Shadowheart s-4

by Tad Williams

  But what else could they do except fight? From what Spelter had said, this many-legged beast was not the only one of its kind, and even if they could hold it off, that would only bring more unsuspecting Funderlings out in search of them, no better armed against such a horror than they had been.

  What would be useful against this thing? Fire, likely-Spelter had said he drove one away with a torch. But what else? It seemed like nothing short of a rifle ball would pierce it and the Funderlings did not have such things. There was Chert's bombard, the one that had devastated the attacking Qar, but they hadn't brought one of those along on this expedition. Still, if they survived, it would be something to think about…

  So-spears and my sword, and a few rocks. If they couldn't beat the creature with the long, strong gurodir spears, they certainly weren't going to be able to kill it with a few small stones…

  A sudden idea came to him-an unlikely one, but Vansen was growing more desperate by the moment. The many-legged monster had tired of trying to butt its way through the stalagmites and was attempting to climb over them instead, and was slowly, awkwardly succeeding. The faces of Vansen's Funderling allies were full of hopeless terror.

  "Spelter," he called to the Qar scout. "How is he?"

  The langedy-legged man, as Jasper had called him, looked up. "He's burned, but most of the venom is on his plate…" He jabbed at the armor with his finger where it lay in a heap beside Sledge Jasper, who was murmuring and twitching as if in a deep fever.

  "Leave him. One of the others can see to him." Vansen told the drow scout what he wanted him to find. "I can't see well enough, Spelter, but you can. Go, find it for us! We'll keep the thing's attention here."

  Spelter went so quickly that he seemed to vanish like a ghost at dawn. Vansen turned back to the rest of the men, who were crouching as far back from the approaching beast as they could. "Spears up and jabbing!" he ordered. "If you can't find something soft to jab at like a joint or an eye, just whack at the cursed thing as hard as you can! And shout!" He didn't even know if the creature had ears, but he was leaving nothing to chance.

  The monster was almost upon them, teetering on a high spike of rock, legs flailing as it sought purchase to pull itself off the pinnacle. The shouts of Vansen and the Funderlings became louder, fueled by panic. The thing actually caught one of the warders in a sweeping claw, but with the Funderling in its grip it could not pull its claw-arm back. Two more warders leaped at it, prying at the crablike claw until the wounded man fell out onto the ground, gasping and coughing, bleeding in a wide band across his chest where his mail shirt had been crushed against his flesh.

  The monster tipped and slid backward a little, then could not get up onto the pointed stone again. Heartened, the Funderlings redoubled their efforts, cracking on the beast's armor so hard with the ends of their heavy spears that they made a noise like high-pitched thunder in the echoing cavern.

  Vansen had his spear in one hand and his sword in the other. Once he even managed to get his spear into the thing's bizarre mouth, but could not drive it in more than a few inches, and although the monster shied back it did not seem badly hurt. Another moment he saw a black spot that he thought must be an eye on the side of the weird, flat head, but when he tried to reach it with his sword, the beast almost took his head off with a flailing leg and he had to retreat behind a stalagmite.

  Vansen was tiring and knew the Funderlings were tiring as well, but the monster did not seem to tire. They were running out of time.

  The creature took a few many-legged steps back to find another angle of attack, and as it did, it moved beyond the Funderlings' reach. The clatter of spear on shell stopped, and in that moment of comparative quiet Vansen heard Spelter calling them: "Here! Here! Come now!"

  "Follow his voice," he hissed to the warders, then bent down to scoop up the small but solid body of Sledge Jasper and toss him over his shoulder. "Go-now!"

  The Funderlings ran deeper into the cavern, away from the center where the stone pinnacles sprouted everywhere. Only a moment passed before the monster realized what they were doing and came legging after them.

  "Here!" shouted Spelter. He was standing near one of the sloping walls of the cavern, half-hidden behind a large, mostly rounded stone many times his size which looked to have been rolled there when the world was young by some god playing at bowls. "Here, help me!"

  Vansen got there last and carefully lowered the senseless Jasper to the ground. "It's too big. We'll never move it!"

  "Balanced. Not so difficult-if we work hard!" Spelter said breathlessly. He had clearly begun already. Vansen and several of the Funderlings hurriedly clambered onto the curving shelf of rock beside him and jammed their spears into the space between the round stone and the wall. Vansen set his booted foot against the stone and leaned back hard, testing the flexibility of his spear. If it broke, he might well kill himself or one of his fellows with the shards before the monster even reached them, but for the moment it was holding together.

  "Everybody!" Vansen shouted. "Now!" The other Funderlings did their best to find a place to throw their own weight and strength against the perched stone, their spears bending like saplings. Vansen felt blood in his temples threatening to boil and burst out, but the stone was not moving and the glowing, spiderlike monster was moving toward them, in no hurry now that it had them out from behind cover and against a wall with nowhere else to run.

  Something was pulling hard at his leg. For a terrifying moment Vansen thought it was another one of the creatures, then he realized it was the half-naked form of Sledge Jasper, with armor and helmet gone and a blistering burn up the side of his face, trying to use Vansen's leg to climb up and help.

  "Give me room, you cursed, gawky upgrounder!" Jasper cried, then shoved the butt of his spear into the crack between stone and floor and lifted his legs off the ground, swinging on the spear until it bent nearly double. The others, too weary now to do anything but keep pulling, leaned back into their own spears. Vansen shoved his back down against the wall so he could use both legs at the same time. The creature lifted its snapping claws, each the size of a fiddler's bass viol, and reared up on its hindmost legs. Then the stone moved.

  Vansen had only a moment to notice that nothing was holding him up before he fell heavily to the floor of the cavern, Funderlings tumbling all around him like frozen sparrows dropping from winter branches. The boulder tottered, then tipped and rolled down the short incline. At first it seemed to move so slowly that Vansen thought it was impossible the monster would fail to evade it, but either the thing's tiny eyes or its weak wits betrayed it, and it only waved its claws impotently as the rock, three times the monster's height, rolled over it and crushed it with a dreadful, wonderful wet crunch. By the time the boulder came to a halt again some twenty paces on, part of the monster was still stuck to it, but most lay in a ruined smear of shadow on the cavern floor, only a leg or two that the stone had missed still showing any last, fitful movement.

  "Go!" Vansen shouted. "Back the way we came in, before another one finds us! Go now, and stay together…!" The indescribable smell of the thing was so strong as they ran past it that Vansen had to stop shouting and clamp his teeth together to keep from being sick.

  If Sledge Jasper had not dragged back a monstrous claw from the thing that had tried to kill him and the other warders and Captain Vansen, and then proudly showed it to nearly every living person in the Metamorphic Brothers' temple, Chert would have had trouble believing that such a horror could exist, even after all the other mad things he had seen in the past year.

  The claw itself was almost as long as Jasper was tall. As Chert stared, the chief warder beamed and pointed to his blistered cheek. "See? This is where he spit his poison on me. Would have killed me, too, but Spelter rubbed it off with his own shirt." Sledge nodded proudly. "One of them drows, but he risked his life to save us. That's a pretty tale, isn't it? But true. He's all right, that Spelter."

  "Does it hurt?" Chert asked.

&
nbsp; "My skin, you mean?" Jasper asked. "Burned like fire at first. Better now, but the healer-brother says I'll always have scars. 'More scars, you mean,' that's what I told him. More scars, 'cause I'd got plenty already. Have I showed 'em all to you?"

  "Later," said Chert quickly. "I'd love to see them, Wardthane, truly I would, but Captain Vansen's waiting for me."

  "Ah, yes, certain then you'd want to be going. We're lucky to have the captain, you know. Almost as good as… no, I'll say it; he is as good as a Funderling. Thought of that dodge with the big stone right on the spot, he did, while that Elders-cursed crab-spider was trying to kill us. We'd all be in its belly, weren't for Captain Vansen."

  "Yes, we're lucky to have him," Chert agreed.

  He left Jasper looking for anyone else who hadn't seen the massive, odiferous claw and made his way down the hall toward the refectory, which Vansen and Cinnabar and the rest had made the stronghold of the defense effort. Chert was a little worried about what Vansen wanted of him, not because he was afraid of being put back into danger-just being alive beneath Southmarch was danger enough these days-but because he was terrified that Vansen would want to send him somewhere and he would have to tell Opal he was off again. She had not been back long and was already distraught over how strange Flint had become: Chert felt sure having to give her bad news would be a more terrifying adventure than any monstrous spider-crab.

  He was surprised to find Vansen sitting in the refectory by himself, poring over a pile of parchments and-even more surprising-piles of the Temple's precious mica sheets. Brother Nickel must have nearly soiled himself when Vansen asked for those and Cinnabar backed him up, thought Chert, not without some satisfaction.

  Vansen looked tired, his eyes shadowed as if bruised, his shoulders slumped, but he found a smile for Chert. "Ho there, Master Blue Quartz. How is your family?"

  Chert was touched to be asked. "Well as can be expected, sir. The boy is very quiet and thoughtful, so that we can hardly get a word from him, but that's better than him traipsing everywhere and getting into trouble."

  The big man laughed quietly. "He is not the chiefest delight of the Metamorphic Brothers, is he?"

  "That's fair to say." Chert couldn't quite muster up the energy to smile himself. "I do not know what we've let ourselves in for with this child, to tell the truth, he is often so strange. It is like living with a fairy child-a changeling."

  Vansen looked at him absently for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. "He is deep in these doings. I suddenly wonder why we have not spoken of him to the Qar-and especially to Lady Yasammez."

  Chert suppressed a shiver. "I stood before her once as a prisoner-a condemned prisoner, at that. I'm in no hurry to seek out another audience."

  "In any case, there is something important to be understood about your boy, Chert, that I feel certain-but it would take a keener eye than mine to see it clear. Perhaps Chaven can solve the riddle." Vansen sighed. "Ah, well. We have troubles enough without inviting more. I was wondering if you could do me a kindness, friend Chert."

  "Of course, Captain. We are all here to help you." But now that the moment had come, Chert Blue Quartz could not help flinching a little in anticipation of some new, mad venture-being ordered to sneak into the castle to steal Hendon Tolly's handkerchief, or sent out to demand the autarch's surrender.

  "Since I have been here beneath the castle," Vansen said, "I have had difficulty making sense of things. Not all," he said hurriedly, "but certainly your people's directions. I do not know what is meant by 'fro-wards' and 'upwise' and whatnot, but…" he put out his hand to forestall Chert's explanation, "but more importantly, I simply do not know the ground."

  "We have many maps…" Chert began.

  "Yes, and I have most of them in front of me," said Vansen. "Come, look. Here is one. It shows Funderling Town and what lies below as a single circle. We are looking down, as from the sky is my guess, if there was no castle and no earth in the way to block our gaze. Am I right?"

  Chert nodded. "It does not show the Mysteries, or most of the Stormstone Roads, but those are secret…"

  "Yes, but I wouldn't have known that from looking. I can make no sense of it at all."

  Chert smiled. "I can show you easily enough. Here, the different thickness of lines indicates the level, and these marks mean…"

  "No, I mean I can make no sense of it. I cannot see it with your eyes no matter how I try, no matter how your folk try to instruct me. Brother Antimony spent half of last night grimly explaining over and over again, but it is like trying to describe Orphan's Day to a fish." His smile was sad, now, and the weariness plainer than ever. "You have spent much time on the surface, Chert, I know. You of all people here might be able to make maps that an upgrounder can understand. Will you do that?" He spread his hands over the documents before him. "It need not be perfect. I do not need every single passage-although I would not quibble at it. But the most important thing is that I need to understand how close the different passages are to each other, especially which of them are above which others. Also, which ways are passable by anyone, which only by Funderlings. Then I can ask questions. Then I can make decisions. Will you do it for me?"

  It was potentially a huge task, but Chert could understand how important it was. And, he realized, he could accomplish much if not all of it from the safety of the temple, so that Opal would not fret too much, and he would see her and the boy every day.

  "How soon?" he asked. He would have to make sure Cinnabar knew about it, in case Brother Nickel made a stink about Chert using the temple library.

  "I need it a tennight past." Vansen rose and stretched, his joints popping so that even Chert could hear them. "I will take it as soon as it is ready-sooner. Show me what you have as you work. Now, if you will pardon me, friend Blue Quartz, I think I should find Jasper and Cinnabar and the others before they say something to turn the Qar back into enemies."

  "… So I will be in the library much of the day most days, and perhaps some nights until I finish this for Captain Vansen," he explained to Opal. "But I can do a good deal of the work here at home, too, after I've finished with the Brothers' books, since I doubt that Nickel will let me carry those home under my arms."

  "Home," Opal sniffed. "I would not call a cramped, crowded room in the drafty, cold temple a home… but I suppose it is all we have for now. At least we don't have to share it with your giant friend anymore." The "giant friend" was Chaven, who on Opal's return had moved to other quarters.

  Chert was reassured. If Opal was complaining, she was… if not happy, then at least in reasonable spirits. "Yes, well, the mark of a noble character is how it stands up to suffering, my only love."

  "Then if I become any nobler, I'll have to start screaming." She gave him a sharp look. "Do you have time to talk to the boy before you go hurrying off to play your map games? He said you would understand, and if you do, you may explain it to me because I don't."

  "Explain what?"

  "Ask him. He's gone down the hall to Chaven's room." She fluffed the straw mattress into a more pleasing consistency, but the look on her face made it clear straw would never compare with their swallow-fluff bed at home. He was surprised she had not carried the mattress down from Funderling Town on her back. "I have things of my own to do, in case you didn't know."

  Chert turned back-he knew that tone and knew he should pay attention. "Of course, my love." He waited, hoping she would go on without making him ask. Of course she didn't. "And those things are…?"

  "Chert Blue Quartz, you are the flaw in the crystal of my happiness, I swear." She was only half-serious, but the problem was that even half meant he was in trouble. "I told you several times, Vermilion Cinnabar asked me to help making sure all the men get fed. By the Elders, do you really think we can bring hundreds of men down here without providing for them? Do you think the monks have a magic garden that simply grows more food when you ask it?"

  "No, of course not…"

  "Of course not. So we are putting m
any of the women to work in the fungus gardens themselves, and replanting some of the old ones that have gone fallow. We are also bringing food down from the town, of course, which means someone has to organize the caravans."

  "Caravans?"

  "What else would you call a dozen donkey carts a day, twice each way?" Funderling Town's few donkeys, descended from upground ancestors almost twice as large, had never bred well in the depths, and the fact that the Guild had given so many to this cause showed how worried they were-and how much power Vermilion Cinnabar wielded. And now Opal was her second-in-command. Chert was proud of his wife. "Donkeys, and drovers, and we have another twenty men carrying the smaller goods, along with warders to protect them all. It makes quite a parade going down Ore Street."

  "The men down here are lucky to have you looking after them."

  "Yes." She was slightly mollified. "Yes, I suppose they are."

  It didn't matter where he found the boy; the circumstances always seemed to be slightly unexpected. This time Flint was indeed in Chaven's room, as Opal had suggested, but the physician was not present. The flax-haired boy was on his knees atop Chaven's stool, leaning on a table as he squinted at a leather-bound notebook.

  "That looks costly," Chert said. "Are you sure Chaven will not mind you handling it?"

  Flint did not seem to hear the question. "The talk is all of mirrors," he said as if to himself. "But no earthly glass could be large enough for a true god's gateway…"