by Peter Fane
“Yes, sir! Master Shum, sir!” the Chief and Val shouted together, backs straight.
“Get to it, soldiers!”
The Chief and Val started shouting orders straight away—the Chief to the boys, Val to the girls—but everybody already knew what to do, so nobody really paid attention to them, everybody just getting to work, some kids throwing their stuff down on the ground right where they were, scrubbing away. Val’s girls usually got put to task on the torch brackets and lantern hooks and other hardware, door handles and stuff. The Chief’s guys broke into squads, and the Chief sent them to different places in the hall. When the Chief got to Rost Gonnerdun and Little Dan, he gave Rost corner duty, which meant that Rost was to go around the whole hall’s edge and scrape all of the dust and dirt and stuff out of the corners with his little fingers so that the sweepers could all sweep it up.
“Eadle, you’re in the pit. Work off those demerits.” The Chief pointed across the hall, to the far corner, to a dark opening in the wall, a big crack that didn’t have a door. The pit didn’t have any light, either. You had to bring your lamp down there with you, and there were no brackets to hang a lantern on.
“Hear me, Eadle?” the Chief snapped.
“Yes, sir! Chief, sir!” Dan yelled, saluted, and lugged his box off the floor, got moving to the pit.
“Every rat you bring me, I’ll take away one of your demerits, soldier,” the Chief shouted as Mistress Croot hobbled by, wobbly hump on her back, that weird eye of hers all shiny. Mistress Croot handed the Chief a bundle of fresh rags, then she gave Rost Gonnerdun a little piece of candy and patted him on the head. Rost smiled and hooted.
“Get going,” the Chief continued.
But Dan was already gone, yelling over his shoulder as he leaned against the weight of his box, “Yes, sir! Chief, sir!”
8
THE PIT WASN’T like the rest of the armory or the barracks or Stormy’s room. No, sir. In the pit, you walked into a big crack in the wall and right when you were inside, the floor kind of sloped down and made it hard to walk. The walls were nice and smooth but only at the beginning, because they changed after a couple steps, and it was more like a cave. After that, you’d walk down a bit and there would be an arch, and after this arch, the pit would turn and go down these steps, and then you’d be at a dead end with a little iron door that was always locked. It was always real dark, so you had to bring your lamp. Dan didn’t really understand what the pit was for. That is, what you were supposed to do down there. There was that little door, but that was it. You didn’t keep anything down there, and you didn’t go anywhere. It still had to be clean, of course. But it would be nice to know what you were cleaning it for.
At the mouth of the pit, at the big crack in the wall, Dan set down his cleaning box, opened it up, and took out his clay lamp. He checked the oil, and refilled it from his tin. He inspected his brushes and rags and rubbish sacks. He took a nibble from one of the biscuits he’d grabbed from the grub cart. Then he made sure that his water jar still had water in it, because sometimes it spilled out when he was climbing the stairs since the lid didn’t fasten right. When that happened, he’d have to go back down and fill it again from the pump at the can, and that would take forever. But the lid was on and everything was in good shape, so he closed his box and lit his lamp with a splinter of flint and a tuft of cotton. When the flame caught, he hefted his box, and stepped into the crack, down into the dark.
“Best way to clean the pit is start at the end, way back in there, then you work your ways back up to everyone,” Little Dan said to himself.
He lifted his lamp to see, but his elbow was so tender he was only able to hold it at his side. Then, in the Chief’s mellow voice, Dan said, “You clean that pit, soldier. Bring me a big old rat and work off them demerits.”
“Yes, sir, Chief!” Dan yelled, his voice echoing against the rock.
The pit always took a long time to clean. It wasn’t a very big place, no, sir. But it was gonna take the whole day, and Dan would still be down there after everyone else had gone back to the bunks. He might miss the night’s grub carts. There was always grey dust everywhere down here, even if Dan had just cleaned it the week before. He walked down the little stairs, extra careful with his box while keeping an eye out for rats. There was no end to the darn dust—.
Dan stopped in his tracks.
His lamp flame wobbled, a little orange light surrounded by black.
He was at the bottom of the stairs, at the dead end where the little iron door was.
But the little door wasn’t closed and locked like it always was, like it was supposed to be.
The little door was open. Wide open, a little rectangle of even deeper black. Someone had put a stone at the door’s corner, so it couldn’t swing shut.
Dan held up his lamp a bit.
The doorway’s dark swallowed the light.
He cleared his throat.
What was he supposed to do? Leave the door open? Shut it? Go tell the Chief? Master Shum?
And for some reason he couldn’t put into words, Dan really didn’t like the idea of cleaning the pit with that black door open behind him. No, sir.
“You should just shut it,” Dan said to himself in Captain Colj’s deep ogre voice. “Shut it, soldier. Then take that stone and put it in front. If somebody pushes it open, you’ll hear.”
“Good idea,” Little Dan answered himself.
He stepped to the door, set down his lamp, made to pick up the stone—but then he heard a distant CLANG! way down there in the dark, like the sound you hear when a cage bangs shut.
Little Dan didn’t know what the little door was for, but he was pretty darn sure that nobody was supposed to open it. And that meant nobody was supposed to be going down in there.
“The Chief will say you opened it yourself,” Dan said to himself in Captain Colj’s slow voice.
“Should I go get help?” Dan asked. “Should I go see?”
Another CLANG! came up from below.
Without thinking, Dan picked up his lamp and stepped through the doorway. The flame flickered. Inside, the walls were just like they were outside, all rough and rocky, like a cave. He walked in, made a turn, then went down a few steps. At the end of the steps, a tunnel went for a while then came to an iron gate. The gate was open, and someone had used another stone to keep it from shutting.
Dan stepped through the gate, walked for a moment, then found himself in a kind of room that split into three different hallways. You could go straight, you could go left, or you could go right. There was no light down any of them.
“Or you could go back, soldier,” Dan whispered to the dark.
He cocked his head to listen.
He couldn’t hear anything.
He shut his eyes, listened harder.
There!
Somewhere straight ahead, he heard a soft clicking sound, then another sound, like someone moving around. He couldn’t really tell how far the noise was—it seemed pretty far away—but it was up there, straight away. Not left. Not right. Straight.
Then everything was quiet again.
“Should I go get help?” Dan whispered. “I go get someone?”
“Who you gonna get?” Dan answered softly in Master Shum’s voice. “Ain’t even supposed to be down here, boy. Gotta use little clubby on ya?”
“That’s right,” Dan whispered. “Who I gonna get?”
He could get Mistress Croot.
“Stand tall, boy,” Dan growled quietly to himself in Master Falmon’s voice. “Stand tall. What if it’s a spy or a bad traitor? What if it’s the Fake King?”
“That Fake King eats turds.” Dan nodded.
But he didn’t move.
Instead, he just stood there, cocking his head, listening. His lamp’s flame wobbled in the dark. His feet were glued to the floor. He didn’t hear anything else, but the hairs on the back of his neck were starting to stand up.
“I’m scared,” Dan whispered.
“Do not be afraid, little soldier,” he answered himself in Captain Colj’s ogre voice.
Dan took a couple of steps down the hallway, holding his lamp up. No noise now. He cocked his head and listened harder. The smoky breath of his lamp was the only sound. This dark wasn’t like the dark when he was down with Stormy and the other big guns. That dark wasn’t scary.
But this?
This was scary.
Dan started to turn around.
Then he stopped, blinked, and turned back.
“Good soldiers don’t run. No, sir.”
He took a couple steps forward. Then a couple more. There was a door on his right, then another door on his left. He kept going. More doors. Some of the doors were big, others were small. A few of the doors were real small, almost like they’d been made for a little boy. But some of the doors were real big, too. And that made him realize how big the hall was. The roof was way up there, so high he couldn’t even see it. And the spaces between the doors were funny, too. Sometimes the doors would be right next to each other, their edges almost touching. Sometimes there was five or ten paces between them. Each door had a different kind of lock, too. Some were closed up with iron bars. Others were locked with glowing locks of high silver.
He touched his front pocket, made sure that his flint and steel and cotton were still there.
He knew what he had to do.
Yes, sir.
It was a trick he’d learned a long time ago.
But then he blinked and looked behind him, back the way he’d come, back toward the hall where all his pals were busy working, back up there in the light.
He shook his head.
And then, without another thought, Little Dan Eadle blew out his lamp.
9
HIGH ABOVE, IN the Tarn’s Great Library, at the very same moment that Little Dan was blowing out his light, the mighty ogre, Fellen Colj of Jallow, was waiting outside the iron-bound door of Lord Garen’s study.
Colj had just knocked on the door. It was one of six set in the eastern wall of the High Lords’ private reading chamber. The chamber was connected to the Library’s main reading room by a corridor of polished granite. Five reading tables sat in the chamber’s center. Tall bookshelves ran along its four walls, packed with leather-bound volumes of many colors and sizes.
Once more, Colj knocked on Lord Garen’s door.
“Come.” A soft voice came from inside.
Colj opened the door and entered. It was a tight fit, but he was able to scrape through.
Lord Garen’s study was a wide, vaulted room lit by gilt safety lanterns and a huge window of blue stained glass. Bookshelves lined the walls, packed with books of every sort, meticulously ordered and perfectly arranged. Three massive worktables of carved Anorian oak sat at the center of the room. On top of these tables, countless jars and cages and boxes and beakers and other items lay neatly stacked, piled, and arranged. In front of Colj, at the edge of the table closest to the door, a wooden stand held four crystal beakers filled with silvery blue liquid. The liquid glowed iridescent; something seemed to move within its depths. Behind these tubes rested a small, silver clock and behind this rested a bamboo cage. A paper label tied to the cage’s corner was marked in a language that Colj could not read. There was an insect inside the cage. It was emerald green, with greenish-blue claws like a sea creature might have. The thing’s black eyes swayed on green stalks, eyes pointing in different directions before drawing together and settling on Colj.
“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” the insect asked, the question blossoming in Colj’s mind like a jade lotus. Colj grunted and paid the thing no further attention.
A stack of books rested behind the insect’s cage. Two High Cups balanced on top of this stack. Behind these, a large glass bowl was filled with clear water, three translucent fish floating in it. Colj could see their purple innards. Each fish had a single black eye in the middle of its forehead, a small metal tag attached to its tail. Part of some important experiment, no doubt. All the tables were like this. Piled high with carefully organized arcana from over a hundred worlds; a scholar’s paradise.
At the center of the study’s eastern wall, the only wall not entirely filled by bookshelves, a huge, round window of blue stained glass lit the scene with sapphire light. The window was set at the base of a shaft that penetrated the Tarn’s eastern fortifications. A series of mirrors set in the shaft amplified the light of Kon’s morning sun. In winter’s dawn, the window’s glass glowed blue. The silvery sigil at its center was a shimmering, six-pointed sun. At the tip of each sun point, there was a tondo. Each tondo contained a portrait in stained glass, each portrait a member of the ancient founding family, like this:
Of course, Colj knew each of them. The tondo at the sun’s top held a portrait of Acasius Dallanar. He was shown pensive and brooding; his eyes were downcast and prophetic. The First Sister, Eressa the Lost, was at Acasius’s right. Her face was dark, beautiful, and fierce. She was set in profile and gazed into her token, a silver tear, as if staring into fathomless eternity. Alea the True, the Second Sister, was shown in the tondo beneath Eressa. Her eyes were sad, her portrait set frontally so that the famous scar on her right cheek could be seen. Her eyes looked to the right where her symbol, the silver sword, filled the rest of her tondo. Aaryn the Chronicler was next, at the bottom of the sun, her face set frontally, a serious face, yet one filled with radiant energy and great potential for joy; even in image, Colj could tell that her ja was strong. Aaryn held her token—the great silver book, the Canon which she had begun—but she did not look at it. Instead, she looked down into the study, her eyes seeming to rest on Garen’s desk. The Fourth Sister, Kora the Just, came next. Her face was shown in profile, narrow and sharply boned, but with eyes filled with kindness. In her right hand, she held a pair of silver balances, the scales held in perfect equilibrium. Finally, coming full circle, there was the Fifth Sister, Margo the Gentle, a happy, round-faced girl with shining dark eyes and a huge grin. She looked straight out of her tondo, holding her token at her side—a silver cornucopia. To Colj, her eyes had always seemed to gleam with happiness.
Beneath the window, bathed in its blue light, young Lord Garen Dallanar sat at his desk with his two nieces and his nephew. The High Lord was a slender young man of twenty years, dark of hair and eye. He wore ancient reading spectacles of high silver. His young charges—Lady Kyla, Lord Tarlen, and Lady Susan—sat across from him in full-sized chairs, their feet swinging. They were in the middle of an examination of some sort. Unlike the other Dallanar of the royal family, whose features were dark, these children had paler complexions and blond hair, like their father and mother, Lord Tomas and Lady Eíra. Lady Kyla was fourteen, Lord Tarlen had just turned eleven, and little Lady Susan was seven. The children were brilliant, a fact well-known. Indeed, young Lord Tarlen often beat Colj in games of chess, and Colj was considered something of a master among his people.
In the far corner of the room, in the shadows, stood Ponj, Colj’s only living son. Ponj was the children’s bodyguard. One of the family’s cloud mastiffs, Bruno, lay snoring at Ponj’s feet. Colj nodded to his son. Ponj nodded in return.
On the table in front of Lord Garen, resting on a blue velvet pad, was the High Cup that Lady Katherine had just returned with from Paráden. As a High Cup, it was a container of memory; the mystical vision it held was the reason for tomorrow’s parley. A tiny star tree sat next to the Cup, its roots wrapped in a bright blue burlap sack. The little tree’s coppery field swelled and pushed against the edges of the table. Several vials of different shapes and sizes rested beside the burlap sack—Lord Garen experimenting with the roots and abilities of the tiny tree, no doubt.
When Colj stepped forward, little Susan cried, “Colj!”
Tarlen glanced over and smiled. Colj gave them both a formal bow, but his eyes were drawn to Kyla. The young lady looked at him, nodded politely, then looked away. Her ja was troubled. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was pale. Col
j frowned. It was well-known that Lady Kyla had been unwell since her parents’ murder a year ago. And yet the other children seemed fine.
“See, Ponj!” Lady Susan glanced over at the corner, toward the young ogre. “Your dad did come. Now we can all be here together.”
Ponj inclined his head but said nothing. Colj also remained silent, then sat on a special-made stool near the door. He did not want to distract them from their lessons. Deep in his nap, Bruno snorted.
“Susan.” Lord Garen took off his spectacles, polished them, and put them back on. “Please. I asked you a question. To whom is this shape assigned?”
“Yes, Uncle.” Lady Susan gave Colj a wink, then turned back to Lord Garen and her task.
Colj looked closer and saw that Lady Susan was inspecting five silver models, each no taller than a human hand. Each model represented the traditional form of one of the Sisters’ High Gates:
Lord Garen was gesturing to the model in the middle, the one that looked like a tapering arch, heavy at its base, pointed at its peak. Lord Garen tapped his finger and raised an eyebrow. “To whom is this shape assigned?” he asked again.
“That’s so easy,” Lady Susan said. She yawned, stretched, and finally said, “Aaryn. Like ours, of course.”
“Good.” Lord Garen nodded. “And this.” The young lord pointed to a model gate shaped like a narrow doorway, wide at the bottom, its top slightly rounded.
“Kora.” Lady Susan bounced slightly, her feet swinging.
Garen inclined his head. “And this.” He pointed to a silver gate like a half circle.
“Alea.”
“And this?” He touched a model with a profile like a turnip.
“Margo.”
“And this?” An intricately formed gate, entirely different from the others, as if almost no silver at all had been used in its making, a fragile tracery governed by neither geometry nor chance.