by Tad Williams
Antimony took a deep breath. "The cells are side by side, only a few paces apart, and open to the outside. They are all still in the cells, slumped over like they died sitting up. Four of them-no, five. There were five, and the other cells were empty." He paused for a moment-Vansen could see him calming himself, collecting his thoughts. "The other cells, as far as we went, were empty. Perhaps a dozen. We turned back then."
"Was there any sign of what killed them? Were they cold?"
Antimony looked surprised. "No blood, but they were all dead. Their eyes were open, some of them! We did not touch them. We did not know who might still be out there, watching us…"
Vansen scowled. "It sounds very strange. If they all died like that, in their cells, they were not fighting back. They must have been surprised. But no blood? Very strange." To get a better grip on his warding ax he wiped his hands on his breeches. Chert's wife Opal had spent two days combining articles of Funderling clothing to make him a proper pair. "Let's go. Pig Iron, you lead for now, but when we get there I will go first." He turned to the others, who looked more than a little worried- all except for Sledge Jasper, who was grinning in a bloodthirsty sort of way. "We will go silently from now on. If you need to speak, truly need to, then for the gods' sake, speak softly. If these are the Twilight folk, they are quieter, cleverer, and crueler than you can guess, and they can hear a whisper from a hundred paces." Even as he said it he felt a momentary pang of shame. Had not Gyir been his friend, of a sort? But he had lost too many of his men at Kolkan's Field and elsewhere to think of the rest of the Qar as anything but deadly enemies. "Do you understand me? Good. Jasper, you come behind me. Show your fellows how a man walks into danger."
Ferras Vansen wanted no part of losing untrained men (or at least men who were not soldiers) while trapped behind them, unable to help, so he was determined to lead the way as soon as he could. But there was a risk to that as well: if he got caught in a tight enough spot, they might not be able to help him even if they wanted to.
Like Murroy used to say, he thought, if you can't be a soldier, hurry up and die so you can be a shield for someone else. If Vansen got wedged in a tight spot it might give the others a chance to retreat and take word back to Funderling Town.
Still, it would have been nice to have a proper soldier's shield. Especially in the tight places, especially with all this darkness around them. Their quiet footsteps were beginning to sound like drumbeats to him. Surely the Qar had heard them coming long ago.
Vansen and his little troop stepped out of the narrow defile at last, into the open space of what Antimony had called the Boreholes, an underground chamber like a mountain valley, its sides scored with vertical creases that sloped upward into the darkness beyond the coral light. The great folds of stone between the creases were perforated with holes, some natural, some clearly chiseled out or at least enlarged by intelligent hands. Vansen could not see much in the thin, greenish light, but what he could see reminded him of the rockier heights of Settland where the old Trigonate mystics had hidden themselves away from the lures of daily life. But surely even the oniri would have found living in these heavy, lightless depths too hard to bear. Vansen had never thought you could miss the sky like a starving man missed food, but it was true. Oh, gods in heaven, he thought, please let me live long enough to see the light of day again!
Antimony pointed to the nearest fold of stone and its honeycomb of holes. For the first time, Vansen regretted the coral lamps. If they faced something that lived down here without light, or some of the many Twilight folk who thrived in darkness, their own lamps, however dim, would make them into nothing but slow-moving targets.
Vansen stepped out in the lead now, skirting dark places in the floor that, as far as he knew, might be holes that would drop him into the center of the earth. As he drew nearer he saw that the closest cell was occupied, its inhabitant fallen halfway out, arms splayed and twisted. In the sickly light of the coral, the victim looked to be little more than a youth. Vansen moved forward and touched the Funderling acolyte's skin. It was warm, but he was otherwise limp as a rag, his eyes halfway open. He pressed his ear against the Funderling's chest, but could hear nothing. Dead, then, but for how long?
As Antimony had said, motionless forms filled several of the sparsely furnished cells on the bottom row, one of the bodies so small it made even Vansen's hardened heart ache in his breast. As Jasper and the other Funderlings crouched over Little Pewter, murmuring angrily, Vansen moved around the edge of the outcropping, wondering how many more cells might contain bodies, and how they had all died with no mark on them. Each dead man was in his own cell, which seemed to suggest that the catastrophe had struck them all at the same time, or else with extreme silence and swiftness.
The first cell in the next stony slope was empty, and Vansen was about to pass on to the next when his lamp showed him something he had not seen in the other cells-a hole at the back of the small space, leading deeper into the rock. He leaned closer. The floor of the cell, which in all the others he had seen so far had been kept scrupulously clean, was a mess of broken stone and dust. The hole in the back wall looked like something that had been done swiftly with a mallet and chisel. But why…?
Vansen suddenly realized what he was seeing. He climbed out of the cell as quietly as he could manage and returned to where the others were waiting, most looking fearful now that their anger was spent.
"I think I've found the place they came through," he whispered. "Come this way."
Jasper was the first to follow him, with Antimony not too far behind, but the others hung back. Vansen felt a pang of renewed worry. These untrained Funderlings were not soldiers-they were nowhere near being reliable. He would have to remember that.
Sledge Jasper turned and glared at his warders, his face a grotesque mask in the light of their lamps. His men scrambled to their feet, but their reluctance still showed.
"It is a hole, dug through from the other side," said Antimony as he stared at the opening in the back of the empty cell.
"And not with Funderling tools, either," growled Jasper quietly. "Or Funderling knowledge. This is foul-looking work. See, the edges are ragged."
"The tunnels Chert spoke of-the Stormstone tunnels," Vansen said to Antimony. "Are we close to one?"
"I don't know. Let me think." Antimony stood up from examining the hole. "Yes, I think so, although we would never go through the Boreholes to reach it-there is a connecting passage much closer to the temple. But yes, it passes along behind this formation here."
"Then this may well have been done by the Qar," Vansen said. "Their invasion may already have begun. We must go through to the far side and see what is there," he told the warders. "We cannot report back to Cinnabar and the others without learning the truth. Follow me. Stay close together. And remember-silence!"
The low tunnel beyond the cell was an uneven path over scree and larger loose stones, sometimes through spaces so small Vansen was forced onto his knees and into the very real worry that he might become stuck. Once his coral lamp faltered, dimmed, and died, leaving him for some moments in near-total darkness until one of the Funderlings behind him passed forward a spare piece. At last the passage widened and he was able to climb to his feet; a few hundred stumbling paces later he stepped through another crude hole in the stone and, on the other side, could stand upright again.
As the Funderlings moved up beside him into the much wider space, the light of their combined lamps reached out and illuminated a passage half a dozen paces wide, a monument to careful workmanship and masterful craft whose ceiling, floor, and walls (except for the hole through which they had just come and the pile of debris beside it) were all finished with smoothly sanded stone.
"A Stormstone road," said Antimony with something like reverence. "I have never seen this one, so far even from the temple."
"The Guild is going to have to start keeping a better watch on them, as of this moment," said Vansen. "Someone has definitely broken through from here
into the Boreholes. We must get back to Cinnabar and the others with this news."
He turned and led them back into the new tunnel, which seemed even more of a brutal, animalistic shambles now that he had seen good Funderling work. They had only gone back a little ways when a glimmer of light caught his attention. For an instant he thought that one of the other Funderlings had somehow got in front of him, but the part of the tunnel in which he stood was scarcely broader than his shoulders.
An instant later, the thing coming the opposite direction stood upright, blocking out the light behind it, and Vansen took a staggering step backward. It was manlike, but only just, bigger than he was and covered with leathery, scaly skin. Its eyes were sunk so deep under a shelflike brow so that they barely reflected the light of Vansen's lantern. He had only an instant to see that there was something in its brute face that was a little like the apelike servitors of Greatdeeps, then one of the massive fists, big as a sexton's shovel, swung toward his head. Vansen only just managed to get his ax up, but the sheer strength of the thing smashed the flat of his own weapon against his head so that he fell back, stunned, collapsing partway onto the Funderlings behind him as they shouted in terror and confusion.
"Aa-iyah Krjaazel!" someone screeched. "It can't be!"
"Deep ettin!" shouted Antimony. "Run, Captain, it's an ettin!"
But there was nowhere to run. The thing in front of him grunted, a deep sound Vansen could feel in his chest. He lifted his ax once more but as he did so a long, hollow stick appeared from behind the monstrous creature's shoulder, swaying like a serpent. A puff of smoke or dust came from the opening and suddenly Vansen could not breathe. He dropped his weapon and grasped his throat, trying to find the hands that strangled him, but there was nothing, only a growing red emptiness in his lungs. As he slid helplessly to the ground, Ferras Vansen felt his thoughts flicker out like a candle dropped down a well.
10
Sleepers
"There are several types of goblins according to Kaspar Dyelos.The smallest are called Myanmoi, or mouse-men, the middling are named Fetches, and then there are several which are as large as children and can live to be very old."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
At first it was all Barrick could do to stay on his feet. The slope was uneven, vines and brambles grew in tangles between the trees, and every few steps a vast knob of pale, yellowish stone thrust out of the greenery like a broken bone to block his way. The silkins, however, did seem to be falling back: he could still see them in the trees behind him, white figures leaping from branch to branch like ghostly apes, but without the aggressive haste they had shown before.
The bird was right, he thought. The silkins are just as afraid of this place as everyone else.
Which probably did not mean anything good for Barrick himself, of course, except that he might get a chance to rest and think. The creatures would be waiting when he came back down and he still had no weapon to face them with but his broken spear. And where was Skurn? Had the bird finally deserted him once and for all?
The steep slope made his lungs and legs ache. When he no longer saw any of his pursuers he paused to rest, but could not stop thinking of their featureless, thread-wrapped faces and gummy black eyes and how they might be crawling silently through the trees to surround him, so after a short while he forced himself onto his feet and began to climb once more, searching for open ground and a better vantage point.
The slope became steeper. Barrick frequently had to use his hands on branches and outcroppings to pull himself up, which made his crippled arm ache even worse than his lungs, throbbing and burning until his eyes filled with tears. The hopelessness of his situation began to weigh him down. He was in a strange land-a deadly, unknown land full of demons and monstrous creatures-and all but alone. How long could he go on this way, without help, without food or weapons or even a map? Any bad fall would leave him helpless and waiting for death…
Barrick suddenly tripped and tumbled heavily onto his hands and knees-it hurt so badly he cried out. He sank forward onto his elbows, staring at the ground only a few inches away, eyes blurry with sweat and tears. There was something strange about that ground, he realized after a moment-something very strange indeed.
It had writing on it.
He straightened up. He was kneeling on a slab of the pale ochre stone. Symbols he did not recognize had been scratched deep into its surface, and although they had been polished almost to invisibility by wind and rain, it was unquestionably the work of some intelligent hand. Barrick hastily climbed to his feet. He looked up and saw that the crest of the hill was not as far away as it had seemed-perhaps less than an hour's climb even at his limping pace. He took a deep breath and looked around for any sign of the silkins-he saw nothing and heard only the wind sighing through the trees-then began to make his way upward once more. Even if he was going to die here on Cursed Hill, he thought, it would be nice to see a high place first. Maybe the gray skies would seem brighter up there-that would be something good. Barrick Eddon was sick at heart with mist and shadowy places.
As he struggled up the last heights he saw that some previous inhabitants or visitors had done more than simply carve symbols into the yellow stones: in some spots curves of outcropping rock had been used as makeshift roofs, with shelters built beneath them, although little was left of these but an occasional wall of loose stones gathered together and carefully stacked. As he neared the summit the yellowish outcroppings became more common, great knobs and curving stretches of stone to which the greenery clung like a rough blanket. The primitive structures also grew more complex, weathered lumps of the hill's smooth bedrock extended and connected by stacked boulders and even some crude wooden walls and roofs, but all empty and long since deserted, with no sign left of whoever had inhabited them except for the occasional antlike track of carved symbols across their surfaces.
Here in the evergreen highlands the mists were at least as thick and slippery as at the base of the hill, but the place was even quieter, missing even the very occasional bird noises he had heard below. Even though Barrick had not seen any sign of the silkins for what seemed an hour or more, the quiet oppressiveness of the place was beginning to unnerve him, making his plan to stay here seem utter nonsense. It was all he could do to continue climbing toward the highest ridge, only a short distance away now and nothing but pearl-gray twilit sky visible behind it.
He pulled himself up onto a prominence and saw that one last mound of stone, greenery, and muddy earth remained between him and the summit, and that the strangest dwelling of all had been built there, a dome of curving stone protruding at an odd angle from the trees and tangled shrubbery, with a huge oblong window gaping in the undergrowth near it. A stone path wound up the last stretch of hillside from the snag of creepers in which he stood, leading to a dark overhang just below the oblong window. The palisade of broken stones he had seen from so far away, the ones like broken teeth, jutted from the forested peak just above the odd dwelling.
Mist and fog hung over this strange place like one of the asphodel crowns children wore for the feast of Onir Zakkas. The vapors were not only thicker here than at the bottom of the hill, but also seemed a different color and consistency. Barrick stared for long moments before he realized that some of it was not mist at all, but smoke rising from between the trees along the very top of the crest.
Smoke. Chimneys. Someone lived in this godforsaken place. On top of Cursed Hill.
He turned, heart beating even faster now than in the midst of the arduous climb, but before he could take a step back down the slope a voice came to him from nowhere and everywhere, echoing softly in the skirl of wind along the hillside, but also inside his head.
"Come," it whispered. "We are waiting for you."
Barrick found he could no longer command his own limbs, at least not to take him farther away from the strange house on the summit, a house that awaited him like an abandoned well into which he might fall and drow
n.
"Come. Come to us. We are waiting for you."
To his astonishment, he abruptly found himself a passive observer in his own flesh. His body turned and began to climb the promontory until his feet were on the stony path, then it walked on toward the stone dwelling like a cloud pushed by wind, Barrick watching helplessly from inside it. The oblong window and the shadowed overhang grew closer and closer. The last stretch of the hill's high peak loomed above him for a moment, then he passed beneath through the opening into darkness.
A moment later the dark gave way to a spreading, reddish light. Barrick recovered a little command of his own limbs, but only enough to pause for a moment, his heart hammering at triple speed, before the unwavering pull of what lay before him exerted itself again.
"Come. We have waited a long time, child of men. We were beginning to fear we had misunderstood what was given to us."
The stony room rounded upward like a dome on the inside, a strange, pale, cavernous place five or six times Barrick's height, its uppermost point rife with incomprehensible carvings, scrawls, and swirls just visible through the black residue of smoke. The red light and the smoke both came from a small fire set in a ring of stones on a floor of rubble and dirt. Three hunched figures of about Barrick's own size sat behind it on a low platform of stone.
"You are tired," the voice told him. Who was speaking? The shapes before him did not move. "You may sit if that will ease you. We regret we have little to offer you in the way of food or drink, but our ways are not like yours."
"We give him much," snapped another voice. It was almost identical to the first and equally bodiless, but with an edge to it that told him somehow it was a different speaker. "We give him more than we have given any other."
"Because that is the purpose to which we were called. And what we give to him will be no kindness," said the first voice.