by Tad Williams
“What are you talking about?” Avin Brone demanded. “You said ‘opportunity?…”
Vansen suddenly realized they were all looking at him. He colored again, lowered his head. “Forgive me, I am but a soldier…”
“Speak.” There was something in his sister’s voice that Barrick had never heard before; again he felt adrift, as though Vansen s river had whirled him far away from his own, familiar life. “You are here precisely because you have seen things the rest of us haven’t, Captain Vansen. Speak.”
“I meant only that… that I wonder why, if they have gathered such an army, they should choose to enter the March Kingdoms at Daler’s Troth. I was born there, so I know it well. There are a few large towns, Dale House and Candlerstown and Hawkshill, but mostly it is hill crofts, a few larger farms, scattered villages. If they mean to come against us, and I believe they do, why should they start so far away? Even if they do not know that my men and I spied them and so they still believe they will surprise us, why should they take the chance that others will flee east with news of their coming and allow us to prepare? If they had come across the Shadowline in the Eastmarch hills, they would have been upon us already and I fear we would not be having this council, unless it was to meet our conquerors.”
“That is treason!” said Rorick. “Who is this lowborn soldier to tell us such things? Are you saying we cannot defeat them?”
“No, my lord.” Vansen’s jaw was set. He would not look at Rorick, but didn’t seem cowed. “No, but I saw them with these eyes—they have a great force. Had they come down on Southmarch in the night, this city would have been in terror and disarray.”
“What exactly are you trying to tell us, Captain Vansen?” Briony asked.
“That perhaps the Twilight Lands have their own ebb and flow.” He looked at her, almost imploring her to understand. “Perhaps they came through in the only place they could. It is hard to say what I mean—there are no words for it.
“Perhaps the captain is right,” said Earl Gowan, whose fiefdom in Helmingsea included a small but excellent personal navy. Gowan usually had the air of someone who joined a discussion, no matter how serious, chiefly for amusement. “But perhaps they have no interest in Southmarch. Perhaps the hobgoblins are only a raiding party after all and you are mistaken, or perhaps their goal is farther south, in Syan. Wasn’t it King Karal of Syan who led the armies of Eion against them once upon a time? Perhaps they want revenge.”
Barrick could feel an easing of tension around the table. Some of the other nobles nodded their heads, agreeing. “No,” he said. He had been silent a long time the others seemed surprised even to hear the prince speak. “They want this place—Southmarch. They lived here once.”
“That is an old tale,” Brone said slowly. “I am not certain it is true, Highness…”
But Barrick knew it was true, as certainly as if he had wakened on a cold, damp day and knew it was going to rain, he was not, however, able to explain why he was so sure. “Not just a tale,” was all he could muster. “They lived here once.”
Old Nynor cleared his throat. “It is true that that there are stones beneath the castle and in the deep places that are part of some older stronghold.”
“Men have lived here a long while, even before Anglin’s folk,” said Tyne dismissively. “And the Funderlings were here when men arrived, everyone knows.”
“This is all beside the point,” said Briony. “Much as some of you might wish it, we cannot hope the Twilight People are going to Syan to revenge themselves on Karal’s heirs and leave it at that. They are in our lands. Every farm in Daler’s Troth is a part of the March Kingdoms. Just as Rorick is their lord and must protect those people and those lands, it is up to the crown of Southmarch to help him.”
Earl Rorick brushed a curl back from his forehead. He had made a concession to the fact of a war council—his outfit, though beautifully tailored, was considerably short of his usual extravagance, but he still looked no more ready for combat than would a peacock. “What… what do you plan, Highness?” He looked around at the other nobles, unhappily aware of how glad they all were that his lands, not theirs, would bear the brunt of what was coming.
“We will fight them, of course.” Briony suddenly seemed to remember her brother; she turned to Barrick with the tiniest flicker of the shamefaced smile that he alone knew well enough to recognize. “If you agree.”
“Of course.” A thought had come to him—a simple thing compared to all the dreadful visons that had been plaguing him, simple and satisfying. “We will fight.”
“Then we must finish our preparations,” she said. “Lord Brone, Lord Aldritch, you will proceed as we discussed earlier. We must put an army into the field now—if nothing else, to see how strong they are.”
Avin Brone and Tyne slowly nodded their heads, weighty men with weighty concerns. “And I will lead it,” Barrick announced.
“What?” Briony recoiled as though he had slapped her. He was almost pleased to see her look so startled. A small, resentful part of him knew that she had grown accustomed to making decisions without him. Now that would end. “But, Barrick, you have been ill… !”
Avin Brone thumped his big hands down on the table, then crossed his arms, hiding those hands in his jacket as though he feared they would get into mischief. “You cannot take such a risk, Highness,” he began, but Barrick did not let him finish.
“I am not a fool, Lord Brone. I do not imagine I am going to single-handedly drive off the Twilight People. I know you think I’m only a crippled child, and a headstrong one at that. But I will go and I will lead our army, at least in name. The Silver Wolf of Anglin must be on the field— anything else is unthinkable.” The glorious idea that had seemed so clear and so obvious a moment ago now seemed a bit muddled, but he pushed ahead. “Someone said earlier that Rorick must go, to show that the nobles of these lands will fight for what is theirs. Everyone knows that the people of Southmarch are frightened by the terrible things that have happened— our father a captive, Kendrick dead. If Vansen is right, even darker days are coming to us—a war against things we hardly understand. The people must see that the Eddons will fight for them. There are two regents, after all, which is an uncommon luxury. One of us must go into the field.”
His twin was so angry she could barely speak. It only made Barrick feel more coldly comfortable with his decision. “And what if you’re killed?”
“I told you, Sister, I’m not a fool. When King Lander put on his father’s crown at Coldgray Moor and fought the Twilight People, was he in the vanguard, trading blows? But he was remembered for a great victory and his people treasure his name.” He realized too late he had said something foolish—they would misunderstand.
And they did. “This will be no place for a young man trying to make a name for himself,” Tyne Aldritch declared angrily. “I beg Your Highness’ pardon, but I will not stand silently and see men and land put at risk so you can earn a reputation.”
Now Barrick was angry, too, but mostly at himself. What he couldn’t explain, what he could barely acknowledge himself, was that the lure of his idea wasn’t glory but resolution—that he would thrive in the simplicity of the battlefield, that he would not need to fear his own anger or even the madness growing inside him, and that if he died it would be a relief from the dreams and the great fear. “I know what kind of place it will be, Blueshore,” he told the new master of arms. “Or at least I can guess. And I certainly know my own failings. Would you rub my nose in them?”
Tyne’s mouth snapped shut but his eyes spoke for him.
“Prince Barrick and I must talk about this.” Briony had pushed down her own anger now, hidden it behind a mask of determined calm. She’s turning into Father, Barrick thought, but not the way that I am. It wasn’t a happy realization. She has inherited his grace I have his curse.
“We will talk all you wish,” Barrick told his twin. “But I am going.”And he knew it was true. He was one of the reigning Eddons, after all,
and at this moment there was a hard, cold thing inside him that none of them could match. He would have his way.
* * *
“Hoy, Chert, have you found that boy?” shouted a woman he only vaguely recognized. He thought she might be one of the Sandstones, the woman with whom she was gossiping on the front porch certainly seemed to have the huge Sedimentary Clan’s telltale chin.
“Not yet,” he called.
“Must tha boom like the wind in the chimneys?” complained Beetledown from his perch on Chert’s shoulder. “Fair collapsed my headbones, that did.”
“Sorry.” Chert was glad that he was far enough away from the women that they couldn’t see the little fellow. Better to have them think he was talking to his own shoulder than to have every child in Funderling Town, and half the grown ones, chasing him down Gypsum Way in hopes of seeing a live Rooftopper. “Are you sure you can’t ride in the pocket of my tunic where no one can see you?”
“And where I can’t smell nothing, neither?” “Ah.True enough.”
Beetledown stirred and sniffed loud enough for even Chert to hear. “Turn turn… Chi’m’ook?” He drummed his tiny heels in frustration. “Where is the sun? Where is sunwise? How can I say the turning?"
“Left and right will have to do, because I don’t think you know where the Stonecutter’s Door or the Silk Door are You do know left and right, don’t you?”
“ ‘Course. But we call uns, ‘leef and ‘reck’ when we speak thy tongue. So go leef, left, what tha will. But there, turn.”
Chert couldn’t understand why the Rooftoppers would use different words than everyone else did in a language that wasn’t even their own, but it had long been clear that Beetledown had his own odd way of talking; of all that small people, only the queen could speak to Chert in a clear, civilized fashion. He wondered again why she spoke the language of the larger world better than her subjects did, but he didn’t waste much thought on it.
As they made a few more turns, Beetledown holding a lock of Chert’s hair so he could stand up without tumbling as he sniffed the air, the odd pair began to move farther and farther from the center of Funderling Town; in fact, it soon became clear that Beetledown’s nose was leading them toward the outermost reaches. If it was a true scent, the boy seemed to have gone by a rather circuitous route, but the overall direction was definitely outward and down. Thus, when they swung close enough to the Salt Pool, Chert turned and carried the little man into the great cavern.
“Going wrong way, th’art.”
“We’ll turn back, but we need something. We’ll be beyond the streetlights soon and, whatever you may have heard about us Funderlings, we can’t see in complete dark. Hoy, Boulder!”
The small Funderling came bounding toward them across the uneven stones, eyes widening at what was no doubt the first adult person smaller than himself he had ever seen. He grinned in surprise and delight. “What is this, Chert?”
“It’s not a this, it’s a who—Beetledown s his name. He’s a Rooftopper. Yes, a real Rooftopper. You heard about Flint? Well, this fellow’s helping me look for him. I’ll explain it next time I come, but I’d appreciate if you’d keep quiet about it for now. Meantime, I’m going down Silk Door way and I’ll need light soon.”
“Just brought up a basketful for the second shift,” Boulder said as he spilled out a selection of glowing coral. “Take your pick, and for free I’m sure the story will be worth it.”
“Many thanks. And you’ve just reminded me of something. Is Rocksalt here today with his basket?”
“Just over there.” Boulder pointed to a group of Funderling men and women and even a few children who were sitting at the edge of the cavern near the great door, waiting for the afternoon shift leader to come for them. As he walked toward them, Chert finally convinced Beetledown to get into his pocket and hide.
He fished out a few copper chips from his pocket and bought bread and soft white cheese from Rocksalt, as well as a waterskin, which cost him a few more chips even though he would be bringing it back to the peddler again afterward Chert didn’t like the expense, but it was becoming clear to him that he would not be back for the evening meal This reminded him of something else.
“Jasper, is your boy staying with you or going home?” he asked a man he knew, one of the fellows waiting to start an afternoon shift.
“Home, of course. Earth Elders! He’d drive me mad in a hundred drips if he came along with me.”
“Good.” Chert turned to the boy. “Here . . little Clay, isn’t it? Pay attention. I’m giving your father this shiny chip, and if you take a message to my wife, he’ll give that chip to you when he gets back from the pit tonight. Do you know my wife, Opal Blue Quartz? On Wedge Road?” The boy, eyes very big at all the attention, nodded solemnly. “Good. Tell her I said that I may be gone a while, searching, and not to hold supper for me. Not to worry if I’m not back by bedtime, even. Can you remember that? Say it back.”
His memory tested and approved, young Clay was dispatched and Chert gave the boy’s father the copper chip to hold in trust. “You’ve earned me a trip up to that fracturing big-folk market, you know,” Jasper said. “He’ll want to spend it up there.”
“Do you good to get some fresh air,” Chert said as he headed off across the uneven, rocky floor.
“Are you mad?” Jasper called after him. “Too much of that wind will suck the life out of a person’s innards!” This was not an uncommon feeling among the inhabitants of Funderling Town and although it might not completely explain why Chert was the first Funderling in centuries to meet a Rooftopper, he reflected, it did explain why there hadn’t been many other opportunities for such a thing to happen.
They went out through the Silk Door, Funderling Town’s back gate, a huge arch carved into a sandstone wall whose natural streaking of pink, ocher, purple, and orange made it look like exquisitely dyed fabric. Once through, they passed in a fairly short time from the careful delving and carving of the town into an area where no digging had been necessary because the underside of the mount was already hollowed out by the ocean and the drip of water from above into the limestone caverns, although the Funderlings had enlarged many of them and created a network of tunnel-roads to connect them all. What was not remembered, at least by anyone of Chert’s acquaintance, was whether the strangely regular caverns below Funderling Town that spiraled deep down into the bedrock of the mount, down below the bottom of the bay itself, had always existed, or had been created by even earlier hands. All that was known for certain by living Funderlings was that the Mysteries were there, hundreds of feet below the heart of the castle s inner keep, and that the less the big folk knew about those secret depths, the better.
Chert stood now far on the outskirts of Funderling Town, at the entrance to those very same Mysteries, looking down at a long, creamy slope gated by two rock walls. At the bottom was a scalloped fringe of pale-pink-and-amber stone that glowed like a translucent curtain in the light of the torches that burned before and behind it. “This way? Are you certain?” Chert asked the Rooftopper. Why would the boy have come so far into the earth, to a place he made it very clear he didn’t like? The Eddon family tombs were two levels up from here, but that was really only a few yards overhead.
“What my nose tells me be true,” Beetledown said. “Stronger here than anywhere past thy home roofs and rookeries.” It took Chert a moment to realize that this very little man meant that he had not smelled Flint so strongly since they had left Chert’s own neighborhood back on Wedge Road. “Well, lead on, then.” He made his way down the stairs that crisscrossed the pale slope and led ultimately into the first antechamber of the caverns.
“Go leef,” announced Beetledown. “No, loft, that is what I mean.” “Left.”
“Aye, that be un.”
They stepped out of the antechamber and beneath a low archway into the first of what Chert had known since childhood as the Festival Halls, a massive set of linked caverns full of columns and flowstone canopies that ha
d begun as natural formations but then been carved and decorated over the centuries until almost every piece had been extensively shaped. Only one extended section of grottoes had been left untouched. Its name was a consonantal grumble in the old Funderling language that roughly translated as “The Lord of the Hot Wet Stones Garden of Earth Shapes.” The carvings in the rest of the Festival Halls were as meticulous as anything in the wonderful roof of Funderling Town, but where the town’s famous roof portrayed a riot of natural greenery, of leaves and branches and fruit, and also birds and small treetop animals, to a people who hadn’t lived among such things in time out of memory, the Festival Halls were something altogether different, a collection of mysterious, endlessly repetitive shapes that made a person’s eyes blur if he or she looked at any one spot too long. These had been done so long ago that nobody remembered whether earlier Funderlings had carved them or why, and it was easy to see almost anything in the odd shapes—animals, demons, portraits of the gods themselves.
“I do not understand this place,” said Beetledown in a voice so quiet and nervous that Chert could barely hear him, despite the immense silence of the caverns.
“We are approaching some of the most sacred spots of the Funderling People,” Chert said. “Very few others ever see them. It is one reason I wanted to hide you from others at the Salt Pool, to avoid someone making a stink if they found out where we were going.”
“Ah, yes.” Beetledown’s voice sounded a little strained. “Laws against it, then? Forbidden, eh? Like us with the Great Gable or the Holy Wainscoting. ‘Course with the Holy Wainscoting, none but the rats be small enough to follow us in.”
Chert couldn’t help smiling. “I can see that would work in your favor Hmm, I suppose most of the big folk would have trouble making their way through some of the tight places down here, too. But you won’t.” He began walking again. “And it’s not really forbidden for you to be in these places, but it’s certainly unusual.”
