprises—Chert even managed to surprise himself. Despite being grateful to his rescuers, not to mention having been raised in the lifetime habit of trained respect toward their order, when he finally stumbled back into the temple, he answered all the brothers’ questions about his journey and the Shining Man as truthfully as he could but volunteered nothing about the mirror or Flint’s unusual origins.
If I tell them anything about where the boy comes from, they won’t let him leave. He felt certain of that, although he was not sure why. The brothers were concerned, of course, and even a little angry about the boy’s incursion into the Mysteries, but not inordinately so. He knew that his reticence was selfish, perhaps even foolishly dangerous, but Opal was waiting for him back on Wedge Road, and she must be frightened now not just for the boy but for her husband as well. He couldn’t bear to think of going back to her only to tell her the boy was being held prisoner in the temple.
For their own part, the brothers brought him no farther into the temple than the outer chamber, the great room of natural stone that the people of Funderling Town were allowed to see on a few of the highest holy days. Even Chert’s carefully shaped version of the tale was enough to make them examine the boy very carefully while they made a fruitless attempt at waking him. Flint had no visible wounds, no lumps or bruises anywhere on his pale skin, but nothing they did could raise him from his deep sleep. Even wrinkled, wild-eyed old Grandfather Sulfur, whose prophetic dreams had apparently contained Rooftoppers and a disturbance at the Sea in the Depths, came in on the arms of two acolytes to examine Flint, which made Chert as nervous as walking on a slope of loose tailings, but the ancient fellow went away again shaking his hairless head, saying that he saw and felt nothing special about the boy.
At last Brother Nickel told Chert, “We can do nothing more for him. Take him home.”
Chert finished his cup of water. He had drunk a bucket’s worth in the last hours, he felt sure, every drop a splendor. “I cannot carry him myself.”
“We will send a brother who can help you take him in a litter.”
“Methinks I will ride on that, friend Chert,” said Beetledown in his tiny, high-pitched voice. “Better than thy pocket, being less whiffsome, beg thy pardon, and better than yon old flittermouse, which tended to the bony.”
Nickel stared at the Rooftopper with superstitious distrust, as though he were a talking animal, but went off to make arrangements.
Chert let a young acolyte named Antimony, moonfaced and broad-shouldered, take the front of the litter while he took the back. A silent crowd of temple brothers watched them go. Tired as he was, Chert was quite content to let someone else find the way and pick the best spots. He looked down at Flint, pale and motionless but oddly peaceful, and even through his fear for the boy he felt a new rush of gratitude to Beetledown and to the Metamorphic Brothers: at least he was bringing a living child, however ill, back to Opal.
“You really rode a bat?” he asked Beetledown who, to lessen the chance of being accidentally crushed, was riding on the top edge of the litter near Flint’s head.
“A Gutter-Scout am I. All animals we master to perform our duty.” The tiny man coughed, then grinned. “And yon rat fellow was so piddling slow I could have outrun him my ownself.”
“All I can say is thank you.”
“Uns be useful words, so no need to apologize on them.”
“You’ve been very kind to us.”
“All for honor of queen and Rooftops.” He made a little salute. “And I have found thy stone world not so dull as I thought. Could tha only bring a little more wind, rain, and sunlight down into these holes, I would come again to make a visit.”
Chert smiled wearily. “I’ll mention that to the Guild.”
*
The shaking of the earth had frightened almost everyone in the castle, but there was not too much damage Some crockery had fallen and shattered in the keep’s huge kitchen and a serving maid had been terrified into apoplexy when an ancient suit of royal armor in the Privy Gallery shook off its stand and collapsed to the floor in front of her, but otherwise the toll had been light Still, even without the news from Marnnswalk and the tremor, it would have been a hectic morning Briony was kept busy until after the noon bell, mostly working with Nynor and Brone to sort the movement and housing of the incoming troops as well as many of the folk from the city outside the castle walls. The keep seemed crowded to bursting with people and animals and the time had almost come when no more could be accommodated.
She stole a part of an hour to eat a meal with her great-aunt, but it was not much reliee. The dowager duchess was consumed with fear for Barrick just as Briony was, and had also been waiting to question the princess regent—and in several cases, argue with her—about the disposition of various nobles and their families within the inner keep When their voices rose, Merolanna’s little maid Ellis watched with wide, frightened eyes, as if at any moment something horrible could happen in this unexpected and unsteady new world.
Almost staggeringly tired, and with a long afternoon still stretching in front of her, Briony walked back to the throne room from Merolanna’s chambers through the Portrait Hall, for once her guards didn’t have to hurry to keep pace. Although she had seen the pictures of her ancestors in their finery many times, so often that she scarcely glanced at them most days, today it was easy to imagine that they were looking down on her with disapproval, that Queen Lily’s kind eyes were full of disappointment, that even the portrait of mournful Queen Sanasu looked more desolate than usual.
It had only been a matter of a few
months since Kendrick had been murdered, Briony told herself, and far less than a year since her father himself had last sat on the throne, yet what had happened? The kingdom was tottering, and that was more than just a fancy, as had been proved today most emphatically. It was difficult not to believe the trembling earth was the anger of the gods made manifest, a warning from heaven. Briony knew she could not escape a heavy share of blame: she and Barrick hated to be called children, but what else had they been? They had let what was given to them to protect fall from their fingers, left it out to rot like a discarded toy. Like the body of a murdered man in a field . . .