Shadowrise s-3

by Tad Williams

  "That's because the people upground would be more interested in putting an arrow in you than letting you sniff the fresh air, Captain," said the Funderling leader cheerfully. "And that's hardly my fault, is it? Now, what I came here for was Chert Blue Quartz, but I see I've missed him."

  "He's getting his family settled in upstairs," Vansen told him. "And Chaven and I have been talking about all kinds of things. I must confess, I had no idea of how much has been happening here in Funderling Town-hidden tunnels, Chert and Opal with their foundling son from behind the Shadowline, magical mirrors. To think I lived so long above such an exotic place without realizing it!"

  "Mirrors again?" asked Cinnbar. "What is this talk of mirrors?" Chaven spoke up. "Nothing. Mirrors are not important, Magister." Despite his earlier interest and all the questions that had quite worn Vansen out, Chaven now suddenly seemed to want to change the subject. "What matters is that we are very few here, trapped between the Qar outside the gates and the turncoat Hendon Tolly in the castle above us. And if they know about the Stormstone tunnels, as Chert suggested, the Qar may not remain outside the gates for long…"

  Before the physician could finish what he was saying, the door opened and Chert Blue Quartz himself walked in, moving slowly as though he carried something heavy.

  Which, in a way, he does, Vansen thought. Chert had been shoved to the forefront of many of their discussions, although he clearly did not like the responsibility. Still, he had impressed Vansen, who thought he saw a bit of his old master Donal Murroy in the Funderling, especially in the sour-sounding witticisms that did not do a very good job of concealing the little man's kind nature.

  Cinnabar spread his arms. "Ah, here you are, Chert, my good fellow! Fresh from the table, no doubt. His wife is an excellent cook, did you all know?"

  "With what those miserly monks give us Opal would be lucky if she could make stone soup," Chert said. "The Metamorphic Brothers regard enjoying one's food as a path to decadence." He rolled his eyes. "Nickel told me, 'Be grateful that you have crickets to roast. Our acolytes only get cricket mush once a week and consider it a feast."

  Nickel himself came in a few moments later, frowning as usual. "I cannot get any work out of the brothers. They would rather gossip about Big Folk and fairies than see to the Elders' business."

  "These are strange days," said Cinnabar. "Do not treat them too harshly, Brother Nickel."

  The Quicksilver magistrate was the representative of the Guild's Highwardens, and it was the Guild, Cinnabar reminded him, who would decide whether Nickel would be promoted to abbot. Even Ferras Vansen couldn't help notice the quick change in the Funderling monk's demeanor.

  "You are right, of course, Magister," Nickel hastily agreed. "Quite right."

  Vansen caught sight of Chert Blue Quartz's expression of disgust and had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

  "So what you are saying is that it is impossible to defend Funderling Town?" Vansen asked.

  "No, Captain," said Cinnabar. "But this is not a walled city like Southmarch above us. The closer in to Funderling Town, the more roads there are to defend. Dozens!"

  "Then it's the temple itself we should be defending," said Chert suddenly.

  "What nonsense is this, Blue Quartz?" Nickel didn't like Chert any more than Chert liked him, that seemed clear. "This is a holy place, not a battlefield!"

  "A battlefield is where a battle happens, Brother Nickel," Cinnabar pointed out. "We are trying to prevent the Metamorphic Brothers' temple and Funderling Town from becoming battlefields. At least, that's what I think Chert is saying."

  "More or less." The little man looked around as though he was suddenly uncomfortable with the attention. "But here we are. The ancient roads the fairy folk are mostly likely to use, the ones that cross beneath the bay from the mainland, pass the temple long before they reach the town. Not only that, those roads and the roads they connect with begin to fork just above us, so that by the outskirts of the town the original few passages have split into nearly a hundred more-far too many to defend."

  "What about blocking them off?" Vansen asked. "You have stone and quite a lot of it, the gods know. In Greatdeeps I saw Jikuyin's slaves using gunf lour…"

  Cinnabar shook his head. "Blasting powder, we call it. Yes, we have that and stone, but it would take a year's worth of quarrying and ten times the men we have to block off all the approaches into Funderling Town. There are roads from the town that lead out to a half dozen different quarries, to freshwater pools, to a dozen outer neighborhoods, not to mention the natural caverns and tunnels we have not bothered to shape. We would have to seal every one of them." He sighed. "Chert is right. If the fairy folk make their way under the bay by the Stormstone roads, then we must stop them here, where we can reduce the number of entrances to a manageable few, or we will not stop them at all."

  "You cannot mean to turn the temple into an army camp-!" Nickel began, but a loud knock on the door interrupted him as husky young Brother Antimony pushed his way in, face flushed. "Forgive me, masters, forgive me! It's just… some of the brothers… there's been… they've heard noises…"

  Cinnabar raised an eyebrow. "What in the name of deadly rockfall are you talking about, lad? Noises? What noises? Where? And why shouldn't they hear noises?"

  Antimony did his best to collect his thoughts. "At the Boreholes in the Outer Halls, Magister-a group of cavern cells connected by tunnels out beyond the farthest temple gardens. Several of the acolytes heard voices coming up from the depths and they sent someone to tell us."

  "Why didn't they come to me first?" demanded Nickel.

  Cinnabar waved his hand to quiet the older monk. "I am not certain I understand the concern, Brother Antimony. They fast, do they not, these acolytes? It is common to hear and see things when the stomach is empty for a long time."

  Antimony bowed his head, but stubbornly went on. "They do, Magister. They fast, and they hear and see things. But several of them heard the same thing, voices whispering like the wind, and the voices were not speaking a tongue the acolytes could recognize."

  Chert leaned forward. "Antimony, do these tunnels touch at any point on the Stormstone Passages?"

  Antimony nodded. "Beyond the Boreholes, yes, of course, Master Blue Quartz. There is Blacklamp Row running below it, and beyond that the Stormstone roads begin."

  "So if the fairies-the Qar-decided to make their way down from the mainland as we discussed, that is one of the ways they might come," Vansen said.

  "And we have not even begun to secure the roads around the temple," said Cinnabar grimly. "Collapses and slides! How can we defend all our tunnels if the Twilight folk already mean to invade? The ways are too many! We might not do it with all of the upgrounders and all their horses and cannons."

  "Nevertheless, someone must go to see these Boreholes, as you called them. Take heart-perhaps it is only the imagination of hungry monks. But we must go quickly, in case it is not."

  "We Funderlings have no army, Captain Vansen," Cinnabar reminded him.

  "You must have some who can fight." Vansen looked around. "Who were those who came at me when I first arrived? Most had only shovels and picks, but a few were young and fit and carried what looked like real weapons."

  "The Warders of the Guild," said Cinnabar. "They are like sentries-no, they are more like reeves. They help to guard the guildhall and other important places and things. But it has been long since they have dealt with anything worse than ordinary crimes like theft and public drunkenness, or putting down the occasional public riot."

  "It matters not." Vansen's heart was beating fast. Here was something he could do, a way he could truly help instead of merely answering Chaven's endless mirror questions. "They must have some training and they will at least have weapons. Send me a troop of these warders, as many as you can spare, and with the Guild's permission I will take them down to see who is whispering and spying out there."

  "It will take hours to get a messenger to the Guild and back," Cinn
abar said unhappily.

  "Perhaps monks could accompany Captain Vansen," Chert suggested.

  "They could not!" Nickel said, scowling. "They have taken sacred orders to serve only the Elders!"

  "Truly? Would the Elders prefer to have the Qar living in the temple and frolicking in the Mysteries?" Chert asked him.

  "Enough," declared Magister Cinnabar. "There are a half-dozen warders here who came with me as an honor guard for the Astion." The Astion was like the Eddon family royal seal, Vansen had learned, a disk of stone that showed the bearer was doing the Guild's official business. "They can go with Captain Vansen while messengers take a letter from me back to Funderling Town and tell the Guild of our fears and our need of more men."

  "That sounds like a wise plan, Magister," Vansen said, nodding. "Can the monk who brought the news lead us back there?"

  "He has run all day," Antimony told him. "He collapsed after he gave us the news. He is in the infirmary."

  "We'll think of something else, then. Chert, can you help me to prepare for this? I know so little about your people and this place."

  Chert gave an unhappy shrug. "Of course. Brother Antimony, would you find my wife and tell her I may not be back for the evening meal?" He watched the young monk go out. "Better him than me," Chert told Vansen quietly. "The old girl won't like it a bit."

  Cinnbar presented the newcomer with the distracted air of a man walking a dangerous dog on a very short leash. "This is Sledge Jasper," he explained to Vansen. "He is the wardthane of the men you are taking. He wanted to meet you."

  The newcomer was not much taller than Cinnabar, which meant he barely reached Ferras Vansen's waist, but he bulged with muscle so that he was nearly as wide as he was tall. His arms were long and his hands were as big or bigger than Vansen's own. Everthing about him seemed aggressive-his shaved head was round as a cannonball, and he had beetling eyebrows and a fierce bristle of whiskers on his chin.

  The intimidating little fellow stared up at Vansen for a long moment. "Have you commanded men?"

  "I have. I was… I still am captain of the Southmarch royal guard."

  "In battle?"

  "Yes. Most recently at Kolkan's Field, but not all my commands ended as disastrously as that, praise the gods." Vansen was amused by such harsh scrutiny, but he had waited a long time for Cinnabar to return and he was growing impatient. "And your warders-will they do what they're told?"

  "If I'm there," Sledge said, still peering fiercely into Vansen's eyes. "They'll dig granite with their fingers if I tell 'em to. That's why I'm going along. The question is, who's in charge-me or you?"

  Vansen wasn't going to be drawn into a pissing contest with this brusque little hobgoblin. "That's up to the magister."

  "Captain Vansen is the leader, Sledge," Cinnabar told the wardthane. "And you knew that already."

  Vansen suppressed a smile: he had suspected as much. "However, I do welcome your help, Wardthane Jasper. We'll be careful of your men's safety. We're only going to investigate some noises-I'm not expecting a fight."

  Sledge snorted, crossing his thickly muscled arms across his barrel chest. " 'Course you are-if you weren't, you'd be taking a troop of these temple fungus farmers with scrapers and baskets. The magister wants my warders, which means there's a good chance someone's going to get their faces pushed in."

  "We'll see." He turned to Cinnabar. "I'll need a weapon, since I came here without one. Where are the rest of the men?"

  "Waiting outside," the magister said. "We'll find you something by way of a fairy-sticker, then you can leave as soon as you want."

  "Let me go and tell Opal goodbye, will you?" said Chert, rising.

  "Why?" Vansen asked. "You're not going."

  "But you wanted me to tell you…"

  "I wanted you to answer my questions and you have. But as far as a guide for the tunnels, I've got permission to take Brother Antimony, a young fellow with an excellent knowledge of the place and no family of his own… unlike you. So shut your mouth, Master Blue Quartz, and for tonight at least, go back to your wife and boy."

  Chert looked at him gratefully, struggling for words. Vansen did not linger long enough to let it become an embarrassment. Jasper's warders were waiting to meet him, men he would lead into danger and perhaps, for some of them, even to death. At this moment, the fact that they were half Ferras Vansen's size meant absolutely nothing.

  It was as strange as anything in Greatdeeps, Vansen thought-no, stranger. To think that sights like these had been beneath his feet all the years he had been in Southmarch! The Cascade Stair was huge, a vertical tunnel in the shape of a great downward spiral, as though the stone had hardened around a whirlpool that had subsequently drained away. The bobbing coral-lights of the men winding down it in front of him looked like little stars bouncing in a thundercloud.

  We have our own Shadowline right here, he thought. But instead of two different lands side-by-side, it is two lands with one beneath the other, our Southmarch above and all this below.

  "Watch your step, Cap'n," growled Jasper. "Not so bad if you lose your footing here, but a little farther down you'd be falling for a long time. Better get used to looking where you're walking."

  "Right." Vansen paused for a moment, propping the weapon Cinnabar had found him against the wall, a "warding ax" as the magister had named it, a one-handed battle ax with a knobby hammer on the poll, the opposite side from the blade. He reached up to straighten the piece of coral bound to his forehead in its little lantern, then picked up the ax again. The sickly, greenish yellow light was not very revealing-Funderlings saw much better in these dark places than he did. He wished he had a good old-fashioned flaming torch, but when he had mentioned it the Funderling wardthane had looked at him with disgust.

  "Oh, they'd smell and hear that coming from a long way away, wouldn't they? Not to mention how fast it would eat up the air in some of the tight spots. No, Cap'n, you just leave the thinking to old Sledge."

  But the Funderlings have fires, don't they? They have fires for cooking and for warmth-I've seen them! And what about their forges? Of course, from what Chaven had told him, they also had very elaborate systems to draw the smoke up out of Funderling Town, with lazily spinning fans like water-wheels that pulled the foul air upward and then puffed it out into the air over the stony hill on which Southmarch had been built.

  Chimneys up where we live, was his bemused thought. Roads that travel under the bay to the mainland, and others that tunnel down far beneath the water, if Chert Blue Quartz told me the truth. These Funderlings own more of this rock than we do!

  Near the bottom of the Cascade Stair, with the stone walls looming so far above them now that their little lights could not reach the top, Vansen and the others trooped through into a large open space full of pale stone columns that were wider at the top and bottom than at their middles. After walking for some time, they paused at last in front of a wall pierced by several stone tunnel mouths.

  "They call this place Five Arches," Jasper whispered.

  Brother Antimony prayed for a little while in a language Vansen didn't understand, words full of harsh kah and zzz sounds, as the dozen warders dipped their heads reverently.

  "Beyond this," the acolyte said to Vansen when he had finished, "lies the Outer Halls. We go now from That Which was Built to That Which Grew."

  This made no sense to Ferras Vansen, but he was getting used to that. "Are we far from the place… what was it called… where your monks are?"

  "The Boreholes? We are not far now," Antimony told him.

  "Close enough that we should keep our mouths shut," said Jasper, and reached out a long hairy arm to smack one of his warders sharply on the back of the head, silencing him midmurmur. "All of us," Jasper added sharply.

  The young man who had been disciplined shot the wardthane a sulky look. For all Sledge Jasper's ferocity, Vansen was worried that the rest of the warders might not be up to the task if there proved anything to it.

  "Just around
this bend," Antimony whispered. "Let me go first and find someone who can talk to us. We should not disturb them more than we have to-they are on their Elder Walks, after all. That is what we call this time of retreat and prayer."

  "You'll not go alone-you, Pig Iron," Jasper said to the warder he had chastised earlier. "Go with him. Keep him out of trouble and bring him back safe."

  The one named Pig Iron looked pleased to have been given a suitably manly task: he puffed himself up inside his heavy cloak and lowered his short Funderling halberd, which was more like a spike-headed spear than like a proper halberd. Pig Iron had no helmet, no armor; but for the weapon, he might have been another monk.

  How can we hope to fight anyone? Vansen wondered. Our army is knee-high and dressed in wool.

  The pair trotted down the winding passage and were quickly gone from sight. Vansen, whose back was sore because he had been forced in so many places to walk almost doubled over, had what seemed scarcely more than a few breaths to rest before the two came clattering back.

  "Dead!" Antimony's eyes were so big they looked like they might never fully close again. "All of them, in their cells!"

  "How?" demanded Jasper before Vansen had a chance to speak.

  "Couldn't tell," said Pig Iron excitedly, "But one of them was Little Pewter. I know him-he's no more than thirteen years old!"

  "But what killed them?" Sledge Jasper demanded. "Was there blood?"

  Ferras Vansen was a stranger and Jasper was their familiar leader: Vansen could understand why they might want to stick to that which was familiar, but confusion now might cost lives later. "Let me ask the questions, Wardthane," he said, softly but firmly. "Brother Antimony, what did you see? Just what you saw, not what you think might have happened. And let's keep it quiet."