by Tad Williams
Nickel and Chert both began to speak at the same time but Flint calmly ignored them both. "I am a friend. Tell me. Your people need you to tell me."
"See here, child…" Nickel began again, but Sulphur was ignoring him too. For a moment it seemed to Chert that everyone else in the great, musty room had vanished except for the old man and the pale-haired boy. Something passed between them-a language without words, like the tiny, all but invisible seeds of the mushrooms themselves, which passed through the air like a cloud of unseen spirits.
"The tortoise," said Grandfather Sulphur abruptly. "It began with the tortoise."
"What?" Nickel put his hand on Flint's shoulder as if to pull the boy away. "Grandfather, you are tired…"
"The tortoise came to me in a dream. It spoke to me of the coming times-the time when evil men will seek to destroy the gods. Of the catastrophe they will bring down on the Funderlings. It was truth, that dream-I know it. It was the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone himself."
"The tortoise…" said Chaven slowly, distantly, as if speaking to himself. Something in the physician's voice put the hairs up on the back of Chert's neck. "The tortoise… the spiral shell… the pine tree… the owl…"
Flint would not be distracted. "Tell me, Grandfather, what were you to do? What did the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone ask of you?"
"This is blasphemy," Nickel sputtered. "This… upgrounder, this gha'jaz, should not be asking about such sacred things!"
But Grandfather Sulphur did not seem to mind-in fact, Chert thought the old man seemed to be warming to the subject. "He said I must tell my people that Old Night is coming and that this sinful world will end soon. He came to me in many dreams. He said to tell the people that there is nothing they can do to resist his will."
"He told you not to fight against the will of the gods?" Flint asked. "But why would your god say such a thing?"
"Blasphemy!" said Nickel. "How can he ask such questions of Sulphur, who is the select of the Stone Lord himself?"
Chert put his hand on the monk's arm. "Brother Sulphur is not afraid to speak to the boy, so let them talk. Come, Nickel, these matters are beyond either of us-but you must see that these are extraordinary times."
Nickel could barely stand still. "That does not mean I should allow a… a mere child to do as he pleases in our holy temple!"
Chert sighed. "Whatever he is, I have known for a long time that my Flint is no 'mere child.' Isn't that right, Chaven?"
But the physician did not reply: he was listening raptly to the old man and the boy.
"You have always dreamed of the gods." Flint was telling more than asking.
"Of course. Since I was younger than you, child," said the old man, not without satisfaction. He lifted a spotted, clawlike hand. "When I had but two years I told my parents I would be a Metamorphic Brother."
"But these dreams are different," said Flint. "Isn't that true?"
The old man leaned back sharply, as though he had been struck. His milky eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"The dreams of the tortoise-the dreams that brought you the god's own voice. You have not had dreams like that all your life-have you?"
"I have always dreamed of the gods…" the old man said, blustering.
"When did they change? When did they become… so strong?"
Again a long, silent communication seemed to pass between Flint and the old monk. At last Sulphur's lined face went slack. "A year ago or more, just after the season of cold. That is when I first dreamed of the tortoise. That is when I first began to hear His voice."
"And what came to you just before the dreams began?" Flint spoke as gently as if he were the priest and the old man some hapless, troubled penitent. "You found something, or someone gave something to you-isn't that true?"
Chert could not help being disturbed by this newest face of the child in whom he and Opal had put so much of their hope. What had been done to this boy behind the Shadowline? More important, was he even a boy, or some kind of Twilight dweller that only looked like a child? What kind of serpent had they taken to their breasts?
"Yes, what?" said Chaven with an edge of hunger in his voice. "What came to you?"
Sulphur waved his hand. "I do not know what you mean. I am tired now. Go away." In his lap, Iktis the fitch grew anxious; chittering, the creature vanished up the old man's sleeve.
"That is enough!" said Nickel. "You must go now!"
"No one will take it away from you," said Flint as if no one else had spoken. "That I promise, Grandfather. But tell the truth. Even the gods must respect truth."
"Leave now!" Nickel looked like he meant to grab the boy and drag him away, but Chert squeezed the monk's arm hard and held him back.
The old man's silence grew so long and deep that for the first time they could hear the squeak of ladders being moved on the far side of the room and even the murmur of whispered conversations between the other Metamorphic Brothers, who had not failed to notice what was going on at the center of the garden. Sulphur looked down at his own hands, knotted in his lap.
"My little Iktis found it," he said at last in a voice so quiet everyone but Flint leaned forward. "He brought it to me, dragging it all the way. He loves shiny things and sometimes he goes as far up as the town. I have had to send back many a woman's bracelet or necklace with the brothers who go to market. Sometimes Iktis even goes upground. And sometimes he goes… deep."
"Can you show it to me?" Flint asked him. "I promise no one will take it from you."
Again the silence thickened. At last Sulphur reached into his thick robe, which was frosted with mold along the crest of every wrinkle. Iktis, still hidden in the old man's sleeve, loosed a twitter of protest as Sulphur withdrew a shiny thing that hung around his neck on a braided ratskin cord.
"It is my seeing-glass," he said. "I knew it was meant for me the moment I saw it."
It was the thing he had been holding when they first saw him, a small, thin shard of crystal in an irregular silvery metal frame that had clearly been built around the crystal's natural shape and decorated with intricate little carvings even Chert's strong eyes could not quite make out. The metal was not one that he recognized, and neither was the style of the metalwork or even the crystal itself, although it was hard to be certain in the poor light of the fungus garden.
Chaven took a deep breath. "That is Qar work," he said dreamily. "Yes. The voice of the tortoise. A cage for the white owl. Yes, of course…"
"And when the little animal brought you this," said Flint, as calm as ever, "then the dreams of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone began."
"But I have always dreamed of the gods!"
"Just let me…" Chaven reached out his hand toward the oblivious Sulphur; the physician's breath was sawing in his throat, his eyes staring like a sleepwalker's. "Yes, let me…" His voice had grown hoarse, a loud whisper. "I must…"
Chert had seen this before, if only briefly: Chaven's mirror-madness was upon him. He knew as surely as if it had been planned that in another moment the physician would snatch the crystal away from the old man and chaos would follow. In the end they would likely be sent away from the temple, their last and best hiding place.
Chert kicked Chaven in the shin, right on the same spot the physician had struck so painfully on one of the stone tables a short while earlier. The physician let out a shriek and began to hop up and down, trying to grab at this new wound. A moment later he fell, knocking over a pile of tools. Startled and suspicious, the old monk slipped his shard of crystal back into the safety of his moldy robe.
"What is going on here?" Nickel shouted. "Have you all gone mad?"
"Chaven hit his leg again," said Chert. "Nothing more. Help me get him back to the temple-the poor fellow's bleeding from the shin. Flint, you are needed too. Thank Grandfather Sulphur for his help and let's go."
The boy looked at the old man, whose face had gone stony and secretive again. Flint did not say anything to him, but turned and walked out of the garden, leaving Chert and
Nickel to follow with the hopping, whimpering physician propped between them.
The first thing Ferras Vansen saw was a pale, yellow-green star hovering in the darkness above him. It was strange a star should move in such a lively manner: not only was it swooping back and forth across the darkness in a series of loops like a browsing bumblebee, it seemed to be talking to him as well.
Stars don't talk. Ferras Vansen was fairly certain about that. Stars don't… bumble, either.
"… Are you…?" asked the star. "Can… hear…?"
He was a bit disappointed: he had expected that if a star ever did speak to him it would have more important things to say. Weren't stars supposed to be the souls of fallen heroes? Had they all hung in the sky so long they had become simpletons, the way Vansen's father had in that dreadful last year of his life?
For a moment he wondered if he was dead himself and had somehow made his way into the heavens-not that he had done anything to deserve a hero's place-but thinking of his father made him wonder if death could be so… fuzzy, so confusing. It didn't seem likely.
"… He… more water now…" said the star.
Vansen tried to focus on the moving light. He soon realized a strange thing: he could see something beyond it-beyond the star! And not the black curtain of night he would have expected, but something that looked like a face. Could it be the great god Perin Skylord himself, inspecting Vansen's fallen soul? Or was it Kernios, the keeper of the dead? A trembling cold moved over him at the thought of that grim god. But if it was Kernios, he looked familiar. In fact, the god of the underworld looked like… Brother Antimony…?
Vansen finally recognized that the yellow-green glow he had been staring at so blearily since his senses had returned was only the coral lamp bound to Antimony's forehead.
"I'm… not… dead?" His mouth was dry as sand. It was hard to make words.
"He's speaking sense again," said Antimony with clear relief. "No, Captain Vansen, you're not dead."
"What happened?" A memory rose up like a dark cloud. "We found them. Those things…"
"They used a kind of poison," Antimony said. "A powder they blew through a tube, as our ancestors used to do. We were fortunate it did not kill you. Also, you blocked the way so the rest of us were not harmed by it." He helped Vansen to sit up, then gave him some water. The other Funderlings crouched nearby, bald Sledge Jasper and his fellow warders. To Vansen's uncertain eye they all seemed to be present. "Is everyone alive?"
"All of us, thank the Earth Elders," said Antimony. "And look!" He pointed to a huge lump of darkness lying against the tunnel wall, something big as a horse. "One of the deep ettins-we killed it!"
"I did most of the killing," said Jasper with pleasure. "Let's speak the truth, Brother! Put my pointy bit right in its eye."
"What is it?" said Vansen. He crawled toward the massive corpse, then wished he hadn't: it gave off a smell so rank and musty that it made his eyes water. "You said… ettin?"
"Krja'azel," said Antimony, the word so strange and harsh on his tongue that the kindhearted young Funderling suddenly seemed a different kind of creature entirely. "Something we have not seen since my great-grandfather's time, and even then rarely."
"But those were wild," said Jasper. "This one fought beside the fairies."
"And what is this under it?" asked Vansen, holding his nose. At first he had thought it was some sort of fin at the back of the thing's neck, but now he saw that what protruded there were stubby little fingers. He tried to move the ettin, but the thing was several times his own weight.
"One of its masters," said Sledge Jasper. "The ones with the powder-pipes. We saw them all rush past in their hoods when you fell, but when I spiked that thing in the eye, this one must have been caught underneath it."
Vansen began to shove at the stinking Scraper. "Could he still be alive?"
The wardthane's laugh was unpleasant. "You don't know how long you've been knocked senseless, do you?"
Antimony came to help him, and after watching with grim amusement for a while as they struggled, Jasper and his men joined too. At last they all managed to roll the deep ettin's corpse away. The figure under it was smaller than Antimony, and the weight of the creature that had fallen on it had pressed its face into a distorted death mask, but it was still plain even to Vansen what it was.
"By the gods," he said, "I think it's a Funderling!"
"Earth Elders protect us," Antimony said in a breathless voice. "One of our own?"
"No such thing," Sledge Jasper snapped. "Look. Look at his hands. Do I have hands like that? Do you?" The small corpse had broad, square fingertips and the nails were as long and thick as a mole's claws.
Vansen looked at the twisted, gape-mouthed face, the lower half of which was covered in a beard as thick and unkempt as black moss. "I've seen people like this before. In Greatdeeps, behind the Shadowline."
"By the Pool's Light, he's right," said Antimony softly. "It's a drow." He made a sign on his forehead and breast. "Now I have seen everything. A drow in Funderling Town."
"What is a drow?"
"They are our… relatives, Captain," Antimony told him. "Long ago, they followed the Qar into the north, but I did not know any still survived."
"I've seen more than a few," said Vansen. "These must have come down from the Shadowlands with the fairy army."
"This is bad," Jasper said. "Very bad. They are just as clever in the ground as we are. If it comes to a fight, we could baffle the upgrounders… but drows?"
"More important," Vansen told them all, "whether it is these drows they send or others-although I will pray they send no more ettins-the fairies have finally begun their attack on Southmarch itself. Or at least on the tunnels down here. But why now, when they could have attacked any time? There must be a reason! Why should they abruptly end what you've told me has been a long time of quiet, almost of peace?" He stared up the tunnel as though he could see all the way to the councils of the fairy folk and discover what he burned to know. "By all the gods, why now?"
"No one can understand the ways of the Old Ones," Jasper said. "And now they send our own lost cousins against us." He straightened up, glaring down at the bearded corpse. "I will gladly kill Funderling Town's enemies-I will wipe their blood on my breeches and laugh-but I will not take much pleasure killing drows. "
"Hold now, hold," said Antimony thoughtfully. "Yes, this all seems bad-but perhaps there is some good fortune here, too. We will find it hard to hold off this Twilight army for long, even with Captain Vansen's help. We do not have the men, the weapons, or the training. They will soon overrun us."
"I must have missed the part where you explained our good fortune," Vansen said.
Antimony smiled a little. "Simply this. If we can talk to no one else on the other side, we should be able to talk to our own cousins, however distant they might be." He looked to Vansen. "Do you see my meaning?"
"Ah. Ah, yes, I think I do." Vansen's estimation of the young monk rose even higher. "Which means we must capture one of these… drows… alive." He frowned. "But what of this one?"
"We will bury him properly," said Antimony. "Under stone, as we do our own. Help me make a cairn."
"A cairn?" Jasper almost shouted. "For this? But he… he was…!"
"Properly. Under stone." The young monk spoke with such cold conviction that even Sledge Jasper, taken aback, could only nod. "If his kin come back, it will show them we still hold to the old ways-that whatever the Twilight folk have told them, we are still one people."
17
Fish Heads
"Rhantys wrote, 'Far larger than a man is the Ettyn, a murderous ogre with thick clawed hands like a mole who makes his home in the earth.' It is known that during the second war against the Qar ettins undermined the defensive walls of Northmarch castle, which led to the defeat and destruction of that city, now lost behind the Shadowline."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
For a long time after she had ca
ught hold of the piling Qinnitan could do no more than cling to it while the breakers dragged her up and down against the pier's armor of barnacles. The salt water made her dozens of scratches and cuts burn like fire, but she had strength enough only to hang on and try to catch her breath. When Pigeon's arms began to slip from her neck she nearly let go of the slimy wooden pier to hold onto him, but she was terrified the current would drag them both away under the dock and she wouldn't be strong enough to find another safe haven.
"Wake up!" She choked and spat green water. "Pigeon! Hang on to my neck!"
The boy made a guttural noise of exhaustion and renewed his grip as well as he could. She had been fortunate her foot had touched him when she had first risen to the surface after plunging off the ship, and fortunate again that a piece of flaming mast had missed them when it hit the water a few moments later, just as she surfaced with the boy.
Another wave, small compared to open ocean but still far beyond her power to resist, flung Qinnitan against the piling again. When she opened her eyes several new cuts crisscrossed her arm, a net made of little streaks of red that disappeared as another wave splashed across them.
People were shouting and thumping across the planks above her head and the smoke of the burning ship was beginning to creep along the water. It was hopeless to stay here, only a matter of time until she lost her grip or the smoke overwhelmed her again. She was already rasping at every breath like a cart with a broken wheel. She had never been so exhausted in all her life.
There. A crude ladder of some kind hung down to the water on the far side of the dock. She hoped it was a ladder, anyway-it was a hundred yards away and her eyes were stinging from seawater and blood. She thanked Nushash and the Hive that she had spent lots of time in the deep bathing pool at the Seclusion and had learned how to swim a little. Still, she couldn't swim that far with one arm.
"You must stay on my back and hold on no matter what," she told Pigeon. "Can you hear me? " She waited until she heard him grunt. "Don't let go, even if I go under the water for a moment."
