by Rebecca Rupp
“They just live like this? All of them crowded on top of each other?” Birdie asked unbelievingly. “Why, there must be hundreds of them, all in the same place. Thousands. All together, like a huge school of minners. How do they do it?”
Tad shook his head in amazement.
Werfel, now far ahead of them, paused and beckoned.
“Come along now!” he shouted. “This way!”
The cave was filled with a steady hum of activity. In the distance there was a steady pounding and clanging of hammers and picks, and repeated sounds of something heavy rolling, then stopping, then rolling again. In open-fronted workshops, Diggers in leather aprons hammered slabs of red-hot metal over roaring fires, or bent over wooden benches, piecing together peculiarly shaped objects that Tad didn’t recognize. Everyone Tad, Birdie, and Pippit passed stopped whatever they were doing to stare at them. Probably most of the Diggers had never seen a Fisher before, Tad realized. Or a frog. We must look funny to them, not having any fur.
He was quite taken up with that thought, imagining how he would look with a sleek coat of reddish fur, when Birdie suddenly screamed and Pippit gave a squawk of terror. There before them was an immense silver-colored . . . something. It was moving frantically, its huge jointed arms pounding vigorously up and down, its eyelike red lights flashing brilliantly. Without warning, it gave off an earsplitting whistle and spat out a scalding cloud of steam. Birdie and Pippit leaped backward so fast that they almost knocked Tad down. A little group of Diggers, dwarfed by the massive whatever-it-was, were rapidly shoveling lumps of black rock into a fiery mouth in the object’s side. The Diggers wore padded leather protectors over their ears, and the fur of their faces and arms was black with dust.
Werfel, his face filled with concern, was hurrying back toward them, waving his arms up and down.
“It’s all right!” he panted. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt you.” He panted for a moment, trying to catch his breath. “It’s called a steam engine. The coal goes in there, see, to fuel the fire, and the fire heats up the water in the boiler. That’s the big tank there.”
Tad gaped at the engine. This was more than he could take in. “Those black rocks — they burn?”
Werfel nodded. “The fire boils the water, see? Then the steam from the boiling water goes through those pipes there and pushes those arms up and down” — he pointed —“which makes those wheels go round, which moves the mining cars.” Tad followed the pointing finger to a row of little wheeled carts fastened to a cable. Each cart held a Digger carrying a shovel or a pickax. As Tad watched, the carts trundled off into a side tunnel and disappeared. At the same time, a second set of carts — these loaded to the brim with silvery-colored ore — emerged from the tunnel, moving in the opposite direction. More Diggers rushed forward to unload them.
Werfel was urging them forward.
“It’s not much farther,” he said. “Furgo and the other Council members live in the next cave. It’s quieter there.”
“What’s that?” Birdie asked.
It was a great wooden wheel set in a broad stone trough. Above the wheel, shallow stone steps led upward as far as the children could see, toward the roof of the cave.
“It’s the Waterwheel,” Werfel explained. He rubbed his nose worriedly with the back of his hand. “Usually there’s a waterfall comes down those steps there and falls on the Wheel and makes it turn. Then it runs off down that channel, see? It’s a regular river. But something’s gone wrong. It’s mostly all dried up now. The engineer chaps have been having a look at it.”
Tad and Birdie exchanged anxious glances.
“The Nixies?” Birdie whispered. “Even here?”
They passed through another archway, into a branching tunnel.
“Those are the bat stables,” Werfel said, pointing to an open doorway. Tad and Birdie craned their heads to peer inside. The stable — a vast open area — looked empty.
“Where are they?” Birdie asked. “There’s nothing here.”
Werfel chuckled and pointed upward.
The roof of the cave was a mass of sleeping bats. There were hundreds of bats, hanging upside down in rows from their perches, leathery wings folded, eyes tightly closed.
“Those big fellows on the right are the transport bats,” Werfel said, speaking softly. “The mothers and babies are over there, toward the middle, and these here, closest to the door, they’re all trainees.”
Tad stared up at the nearest bat. It was a middle-sized bat, velvety brown, with a pointed mouselike face and big ears. It was sound asleep, making a rhythmic purring sound.
Werfel tugged Tad’s elbow. “The Council Chamber is over this way,” he said.
This cave was quieter than the first. Its walls, too, were lined with stone houses, but these were richer and more elaborate, with intricately carved windowsills and doorways.
“There’s the Council Chamber,” Werfel said.
It was an imposing building at the end of the row of houses. Tall stone columns supported a portico across the front. Beneath the portico was a heavy wooden double door, studded with polished pebbles and inlaid in curly patterns with silver. One of the doors stood open.
“Go on in,” Werfel said. “Furgo’ll be waiting for you. Just stand up straight and talk respectful, and you won’t have any trouble. Good luck, now, the both of you. I have to be getting back to the gate before that Grummer starts seeing more ferrets.” He lowered his voice and tapped a finger against the side of his head. “Grummer’s not a bad sort, you know. He had a close call with a ferret when he was a little chap, and he’s been nervouslike ever since.”
He strode away in the direction from which they had come, looking once behind him to give an encouraging wave. Tad and Birdie waved back. Then, together, they turned toward the entrance to the Council Chamber.
The Councilors looked, Tad thought, like silver statues.
The eight members of the High Council sat at the far end of the Chamber in a row of high-backed stone chairs. Each wore a wide-sleeved gray robe thickly embroidered with silver thread and fastened at the throat with heavy square silver buttons. There were round silver-embroidered caps on their heads and silver-trimmed leather boots on their feet. In a middle chair, taller than all the rest, sat an elderly Digger with a knitted shawl draped over his shoulders. He was thin and bent, and his short fur was entirely gray except for faint black circles around his eyes. He held a polished metal rod in his right hand, which he rapped sharply three times on the arm of his chair as Tad and Birdie approached. All the Councilors, moving as one, turned their heads to look at them. Tad had never felt so small and so grubby. So . . . barefoot.
“Ah, the Fisher younglings,” the gray Digger said. “Sit down, sit down, both of you. I am Furgo, Head of the High Council of the Diggers.”
Tad and Birdie sat on a low stone bench.
“I am Tadpole of the Fisher Tribe,” Tad said. “But mostly I’m called Tad.” He remembered that Werfel had warned him to be respectful. “Sir,” he added hastily. “And this is my sister, Redbird. Birdie.”
Furgo introduced the Councilors. “There are seven,” he explained, “one from each of the seven workers’ guilds. This is Gerda of the Growers. She oversees our moss and mushroom farms, and directs the cultivation of the Outer Gardens.” Gerda had brown-and-black striped fur and wore silver rings in her ears. She gave the children a small polite smile. “Bodric of the Leatherworkers. He tends our deermouse traps and tanning pits.” Bodric, a short toast-colored Digger, bowed briefly in the children’s direction. “Hadnar of the Stonecutters.” A big burly Digger. “Sindri of the Metalworkers.” An orange-furred female with a delicate white stripe across her nose. “Sidda of the Engineers. Our technological specialists.” A small chocolate-brown female with a serious expression. “Edelbert of the Skalds. Our poets and scholars.” Edelbert was a tall slender Digger with sleek black fur and elegant white patches under his ears. He had an exceptionally long pointed nose on which was perched a pai
r of silver-framed spectacles. He gave the children the barest of nods. “And Pegger of the Miners.” A plumpish dusty-brown Digger with a friendly look. He winked. Tad and Birdie liked him at once.
“We have few visitors here,” Furgo explained, “so we are most interested in the news of the outer world. And in what brings you younglings so far to Stone Mountain.”
Tad took a deep breath. “It’s a little complicated, sir,” he said.
“Then take time to explain,” said Furgo. “The Council is here to listen. Begin at the beginning.”
But what was the beginning? Tad thought. And then he thought: It began with the spear. He almost smiled. It seemed so long ago that all he had had to worry about was learning how to throw the spear and getting guggled at by a bunch of mudflapping frogs. He was a whole different person now. Words and images tangled in his head. The voice in the water, the journey up the dying stream, the Hunters. The dreadful black lake and the terrible loss of Pondleweed. The Dryad and Witherwood. The Sagamore. How could he begin to explain?
He felt Birdie’s touch on his arm.
“The first part was the water,” Birdie said. “Back home our pond is drying. That was how we knew something was wrong. That was the beginning.”
There was a rustle of movement and a murmur as the Council members turned and whispered to each other.
“The Drying,” Furgo said. “We have seen it too.”
The Councilors, one by one and then all together, nodded.
“The onion crop is a rock-thumping disaster,” said the plumpish Digger named Pegger. He had a crooked ear that gave him a raffish happy-go-lucky look. “And the waterfall has gone dry as a bone.”
“The green plants on the outer mountain have withered,” said Edelbert from the neighboring chair in reproving tones, “and the river that runs through its heart has shrunk to a silver trickle over the rocks. Now that you’re a Councilor, Pegger, you must really try for more nicety of diction.”
“I speak as I see fit,” said Pegger. “And I say what I mean. And when I say ‘dry as a bone,’ I mean ‘dry as a bone,’ and not none of your silver trickles, neither.”
The black-furred Digger closed his eyes briefly. A pained expression washed across his face. “That,” he said, in horrified tones, “was a triple negative.”
“Edelbert,” Furgo said severely. “Pegger. Let the younglings talk.”
Tad — with help from Birdie — began to tell his story. Every once in a while, a Councilor would interrupt, asking Tad to explain further or to repeat a part of the tale in greater detail.
Tad talked on. When he told about his mysterious Remembers and the blossoming of his strange new powers, a startled babble arose.
“Sagamore? . . .”
“The Sagamore! What kind of name is that?”
“I always thought that was a superstition. The belief systems of the primitive tribes . . .”
“There is a mention of a ‘Sagimore’ or ‘Sagamore’ in one of the Alternative Elder Epics, but the precise meaning of the term is a matter of debate. Only a fragment of the original text remains. It seems to have been some sort of magical fish. . . .”
“Did you say a fish?”
Furgo rapped his metal rod again, and the Councilors fell silent.
“You, of all Diggers, should know the tale of the Sagamore, Edelbert,” said Furgo. “It appears in the third of the Original Orations, and it agrees, in all particulars, with the story we have just heard from the lips of this youngling.”
Several of the Councilors nodded.
Edelbert looked furious.
“It is not a question of a Sagamore, Councilors. A Sagamore, if described in the ancient texts, is certainly more than a primitive superstition.” It was Hadnar of the Stonecutters, in a gruff raspy voice that sounded a bit like scraping chisels. “It is a question of the Sagamore in the person of this boy. A boy, Excellency, and younger than my own apprentices. We all know that younglings are prone to exaggeration and that their imaginations often run away from them. You should hear my lads, with their boastings and teasings, and their tales of stonegoblins and ghosties. . . .”
“You must admit,” said Gerda regretfully, “that the boy’s story is a trifle hard to believe.”
“If you will pardon me, your Excellency, it is impossible to believe.” It was Edelbert, sounding as if he’d just found a bug in his dinner. “This . . . Fisher . . . is wholly uneducated. He is not even clean.“
The orange Digger — Sindri of the Metalworkers — nodded.
“Surely, if there were such a mental phenomenon as this child describes, it would appear to us in a more likely form.”
“Clearly a misinterpretation of the facts . . .”
They were talking about him as if he weren’t even there. Tad clenched his fists.
“Form is as form does.” It was Pegger, sounding angry. “Did you never see a thunder egg, Edelbert? No, you’ve not been down in the mines, now, have you?” He leaned toward the children, making a cupping motion with his hands. “A thunder egg is a ball of gray rock, looking like nothing so much as an ordinary stone. But if you hit it with your hammer, so” — he made a downward striking gesture —“the ball splits open, and inside, it’s filled with crystals, big and bright and beautiful like none you’ve never seen before. You do remember that thunder egg, Edelbert, for some things you can’t tell by their outsides. The Fisher sounds a truthful lad to me, and we’ve no call to name him liar.”
“I saw him,” said Birdie. Her eyes were narrowed fiercely and her lower lip was sticking out. “I was there and I saw him. Tad is just what he says he is. And if you’d been with him, you’d believe in him too. And the ha — A friend of ours says there’s a shine around him. He can see it. The Shining One, he called him.”
Tad rose to his feet. He straightened his back, lifted his chin, and let his gaze travel from face to face, meeting each Councilor’s eyes. The Diggers stared back at him, waiting.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” Tad said simply. “I don’t understand it all yet myself. I don’t remember this place, but I know that I — or a part of me — was here once, long ago. I had a friend” — his voice caught for a moment on the word —“a friend named Burris.”
Oh, Burris, if you were with me now.
Time seemed to stand still. And then the scene changed.
Trees rose dark behind him. The sky above was velvet-black, star-studded, with a thin sliver of silver moon. The campfire was nothing but red coals. He was too wound up to sleep. Tomorrow . . . something momentous would happen tomorrow. Tomorrow he would meet the Witches face-to-face. Everything depended on him. His thoughts refused to lie still.
Someone stirred beside him in the darkness.
“I’ve had a Foreshadow,” the familiar fur-soft voice said.
His breath caught in his throat. “A bad dream, old friend.” But to his own ears his voice sounded shaken. “A bad dream and Hunter firepeppers for supper.”
A movement, shadow on shadow, as Burris shook his head. The warm grip of strong fingers on his forearm. “Hear me, Sagamore, and remember,” the husky voice said softly.
The next words were strange words, in a language he had never heard before. He could almost feel these words. Some were as heavy and thick as blocks of granite, some sharp as metal picks, some as clear as crystals.
Hicht yar logh und ostrem berraen
Alt alben lithag rebicht ferraen
Und ghawone ac averraegd
Harta twinnen syntaghraegd
Und ombichten clannenbain
Hicht erth und hord untwinnentwain.
“Now you,” Burris said.
He repeated it back, stumbling, the foreign words awkward on his tongue.
“Again.”
This time it was easier. He could understand the phrases now. They rolled from his lips like polished pebbles.
Though years are long and men forget,
The stone-cored mountains do stand yet
And,
staunch as they, we do avow
To keep the faith between us now
And stand together, kindred-true,
Though world and time divide us two.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It is called the Magelith,” the soft voice answered. “Spoken in the Old Tongue of the Diggers. It is a password and a pledge, taught by parents to their children generation after generation, always kept secret, known to the Diggers alone. With the Magelith, I make you a member of my Tribe. We are as brothers, you and I, and your sons must be as mine, for tomorrow —”
Tad thrust the words away from him in a sharp gesture of denial. “A thousand Foreshadows never come to pass,” he said.
“Perhaps nor will mine,” the familiar voice said, a fur-warm murmur in the darkness. “But Great Rune has whispered in my ear, old friend. Speak the Magelith and any Digger in the land will welcome you and give you aid, for now you, too, are of the line of Burris. Remember.”
Furred fingers closed briefly over his.
“Sleep, Sagamore . . .”
Time shuddered and dissolved. He was in the Council Chamber once more, all eyes watchfully upon him, the stone floor cool under his feet. He felt dizzy and disoriented. The Remember was over. Except . . .
“Burris did me a great honor,” Tad said. “He made me a member of his Tribe.”
Edelbert — It would be Edelbert, Tad thought — gave an incredulous snort, as if to say that no Digger would ever stoop to such a thing.
Tad began to speak, softly at first, then louder. The foreign words this time felt utterly familiar in his mouth, as if he had recited them many times before. They echoed in the high stone chamber like chords of music, as if the stone itself recognized and welcomed them. When the last echo died away, the Councilors were staring at him goggle-eyed. Edelbert’s mouth was sagging open. Pegger wore a broad gleeful grin.