by Tad Williams
Beneath even the Sea in the Depths ? If so, there might be an end to the journey at some point—he had half feared that he might simply continue down into the earth for days and weeks, perhaps at last to arrive at the black tourmaline doors of Kernios’ own subterranean palace, doors that were famously guarded by Immon the Gatekeeper. It was a place Chert definitely did not wish to see while still alive, even if much of the original tale had been distorted by the big folk. The Funderling version was even more frightening. He tried to remember the distance across the quicksilver sea but the unstable light had confused him. Never having been any closer, he could only guess now in the most formless kind of way. He shrugged and took a deep breath.The hot, sour air did not seem to clear his thoughts. He staggered down the corridor.
“The deeps are no more like the town than the sky is like the ground, lad.”
It was his father’s voice in his head now, strangely Big Nodule (unlike his firstborn son, Chert’s brother, who was the current magister, his father would never have let himself be called anything so pretentious as “Nodule the Elder”) had been lamed by a rockfall in the early part of Olin’s reign, and had spent the last years of his life moving between his bed and his chair before the fire, but during Chert’s boyhood he had still been vigorous. Of all his sons, Chert had been the one most like him— ”the boy loves stone for stone’s sake,” Big Nodule had often proclaimed to his cronies at the guildhall—and he had taken Chert for long walks through the unfinished works outside Funderling Town, and even a few times to some of the hills above-ground or along the edge of Brenn’s Bay, pointing out the way limestone came to light where the rainwater washed away the earth, or the trapped centuries that were pressed in a sandstone bank above the waves like dried flowers in a noble lady’s book.
“A man who knows stone and its ways is as good as any man, big ‘un or Funderling, prince or kern, and he’ll never lack for things to do and think about.” That had been another of the old fellow’s favorite sayings.
Chert was astonished to find that he was walking blind, not because his toral lamp had finally died, but because he was weeping.
Hold on, you, he told himself. That man strapped you raw with his tie-rope for stealing a few sugarcap mushrooms out of Widow Rocksalt’s garden. When he finally died, your mother didn’t last even a year after, not because she missed him so much but because he’d worked her so in those last years that she was just bone-tired and couldn’t go on any longer.
Still, the tears wouldn’t stop. He found it hard to walk. His mothers face was before him now, too, the heavy-lidded eyes that could seem either beautifully dignified or painfully distant, the mouth that turned down at any hint of what she deemed an unnecessary fuss. He remembered Lapis Blue Quartz’s nimble, work-gnarled hands as she made a yarn doll for one of her grandchildren, her fingers always busy, always doing something. He couldn’t think of a time when she had been awake and those hands were not occupied.
“And what is this now?” He could hear her as clearly as if she stood beside him, her voice sour but not without humor. “What noise is this? Fissure and fracture, it sounds like someone’s skinning a live mole in here.”
Chert had to stop for a while to get his breath, and when he started again, it was hard just to keep walking. The walls, unbroken now even by the occasional glyph, featureless as a rabbit scrape, squeezed in on him as though they meant to catch him and hold him until the world changed. He could again imagine himself in the belly of the Shining Man, being digested and changed, becoming something hard like crystal, immobile and eternal, but with his thoughts still alive in the center of it, battering hopelessly to get out like a fly beneath an overturned cup.
And now, as though the deep places that contained him suddenly went through some sort of paroxysm, he could feel the sensation of power, the presence that he thought was the Shining Man, shift and grow less diffuse, more localized it was something he sensed as powerfully as he could know down from up with his eyes closed—the presence was no longer smother-mgly all around him, but instead had taken on a very definite location, up and ahead of him. Instead of giving him a goal, the power of it became something that pushed against him like a strong, constant wind, as though he and it were two chunks of lodestone repelling each other. Chert put his head down, eyes still prismed with weeping, and forced himself to take step after agonizing step.
What is this place? What does it all mean? He tried to remember the words of the temple brothers at his coming-of-age ceremony, the ritual tale of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone, but it came back only as a jumble of sonorous words that buzzed in his head almost without meaning, in pictures that were smeared like wet paint. The earth was a broken thing, the voices murmured and roared, a new thing, the lights in the sky so bright and the face of the world yet so dark, the battle to take this place away from older, cruder gods a thing not of days or weeks but of aeons, throwing mountains up where no mountains had stood, tearing the face of creation so that the water rushed in and made great, steaming seas.
“In the Days when there were no Days,” the oldest of the temple brothers had chanted, beginning the initiation ceremony, and Chert and the other celebrants had only moaned, their heads full of waking dreams that painted the dark around them, their stomachs sour from the k’hamao they had been given to drink after fasting and purifying themselves for two days before the being taken down into the Mysteries In the Days when there were no Days.
But what now? What was this? The tunnel had somehow been yanked upright like a length of string. It rose above him into the shadowy distance. Somehow Chert found himself on stairs again, but this time he was climbing, not descending, his head chaotic with ideas, with visions that were not quite visible, with the endless roar oe. The Lord of the Hot Wet Stone battling his foes, a roar that made the very roots of the world quiver Chert felt that roar in his bones now, felt it beginning to rattle him to pieces, to crumble him like the sandstone cliffs his father had shown him, falling to the relentless waves. Soon there would be no more Chert, only fragments, crumbled smaller and smaller until they became dust, then the dust would scatter and waft away and spread into all the dark places even the stars had never reached…
When his thoughts at last came back to him, when the dreams finally began to shred and disperse like wind-tormented clouds, Chert couldn’t make sense of what he saw; in fact, he wondered if he hadn’t merely passed into some different and only slightly less hectic realm of madness. He was standing at the foot of a mountain, a great jut of dark stone, a massive shadow in the thin, dim light that seemed to come from all directions and none—but how could there be such a thing, a mountain inside a mountain? Nevertheless, there it was, a monstrous black lump rising a hundred times his own height or more; he stood at its foot like an ant gazing up at a man.
Oh, Elders save me, it’s the gate, the black gate. I have climbed all the way down to Kermos . . and lmmon —Noszh-la himself —is going to find me wanting and chew me in those terrible, stony teeth . ‘
Something flickered like lightning inside the vast black shape that loomed above him. A moment later a mad radiance began to leak out from every part of it, but strongest in the center, where it formed the rough shape of a man. A shining man.
Chert stared in horrified fascination, but also with a growing sense of relief. He was standing right at its feet. He had crossed under the Sea in the Depths.
Still, he had never imagined what it would be like to stand before it. The rock seemed half translucent, half solid black basalt, and the light that streamed out bent as it came and broke into more colors than surely could be contained in a rainbow—so many colors and all moving so strangely! He had to narrow his eyes until they were almost shut and still it made him dizzy, made his head waver and his stomach lurch. He collapsed to his knees on the stony shore of the island. The heart of the blazing, coruscating brilliance did indeed have the shape of a person, although the stone—semi-translucent as volcanic glass, and the very inconstancy of
the lights made it hard to discern Still, it almost seemed to move, to writhe within the rock as though racked with nightmares, or as though it sought escape.
At last Chert could not look at it even through squinting eyes and so he lowered his face. He crouched on all fours like a dog, feeling as though he would be sick, and it was then, as the glare faded, that he saw the boy lying stretched out on the gravel slope a few yards above him.
“Flint!” His voice flew out—he could almost see the echoes spreading and chasing each other, growing smaller like ripples. He scrambled up the loose stones. The boy was curled on his side but almost facedown, one arm reaching upslope as though offering a gift to the gleaming giant. Chert saw something flat and shiny in the boy’s hand as he turned him over, noted distractedly that it was the mirror that he and Opal had discovered in the boy’s cherished bag, the child’s one possession, but then the sight of Flint’s face, pale as bone beneath the dark dust, eyes half open but sightless, drove all other thoughts from his mind.
He would not wake, no matter how Chert shook him. At last the Funderling dragged the boy up and pulled him to his chest, then pressed the cold cheek tight against his neck and shouted for help as though there were people around to hear him—as though Chert Blue Quartz were not the last living creature in the whole of the cosmos.
* * *
The sky had lightened a shade, but still no birds were singing Barrick’s heart hurried, fast as a dragonfly’s wings, until he found it hard to get his breath. The quiet sounds of the camp rising were all around him. He wondered if any of the others had managed to sleep.
He tested the saddle straps once more, loosened and then retightened one even though it did not need tightening His black horse, Kettle— named to irritate Kendrick as much as anything else, who had believed in noble names for noble steeds—whickered in irritation.
Barrick watched Ferras Vansen, the guard captain, going from one smoldering fire to another, talking to the men, and found himself irritated by the man’s calm attention to duty Slept like an innocent child, no doubt. He didn’t really know what to think about Vansen, but didn’t much want to trust him No one could truly be quite that honest and forthright—years in the Southmarch court had taught Barrick that. The guard captain was playing some deeper game—perhaps the innocent one of craving advancement, perhaps something more subtle Why else would he be watching Barrick so closely? Because he was, there was no doubt of that, Vansen’s eyes were on him every time Barrick turned around. Whatever the case, the man bore watching Briony might have forgiven him his derelictions, but his sister’s angers were always quicker to cool. Barrick Eddon was not so easily mollified.
A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, which made Kettle prance in place, snorting nervously. “Sorry, lad,” said Tyne Aldritch. “I mean, your pardon, Highness I didn’t mean to startle you.” “You didn’t… I mean…”
The Earl of Blueshore stepped back. His breath smelled of wine, although he showed no signs of having drunk more than he should. Barrick remembered the stream winding down through the thorny black vines and couldn’t really blame the man for not wanting to drink from it. “Of course,” Tyne said. “It’s only that I was remembering the night before my first battle. Did you sleep?”
“Yes,” Barrick lied. What he really needed to do now, he realized, was piss. Tyne had almost frightened the water out of him.
“I was reminded of when I went as my uncles squire to Olway Coomb. Dimakos Heavyhand was one of the last chieftains of the Gray Companies, and he and his men had come into Marrinswalk, burning and looting. Your father was down in Hierosol with most of the hardened Southmarch fighters, but those remaining made common cause with the Marrinswalk men and such others as we could gather, then met the raiders in the valley. Dimakos had come there first and had the high ground, although we were the larger force.” Tyne smiled a hard smile. “My uncle Laylin saw that I was fearful about the battle to come and brought me to the questioning of a prisoner, a scout from Heavyhand’s company we had captured. The man would say nothing of use no matter the persuasion, I will give him that, and when it became certain we would get nothing more from him, my uncle slit the man’s throat and rubbed the hot blood on my face. ‘There,’ he told me ‘Well-blooded is well-begun.’ Nor would he let me wash it off until we rode. It itched so that that I scarcely thought of anything else until I struck my first blow in anger.” Tyne laughed quietly. “Harsh, but my uncle was one of the old men, the hard men, and that was their way. Be glad we do not live in such times although perhaps we will miss his like before long, if the gods are unkind.” He made the sign of the Three, then clapped Barrick on the back so that the prince almost lost control of his bladder once more. “Fear not, lad. You will do your father proud. We will send these Twilight folk back to their boggart hills with something to think about.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better? Barrick wondered as Tyne walked away, but he couldn’t worry about it long, as he was already fumbling with the laces of his smallclothes.
Expecting little in the way of siege play, they had brought only a small contingent of Funderling miners, but these were also serving as gunnery men. Barrick tried to sit still in the saddle as the tiny shapes in leather hoods and cloaks, their eyes insectlike behind thick spectacles of smoked crystal, aimed the bombards up the hillside. Although he was armored, Barrick was not going in the first waves of mounted men, not least because he could only carry a light sword instead of a lance, he should have been angry at the coddling but found he was grateful. Dawn was just touching the edge of the eastern sky. The clumps of shadow were becoming bushes and trees again, and although the forest at the top of the hill was still shrouded in mist, beneath the lightening sky it did not look quite so fearsome and mysterious. In fact, everything was equally strange to Barrick’s eye just now, befogged forest and mortal army; even though he was in the midst of it, he felt as though he looked down on the scene from some high window, perhaps from Wolfstooth Spire.
Still, he held his breath as fire was touched to the train and the guns began to speak, barking like bronze dogs and spewing stone balls toward the trees on the hilltop. The first shots fell short, bouncing up the slope and vanishing into the leafy cover, but the Funderlings raised the bombards and let fly again, this time the round stones crashed into the center of the hill-crest, tearing away branches and knocking down trees. When the roaring stopped, there was only silence for a moment as Barrick and the others peered through the drifting smoke. A wailing cry went up from the hilltop, and at first he felt a fierce, relieved joy—they had killed most of them, they must have! Then he heard the note of defiant triumph in the inhuman voices. It sounded like there were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands.
Tyne had waited impatiently for the barrage to finish. He had already made it clear that he believed cannons were for siegework, nothing else, but he had bent to the wishes of Ivar Brenhill and the other more progressive war barons. Now he lowered the visor on his helmet and waved his arm. The first row of archers let fly, then crouched as the second row filled the air with their own arrows. Tyne waved again and with a shout that was almost as daunting as the cry from the hilltop, the first wave of pikemen dashed up the slope, pike shafts waving and clacking like a denuded version of the forest above, the wielders sped by the knowledge that the mounted men behind them would ride down any stragglers. A flight of arrows whistled toward them from the heights, strangely few but terribly accurate. A dozen men were down already, at least one of them a knight: his horse was dying beside him, legs thrashing as the other mounted men surged past.
Long, confused moments of noise and smoke passed before Barrick and the men around him spurred their own horses up the hill, time enough for the first wave of foot soldiers to reach the top and plunge into the trees. He heard shouts, excited cries, even a few screams, but over everything he heard the unnatural voices of the enemy—keening noises like seabirds, like the howls of wolves and the barks of foxes, but with words buried in
them to make the strange sounds even more terrible.
“Briony…” he murmured, but even he could not hear the name.
Some of the first wave of soldiers came reeling back, bloodied and shrieking. The fairies had built a wall of thorns. The mounted men behind them pushed on, some wielding axes, hacking their way in and killing many of the wall’s defenders. Arrows were snapping out of the trees at them, but still strangely few, and Barrick could almost feel the mounting concern of Tyne and the other war leaders—was it an ambush, after all? But the hillsides and meadows all around were still empty for this moment, the forested crest seemed the angry heart of the world, an island of noise and struggle surrounded by stillness.
“They break out!” someone called in a throttled, high-pitched voice— Barrick thought it might be his cousin Rorick On the hilltop a knot of men had been forced backward out of the trees, fighting hand-to-hand with a group of howling, white-haired warriors. At the center of the defenders a hugely tall figure stood in his stirrups, slashing with what even from a great distance seemed a bizarre, misshapen blade. The defender was tall, with snowy hair flo’wing free in the wind like a woman’s, and Barrick thought for a moment he must be an old man, but a glimpse of his face showed youthful features, and skin stretched tight over bones sharp enough to cut leather. The Twilight man struck down one of Tyne’s soldiers, then another, spinning the blade in the second man’s guts like a peasant churning butter. One of the mounted nobles spurred toward him, lance lowered, and the white-haired fairy or elf or whatever kind of creature he was knocked the weapon aside before closing with his attacker. Barrick lost sight of them behind a clump of trees as he neared the crest, then the forest was all around him and the men with whom he rode, mist puffing up from their horses’ hooves.
“Forward!” someone else shouted. “But stay together!” Barrick was surprised to realize it was Vansen, that the man had found his way to them through the trees and the mayhem, but he did not have long to contemplate it. A figure suddenly sprang up from the undergrowth—no, two figures, three!—and Barrick had to strike away a hand clawing at his bridle. The sound of many voices echoed through the trees, as many unnatural as natural, and in the cloudy, slanting light a thousand weird shapes loomed between the trunks—shadows and tricks of the light, perhaps, but there were enough real bodies and enough pale, hating faces that he had no time to consider anything except staying alive.
