Shadows Fall

by Simon R. Green

  Time passed. There were no landmarks by which distance could be judged, and Gold wasn’t really all that surprised to find his watch had stopped working. The only measure left to him was the growing ache in his legs and hunched back. But eventually they came to a gate, and had to stop. It filled the tunnel from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, huge and heavy, built from a pale, grey veined stone in the form of a giant head. It was some kind of animal, but there were elements of the snarling face that were disturbingly human. The muzzle stretched outwards into the tunnel, blocking the way forward with huge blocky teeth clamped together. The eyes were closed, but it looked as though it might be listening, and waiting. There was no way past the head, and Gold couldn’t take his eyes off it. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to get the hell out of there. The sense of danger and menace was so thick he could all but feel it on the still air.

  “They call it the Watcher,” said Morrison softly. “Don’t let the closed eyes fool you; it knows we’re here. Don’t ask me whether it’s dead or alive. Legend has it the beast was alive when the Faerie set it here to guard their home, and it sat here so long it petrified to stone. No one knows what its name or species might have been; whatever it was, it’s extinct now. Even the Faerie don’t remember.

  “They say the Watcher can recognize truth and treachery in the soul, and know a true and honest man from a villain. It can see into the dark places of the heart, and see every little secret you ever had, even the ones you don’t allow yourself to remember, except in dreams. Step right up and the jaws will open, and if you’re brave and true you can walk on into the hidden home of the Faerie.”

  “And if you’re not?” said Gold, just a little more harshly than he’d meant.

  “Then the Watcher will eat you up, soul and all. Pleasant little legend, isn’t it? But that’s the Faerie for you. Every story has a moral, every legend a sting in its tail. Well, Lester, what do you think? Do we turn back, or do we go on? It’s up to you.”

  Gold looked at the Watcher, and the closed stone eyes looked back at him. There were dark stains on the huge teeth that might have been old, long-dried blood. He looked at Morrison, who was regarding him narrowly, and smiled coldly. He was the Man of Action, the Mystery Avenger, and he’d faced worse than this in his time.

  “We go on,” he said flatly. “I faced the Gibbet of Doom and the Howling Skulls, the Phantom of the Bloody Tower and the Order of the Immaculate Razor. It’ll take more than this to make me turn back or step aside.”

  Morrison nodded approvingly, and Gold wished he was as certain as he sounded. Just staring at the Watcher made his hackles rise, and the gusting breeze passing in and out of the snarling jaws seemed more like breathing with every moment. He nodded politely to Morrison.

  “After you.”

  “Oh, no,” said Morrison. “After you.”

  “No, no, I insist.”

  “Age before beauty.”

  Gold gave Morrison a hard look. “I thought you said you’d been this way before?”

  “I have.”

  “Then what are you being so cautious for?”

  “I’m not! I’m just being polite.”

  “Well, I’m feeling less polite by the minute, and I’m damned if I’m going in first. I don’t like the look on this thing’s face. It looks very much like the kind of creature that might have an extremely unpleasant sense of humour.”

  Morrison raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were supposed to be one of the great old superheroes?”

  “I was. And I didn’t get that way by taking dumb chances. Now, are you going to walk into that thing’s mouth of your own free will, or am I going to have to pick you up and throw you in?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be like that about it,” said Morrison. He walked up to the huge grinning jaws, and the bobbing lights clustered thickly about him, as though fascinated to see what would happen. The jaws opened slowly, stone grinding on stone as they retracted into the floor and ceiling. A series of low creaking sounds filled the tunnel, as of ancient machinery stirring to life again, or the stretching of long unused muscles and tendons. Morrison stepped into the mouth of the beast, and looked back at Gold. “You worry too much, Lester. It’s a wonder to me you haven’t got ulcers.”

  “That’s as maybe,” said Gold, watching carefully. “My writers never intended me as cannon fodder.”

  Morrison walked on and disappeared from sight, and the jaws slowly came together again to form their impenetrable barrier. Gold was almost sure the grin was now more pronounced. He glanced at the remaining will-o’-the-wisps hovering curiously around him, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, and walked steadily forward. The jaws opened again, gaping wide before him. He never doubted for a moment that he was a good man and true, and therefore in no danger whatsoever, but still… there was no denying his life had taken many different turns since he became real. The real world was much more complicated, and he’d become… complicated too. He strode on into the maw of the beast, head held high, and his breathing slowly eased as he realized nothing was happening. He’d never doubted for a moment, but it was nice to know he was brave and true, after all. The tension went out of his back and shoulders, and he even managed a small if rather sour smile. For all he knew, Morrison had been pulling his leg. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. He looked back at the great teeth closing slowly behind him, and bowed briefly.

  “Thank you, Watcher.”

  You’re welcome, said a dry rasping voice in his mind.

  Gold glanced back, startled, and then looked suspiciously at Morrison, waiting patiently in the tunnel ahead. He wanted very much to ask Morrison if he’d heard the voice too, but he had a strong suspicion Morrison would just say What voice? and he didn’t think he could handle that just at the moment. He shrugged mentally, and went on to join Morrison. You’d think living in Shadows Fall all these years would harden you to things like that, but his thirty years as a florist had cushioned him from most of the town’s wilder aspects. Which was at least partly why he’d been content to stay a florist for so long. After eighty-seven adventures and forty-nine issues of his own comic, he felt he was owed a peaceful retirement.

  He and Morrison walked on down the earth tunnel in their pool of shimmering light, the will-o’-the-wisps alternately darting ahead and falling behind but never quite losing touch with their charges. Nothing happened for a long time, and Gold actually started to get bored again. He studied the curved earth walls curiously. They were smooth, almost polished, with no signs of workmanship to suggest how the tunnel had been dug. Gold frowned slightly. There should have been something; tool marks, signs of bracing or transport… something.

  Morrison stopped suddenly, and Gold stopped with him. The young bard cocked his head slightly to one side, as though listening to something faint or distant. Gold concentrated, but all he could hear was their own quiet breathing. They were far below the surface, a long way from the sounds of the natural world. And then, very faintly, he heard footsteps, slow and unhurried, approaching out of the gloom ahead. A few of the glowing lights started down the corridor to see who it was, and then apparently thought better of it, and hurried back to Gold and Morrison. The footsteps grew slowly louder, though still strangely muffled. Gold glared into the darkness ahead, and then stopped and looked back the way they’d come. The sound could have been coming from either direction. He glanced at Morrison, but he looked baffled too. And then a figure stepped out of the wall just ahead of them, like someone appearing out of a thick fog. Gold fell back a step instinctively, and Morrison’s hand clamped down painfully tight on his arm to keep him from any further movement.

  The figure hesitated before them, trembling slightly as though chilled by an unfelt breeze. It was basically human, but impossibly gaunt and desiccated, to the point where it seemed merely a collection of bones held together by skin and gristle. The face was barely distinct enough to hide the grinning skull beneath, and the staring eyes seemed very wide. The figu
re raised a bony hand in some kind of gesture, and then stepped forward and disappeared into the wall opposite, sinking into the solid earth like a ghost. Gold just had time to blink, and then more of the spindly figures trooped out of the right-hand wall, crossed before Gold and Morrison, and plunged into the opposite wall, all of them come and gone in a second, like a fleeting thought or impression. Morrison finally let go of Gold’s arm, and he rubbed it pointedly to get the blood moving again.

  “Sorry about that,” said Morrison, “But I didn’t want to risk you doing anything impulsive. Those things may look like they’re knitted together out of pipe-cleaners, but they’re actually pretty damned powerful in their own domain. They don’t like strangers, they don’t like being stared at, and most of all they don’t like people. Not unless they’re served with a nice white sauce and a few mushrooms to bring out the flavour.”

  Gold frowned at the point where the figures had disappeared into the earth wall. It didn’t look any less solid than any other part, and it certainly seemed firm enough when he prodded it with an inquisitive finger. He looked back at Morrison.

  “Were those… elves?” he said finally.

  “One kind. They’re kobolds. Miners, basically, but they take care of any and all matters to do with the earth and what lies in it. And don’t let the ghost act fool you; they can be incredibly strong, not to mention downright vicious, when they need to be. They’re not very pretty, but then, in their job they don’t get out much.”

  “So they’re the ones who dug this tunnel?” said Gold, with the air of someone trying to stick to the point despite numerous distractions.

  “No. This wasn’t dug. Wait a minute… oh, shit.” Morrison broke off, knelt down and placed one hand flat against the earth floor. “Stand very still, Lester. You’re about to get a look at what was responsible for this tunnel. If we’re lucky, it won’t get a look at us.”

  He straightened up, his eyes fixed on the tunnel ahead. Gold looked quickly about him, but refrained from drawing his gun. Partly because he felt Morrison wouldn’t approve, but mostly because he didn’t have anything to aim it at. The tunnel floor vibrated beneath his feet, briefly at first and then in long surges, growing steadily stronger. Something was coming. Something very big and very heavy.

  A dozen feet before them, the ground surged up and burst apart as something underneath it rose up out of the depths. The ground shook rhythmically, like a heartbeat in the earth, and something appeared in the widening crack. It was a sickly white, its surface glowing and glistening, ten feet across and more. It took Gold a long time to recognize what it was, because of the sheer size, but when a thick ridge appeared in the white flesh, followed some time later by another, he finally understood what he was looking at. It was a single segment of a giant worm, burrowing through the earth. Gold started to back away a step and then caught himself. His hackles rose and his stomach tightened, in simple instinctive fear. The white flesh glistened wetly as vast segments moved ponderously past the crack in the floor. Each segment had to be ten to twelve feet long, and there seemed no end to them as the worm ploughed on through the earth. Gold no longer needed to ask how the tunnel had been made.

  “Cromm Cruach,” said Morrison softly. “The Great Wurm.”

  Finally the glistening segments sank back into the earth, and the crack closed over it. The rumbling below died away, and the tunnel floor was quiet again. Morrison breathed a little more easily, and smiled briefly at Gold.

  “I hope you appreciated that. The Faerie must have laid it on specially to impress you. Cromm Cruach doesn’t usually show himself to outsiders.”

  “Why would they want to impress me?” said Gold. “I doubt they’ve ever even heard of me. Besides, they don’t know I’m coming.”

  “Oh, they know,” said Morrison. “You’d be surprised what they know. Let’s get going. We’re almost there.”

  He set off down the tunnel, stepping carefully over the narrow crack in the floor, and Gold followed him. The air slowly grew warmer, and subtle scents replaced the acrid smell of wet earth. Dim, muffled sounds broke the tunnel’s quiet, too distant to identify, but poignant with promises of meaning. The will-o’-the-wisps disappeared between one moment and the next, revealing a bright light somewhere up ahead. Gold was sorry to see the little spirits go. They’d seemed friendly enough, and he was beginning to think he could use a few friends in this strange new place Morrison had brought him to.

  And then the tunnel turned suddenly to the left up ahead, and Morrison stopped. Gold stopped with him, and Morrison looked at him seriously.

  “This is it, Lester. We’ve arrived. The land beneath the hill, the last holding of the Faerie. From now on be careful, be courteous, and watch what you say. They have a largely spoken tradition of ceremony and law, so anything said can have binding properties. Don’t accept anything to eat or drink from them, or accept any gift. But for God’s sake be very polite about it. They’re very keen here on duels, and they take their honour seriously. Remember, these people are aristocracy, the highest of the high. Don’t show me up.”

  “Relax,” said Gold. “I know when to tip the butler, and which sleeve to blow my nose on.”

  Morrison winced. “This seems less and less like a good idea all the time. Let’s go. I wish I felt lucky…”

  He strode quickly forward and round the bend in the corridor, looking unhappy but determined, like a man late for a dentist’s appointment. Gold followed quickly after him, and the two of them strode along side by side. The tunnel opened out into a vast cavern, hundreds of yards high, and so wide they couldn’t see the far side. In that hollow was a courtyard big enough to hold a county fair and then some, with towering walls built from massive blocks of a blue-white stone. Sculptures of strange beasts and unfamiliar people stood scattered across the courtyard, along with a number of strange shapes without or beyond meaning. But none of that caught Gold’s attention. To begin with, all he could see was that the courtyard had fallen to the jungle. Trees sprouted everywhere, thrusting up through the cracked and broken flagstones. Strange and fantastic plants and flowers rioted in thick profusion, and vines and creepers and a dozen sorts of ivy crawled over every available surface.

  Small creatures ran and scuttled across the crowded floor, or threw themselves from branch to branch. Bright eyes watched from a hundred shadows, and unfamiliar cries and howls rang out on the air, along with harsh and raucous cries from brightly-coloured birds soaring high above the courtyard. Gold stood silently with Morrison before tall gates of rusting black iron, hanging drunkenly open from broken hinges. The air was uncomfortably warm and humid after the cool of the tunnel, and Gold could feel sweat breaking out on his exposed skin. The sheer variety of the jungle stunned his eyes, overwhelming him with detail. He didn’t quite know what he’d expected of the land of the Faerie, of elves and goblins and forgotten dreams, but this sure as hell wasn’t it.

  Morrison gave him a few moments to get his breath back, and then plunged confidently forward into the jungle, following a path only he could see. Gold stumbled after him, eyes wide and his mouth all but hanging open. The air was rich with thick scents of life, of the greenery and all that thrived in it. Birds fluttered up as Gold and Morrison passed, sudden explosions of gaudy colours and beating wings, settling silently as they were left behind. Statues were everywhere, carved from some dark veined marble that was still smooth to the touch, despite their apparent age. Some of the faces were chipped and disfigured, and here and there a limb was missing, as though the smothering jungle had torn it away. Long strands of barbed creepers curled around bulging stone biceps and dreaming faces, hanging down in heavy, languorous coils. Something peered at Gold from out of the verdant gloom with bright shining eyes, only to turn and crash off through the trees as he and Morrison drew nearer. It was a man’s size, but it didn’t move at all like a man.

  The jungle opened briefly to display two living figures, standing face to face, surrounded by coils of hissing roses. Gold didn�
��t need Morrison to tell him that they were elves. They were tall, easily seven to eight feet in height, their bodies lean and wiry with no concealing fat to soften the muscles’ outline. Their skin was inhumanly pale, and their faces were painfully gaunt. They had huge golden eyes and long pointed ears. They did not move as Gold and Morrison approached, but the roses coiled and twisted and hissed loud warnings not to draw too close. Only the slow rise and fall of the elves’ chests showed that they were still alive. Their glowing eyes were fixed upon each other in endless fascination. The roses’ thorns had pierced their flesh in a hundred places, but no blood flowed. Gold and Morrison passed them by and left them behind, and Gold wondered numbly how long they had been standing there, that the roses could have grown up around them in such numbers.

  It took the best part of an hour to cross the vast courtyard, turning this way and that as the jungle dictated, but eventually they came to a tall, narrow gate in the far wall and passed through it, leaving the seething greenery behind. The gate opened on to a wide corridor, high-raftered and brightly lit from no apparent source, with towering walls and bare unpolished flagstones. Gold checked briefly, but as he’d expected there was still no sign anywhere of any shadow. Morrison strode confidently down the corridor, looking straight ahead, as though he’d been this way so often he felt no need to gawp like a tourist. Gold hurried to keep up with him, but every passing minute brought new wonders and marvels. Elves thrust out of the walls at intervals, as though they’d somehow grown from the stone or been immersed in it, sinking into the solid walls as into the warm embrace of a hip bath. The solid stone had closed around them, holding them fast for ever. They still lived, breathing slowly and shallowly, and sometimes their staring eyes would follow Gold and Morrison as they passed. Once an elf came striding down the corridor towards them, slow and stately in his height like a stilt-walker. Morrison bowed deeply, but the elf did not acknowledge his presence.