Shadowrise s-3

by Tad Williams

  In the center of everything three massive figures stared down upon the gates, their shapes indistinct even in the brightest glare except for the icy, star-bright gleam of their eyes. One of them held a massive hammer forged from some dull gray metal, but the other two held spears, one spear double-pronged and green as the ocean, the other as black as a hole in the ground.

  Barrick knew those three, although it terrified him to admit it, even to himself.

  The middle figure raised his hammer and what seemed like a storm of bright shadows rushed forward and flung itself against the walls of the great castle, fiery shapes, glowing shapes, changing shapes, their combined radiance so great that Barrick could scarcely make out what was happening. For a moment it seemed that the city, for all its size and magnificence, must simply burn away like a dry forest in a raging firestorm. Then an even brighter light began to burn like the rising sun and the attackers fell back from the walls in disarray.

  Only two shapes came forward from the besieged city, but they drove back the attackers. One was a great sphere of blazing amber light, the other a chilly, blue-white glow that somehow remained visible even beside the greater golden brilliance. The shapes of two riders sitting proud and tall atop their mounts could be seen within these two powerful lights, each rider carrying a sword; it was impossible to tell whether the glow came from the figures themselves, from the blades they carried, or from the armor they wore, but faced with the bright radiance of the two the besieging army now scattered in all directions.

  The roar in Barrick's ears became louder, so that his skull boomed and echoed as though a storm beat inside it. He could scarcely see for the blazing light. The three shapes on the hill spurred their mounts forward, rushing down the slope, the hooves of their monstrous horses not even touching the ground. They raised their weapons and the very sky seemed to crack open to bring unending darkness stabbing down at them all.

  And then, suddenly, they were all gone-the fire-women, the air-men, the beautiful figures in their terrible anger, all the fighting and all the fighters ended and vanished in an instant. Only the castle itself remained, its pale, shining towers now toppled like trees after a winter storm, broken and scattered so that the pieces gleamed in the muddy ashes like droplets of molten gold on the floor of a forge.

  Barrick had only seen the mad beauty that had preceded this ruination for a short moment, but as he stared at the destruction he found himself mourning what had been lost with every nerve of his being.

  Then, without warning, he found himself plunging downward. The ruins of the castle were changing even as he rushed toward them: what had been gleaming gold, pale blue-green, or creamy white now grew back black and twisted, and what had been translucent became full of shadow. The castle that had been so marvelous was now only a dusty, deserted cobweb where a shining, rain-shimmering spider's net had once hung. The beauty was gone, but in some strange way it remained.

  It was the same. It was completely different. And Barrick fell into it like wind blowing down a well.

  He had only a moment to realize he was lying facedown on a floor of flat, polished, and carefully interlocked black stones. He heard strange skittering noises getting closer, and then, a moment later, the whisper of soft footfalls.

  He opened his eyes to a nightmare. The faces pressing down on him were bestial, with rolling, idiot eyes and gaping fanged mouths. Only the shape of their heads was vaguely human. That was the worst part.

  "Ah," said a voice behind him-a cold, unfamiliar voice. "Very good, my dear ones. You have caught a trespasser."

  32

  Mysteries and Evasions "Another tribe of fairies described in Ximander's Book are the Tricksters, Qar who seem to be the bargain-making fairies of many human legends. Only Ximander and a few other scholars claim to know anything about them, and since Ximander died before his book was read by any others, his sources are unknown and therefore his conclusions are untrustworthy."

  -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" "

  In truth, it is not so strange at all," saidBrother Antimony, warming to his subject. "The tongue the prisoner speaks is much like the old language of the Feldspar Grammars. You may not know this, but the Grammars were written on perfect mica sheets, each one shaped from a single crystal, and they contain stories of the Eldest Days found nowhere else…"

  Vansen cleared his throat, interrupting the enthusiastic young monk. "That's all very well, Antimony, but we need to know what this fellow is saying now."

  He flushed so deeply that Vansen could see it even in the dim light that Funderlings loved so much. "My apologies…"

  "Just go on, son," Cinnabar told him. "Talk to the prisoner, if you can."

  The young monk turned to the trembling, scowling drow, who clearly thought he had been brought to the refectory to be tortured. Two Funderling warders stood behind the fierce little bearded creature, ready for trouble, but Vansen wasn't worried. He had seen many men being questioned and this one showed signs of the false, blustery courage that would collapse quickly.

  "Ask him why they have attacked us here in our home," said Vansen.

  Antimony uttered a halting string of deep, throaty sounds. Some of the other Funderlings looked bemused, as though it had a familiar ring, but to Vansen it was all noise. The shaggy-bearded drow looked up at the monk, resentment in every dirty line of his face, but did not answer.

  "Ask him why they follow the dark lady." He struggled for a moment to remember the name Gyir had given her. "Ask him why the drows follow Yasammez."

  This time Antimony's question made the drow stare in surprise. After a moment, he said something-short and clearly reluctantly given, but something.

  Antimony cleared his throat. "He says that… Lady Porcupine, I think that is the name… that she will crush you. That she will have revenge against the Sunlanders. I think that is right."

  Vansen suppressed a smile. Slogans-that was what you got from prisoners who did not actually know why they had been fighting. "I'm going to step to the back of the room, Antimony," he told the monk. "You and Cinnabar ask him some questions about why drows would take up arms against their brothers-against Funderlings."

  He gestured as if in frustration and walked away. Cinnabar leaned in and began to ask questions, Antimony carefully translating. Vansen noticed that every now and then Cinnabar recognized one of the foreign words and repeated it. Vansen could not help being impressed by the magister's wits.

  Thus he underscores the connection between them-see, drow, he is practically speaking your tongue now!

  Vansen stood quietly in the background as Cinnabar continued asking questions, leaning heavily on the idea that the Funderlings were closer relatives to the drows than the Qar leaders they served, but still the prisoner would not tell them anything.

  Ah, but if we have created even the smallest bit of sympathy or shame… Vansen thought. "Ask him what his name is."

  Antimony looked surprised, but asked. The drow looked shamefaced, but grunted a reply.

  "Kronyuul, he says-that is 'Browncoal' in the old tongue, I think."

  "Good," said Vansen, still speaking quietly so as not to draw attention to himself. "Then ask Master Coal why exactly his Lady Porcupine wants our castle. What will she do with it if she gains it? Why does she waste so many drow lives to take this castle?"

  After Antimony had translated the drow stared back at him, apparently at a loss for words. At last he began to murmur. It went on for some time. The young monk leaned close to hear, then straightened up.

  "He says the dark lady is angry. The king of the Qar would not let her simply slaughter us wicked folk-he calls us something like 'sun-land-dwellers'-but forced her instead into some kind of a pact. The dark lady did her best to honor that pact, but it failed. Her… I do not understand the word he uses… her relative, her friend, something-it is a little like our word 'clansman'… was killed, and so now she says the pact is broken. She blames the fairy-king, but she is also angry because of h
er kins-man." Antimony sat back. "That seems to be all he knows-he is only a petty officer of the belowground army…"

  Vansen's heart was suddenly beating fast. "Perin's hammer, I don't believe it. The pact? Did he say pact?"

  Antimony shrugged. "Bargain, pact, treaty-the word is not precisely the same as…"

  "Silence! No, I beg your pardon, but do not say anything for a moment, Antimony." Vansen did his best to remember. Yes, he thought, it all seemed to fit. "Ask him if he knows the name of the lady's kinsman-the one who was killed. The one whose death ended the pact."

  The young monk, surprised by Vansen's vehemence, turned and passed the question along to the drow, who was looking less frightened and more puzzled every moment. "He wants to know if you are going to kill him," Antimony said after listening to the man's reply. "And he says that he thinks the kinsman's name was Storm Lantern."

  "I knew it!" Vansen slapped his hand on the stone table, making the prisoner jump. "Tell him no, Antimony-no, we are not going to kill him. In fact, he is going to be set free to lead me back to his mistress. Yes, I will go and speak to her. I will tell her the truth about the Storm Lantern and the pact. Because I was there."

  Haltingly, the monk translated Ferras Vansen's words to the prisoner. The small room fell silent. Vansen looked around. Cinnabar, Brother Antimony, Malachite Copper, even the drow-all were staring at him as though he had utterly lost his mind.

  Chaven's bed still hadn't been slept in. In fact, there was no sign the physician had even been in his cell.

  "He's not here," Flint said in his solemn, high-pitched voice.

  "I know he's not," Chert growled. "We haven't seen him for days-not since he let you run off when he was supposed to be watching you. But I want to talk to him. Did he say anything to you about going somewhere? "

  "He's not here," Flint said again.

  "You're going to make my head cave in, boy." Chert led him out of the room.

  "Captain Vansen isn't here," Cinnabar said. "He's preparing for a trip where he'll risk his life to do something I don't quite understand and which seems to have no chance of succeeding in any case." He sighed. "I hope you have some better news for us."

  "I'm afraid not," Chert told him. "I found no sign of Chaven anywhere in the temple."

  Cinnabar frowned. "That is very strange and worrying. He is under threat of death from Hendon Tolly, so why would he go upground into the castle, or even into Funderling Town?"

  "Let us hope he has not gone off on his own somewhere and fallen," said Malachite Copper. "So much is dark down here, especially beyond Five Arches-we might never even find his body."

  Brother Nickel was furious. "I told you it would make trouble-a stranger who is not even of our tribe wandering willy-nilly in the temple grounds and beyond! Bad enough that Chert Blue Quartz's child found his way into the Mysteries. What if this… upgrounder, this magician-priest, should do the same? What kind of misfortune might he bring down on us all?"

  "Why should Chaven want to enter the Mysteries?" asked Chert.

  "Why shouldn't he?" Nickel was so angry he could barely control himself. "It seems everyone thinks they have business in our most sacred places these days! Upgrounders, children, even the fairies!"

  "Fairies?" Chert turned to Cinnabar and Heliotrope Jasper in confusion. "What does that mean? I've heard nothing of this."

  "Jasper and his warders have stopped a few attempts to dig into tunnels beneath the temple levels," said Malachite Copper. "But that proves nothing-likely the fairies were only trying to find a way to take us unaware. Then after beating us, they could surprise the castle's defenders by appearing from the gates of Funderling Town, already well inside the castle walls."

  "You are deluding yourself," said Nickel. "They seek the power in the depths." He glared at Chert as though the Blue Quartz family were somehow complicit in this vile plan. "They seek to control the Mysteries."

  "Why? Why would the fairies want such a thing? What could that even mean?" Chert looked at Nickel's angry face and saw a flash of sudden fright there, like a child caught in an obvious lie. "Hold a moment. There is something going on here that I don't understand. What is it?"

  "Tell him, or I will," said Cinnabar. "Chert's earned our trust."

  "But Magister!" Nickel looked distraught. "Soon everyone will know the secrets…"

  "The Guild granted me authority and I will decide, Brother. Besides, perhaps the time for secrecy is over." The magister sighed and slumped back in his chair. "Still, may the Earth Elders forgive me, but I wish this burden had passed to another generation."

  Chert looked from face to face. "I don't understand any of this. Can someone please tell me what it's about?"

  Despite his comparative youth, Nickel had the face of a much older man, and just now he looked as though he had bitten into the sourest radish in a harsh crop. "This is… this is not the first time… that the Qar have tried to get into the Mysteries. They have been there many times."

  Chert could only stare. "What?"

  "As I said," snapped Nickel. "They had been coming for as long as the Metamorphic Brothers have kept records. The elders of the brothers and of the Guild knew it and permitted it, more or less-it is a complicated story. But then it ended, and it has been a long time since they last came. Two hundred years and more."

  Chert shook his head. "I still don't understand. What did they do in the Mysteries?"

  "We don't know," said Cinnbar. "There is an old tale of some monks who snuck down into the Mysteries and tried to spy on the fairies-or the Qar, as the fairies call themselves-but the tale says that those men lost their minds. The fairies came only seldom-perhaps once a century at most-and always in small groups, which may be why it was permitted. The tradition was old when the first Stonecutter's Guild was formed seven centuries ago. They always came through the Limestone Gate from Stormstone's longest road, the one that leads to the mainland. They stayed only a few days and never took anything of value or harmed anything or anyone. For a long time our ancestors did not interfere, or so the story goes. Then, after the battle at Coldgray Moor, the Qar stopped coming."

  "But if they had a way to gain entry, why didn't they just use it again this time?" Chert asked.

  "Because we sealed the Limestone Gate after the second war with the fairies," said Brother Nickel with an angry sniff. "They proved themselves untrustworthy. That is why they've had to dig their way in from the surface. And that is why they try so hard to reach our holy Mysteries!"

  Chert rubbed his forehead, as if to knead what he had just heard into a more sensible shape. "Even if that's true, it doesn't explain the why at all, Nickel. Does nobody know what they did down there, or why they were permitted in the mysteries in the first place?"

  Cinnabar nodded. "In truth, it seems that in a past age the Qar helped to build the Mysteries-no, my apologies, Nickel, I do not mean to blaspheme. I meant to say they helped build the tunnels and halls in the depths, not the Mysteries themselves."

  "Fracture and fissure!" Chert felt as though he had been struck by a rockslide, as though he were being carried down and away from everything he knew. "And I only learn this now? Am I the only person in Funderling Town who didn't know?"

  "This is new to me, also," said Copper. "I do not know what to say."

  "It is new to all of us, even me," Cinnabar said. "Highwardens Sard and Caprock called me to them before they sent me here and told me. Only the highwardens themselves and a select few chosen by the innermost circle of the Guild have known this. For Nickel it was the same."

  "It's true," said Brother Nickel. "The abbot told me when he became ill. 'This is a young man's time,' he said to me. 'I am too old to keep these secrets to myself any longer.' " The monk scowled. "I have been given more generous gifts."

  " 'We do not keep Grandfather's ax because it looks handsome in the hall,' as the old saying goes," Cinnabar told him. "We are carrying the trust of all who came before us and all who come after. We must do what is right."

/>   "Then we must pray to the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone that your Captain Vansen has not lost his mind," said Brother Nickel. "That he can achieve something more than getting himself killed. Otherwise, we may throw back another attack, perhaps two, but eventually we will fall and the Mysteries will be theirs."

  "Not just the Mysteries," said Malachite Copper. "If we fall, then Funderling Town will fall, and then the castle above will be theirs, too."

  "What are we doing, Father?"

  It still seemed strange for the boy to call him that, almost as if the child were playing the part of a dutiful son in one of the Mystery Plays. "I am frightened for Chaven and I want to look for him," Chert explained. "But I am not going to make the mistake of leaving you alone again. By the Elders, I miss your mother!"

  Flint looked back with calm eyes. "I miss her, too."

  "Maybe I should send you to her in Funderling Town. It would keep you out of trouble-or at least keep you out of trouble in the temple."

  "No!" For the first time the boy seemed agitated. "Do not send me away, Father. I have things to do here. I need to be here."

  "What nonsense is that, child? What could you need to do?" Flint's certainty made Chert uneasy. "You're not going to go rummaging in the library anymore, do you hear me? Nor make any surprise excursions down into the Mysteries. As it is, the brothers have barely forgiven you or me."

  "I need to stay in the temple," the boy said stubbornly. "I don't know why, but I do."

  "Well, we can talk of it more later," Chert said. "For now you can come with me. But you stick by my side, is that understood?"

  In truth, he was just as glad to have the boy's company. Chert was growing more and more worried about the physician, increasingly certain that Chaven had not simply wandered off somewhere. Either he had been taken by the Qar, which was a frightening thought, or he was in the grip of his mirror-madness again, which might lead to something even worse. Chert didn't plan to search anywhere very dangerous, although nowhere beneath Funderling Town would ever feel completely safe again after the last year's madness, but if several uneventful days had not passed since the last Qar attack he would not have dared bring the boy out of the temple. Even so, he had slipped both a stone pick and hand ax into his belt, and carried a greater than ordinary amount of the lamp coral.