by Tad Williams
“You had better.” Her laugh was sharp and raw. “There’s enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. I don’t like handling it, myself. I had an accident once.” She sat down heavily. “And it goes without saying that from here out, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ve no qualms about much of anything but I don’t want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, someone will come looking for you in turn. Understand?”
“Yes.” Those Skimmer men testing the blades of their fishgutting knives as they watched him pass was a picture he wouldn’t soon forget. The Black Wrack in his stomach seemed to sour and bubble. He hesitated for a moment before carefully putting the little flask into his sleeve pocket.
“Grandsire’s sake, boy, wrap it in something,” she said, disgusted. “Here, take this bit of kelp leaf, that’s thick enough. If you fall down and break the jar while it’s sitting in your shirt like that, you’ll never get up again.”
When he was finished Tinwright was feeling ill indeed. He stared at Aislin for a moment, swaying, then swiveled toward the door.
“Didn’t you forget something?”
“Pardon?” He turned back. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“No, you daft herring, my money. That’s a gull and two coppers you owe me.” She smirked. “And I’m giving you the lovesick poet’s rate.”
“Of course.” He fumbled out the money, handed it to her. After a moment’s assessment, which seemed mostly to consist of running her thumb around the circumference of each coin, she whisked them down the gap in her shiny, wrinkled bosom, an expanse which looked like nothing so much as a well-worn saddle. “Now be on your way. And remember what I said. Better you drink that whole jar right now than breathe a word to anyone of where you got it.”
Feeling as though some poison had already taken away his powers of thought and speech, Tinwright nodded and staggered toward the door, then out into the cold gray day, or what was left of it.
When he reached Silverhook Row he turned to look back down the alley. Aislin the tanglewife stood in her doorway beneath the great length of pale horn, staring at him. She lifted a hand as if to wave him farewell, but her strange, pop-eyed face had gone cold and remote. She turned and went back inside.
Matt Tinwright hurried out of the lagoon district as fast as he could, acutely conscious of both the fast fading afternoon light and the tiny jar full of treason and murder concealed in his shirt.
Opal came back from market with her sack mostly empty and her face full of worry.
“You look terrible, my old darling,” Chert told her. “I’ll only be gone up to the castle for the day. I’m sure there’s nothing to fear.”
“I’m not worrying about you,” she growled, then shook her head angrily. “No, of course I’m worried about you, all caught up in this big-folk madness again. But that’s not what’s bothering me. There’s nothing to eat in this house and scarcely anything to be had even at the market.”
“Why is that?”
She snorted. “You are a dunderhead, Chert! Why do you think? The castle is surrounded by fairy folk, half the merchants won’t send their ships here to Southmarch, and there’s no work for the Funderlings. Surely in your time loitering around the guildhall you must have heard something of that?”
“Of course.” He scratched his head. She was right: it wasn’t as though there were no ordinary problems. “But Berkan Hood, the new lord constable, promised that he’d put two hundred of ours to work repairing the castle walls, so Cinnabar and the rest are saying not to worry.”
“And what are they going to pay them with?” She had her shawl off now and was washing her hands vigorously in a bowl of water. “The Tollys are already spending money hand over fist trying to lure merchants to bring in food and drink for Southmarch, not to mention the ships they’ve had to buy and mercenary seamen they’ve had to hire, all to protect the harbor.”
“You heard all this at the market?”
“Do you think we spend all day talking about vegetables and sewing?” She dried her hands off on her shapeless, oft-mended old dress and Chert felt a pang that his wife had nothing nicer to wear. “Honestly, you menfolk. You think you do it all yourselves, don’t you?”
“Not for years, my good old woman.” He laughed ruefully.
“Not since I’ve had you around to keep me straightened out.”
“Well, just go and talk to the boy before you disappear for the day. He’s had a bad night and I have a hundred things to do if I’m going to make a meal out of these sad leavings.”
Flint was sitting on the bed, his white-gold hair disarranged, his face distant and mournful.
“How are you, lad?”
“Well.” But he didn’t meet Chert’s eye.
“I wonder if that’s really true. Your mo...Opal says you had a bad night.” He sat down beside the boy and patted his knee. “Did you not sleep well?”
“Didn’t sleep.”
“Why not?” He peered at the pale, almost translucent face. Flint looked as though he needed sun. It was a strange thought—he certainly couldn’t remember ever thinking it about anyone else. Of course, most of the people he knew never even saw the sun if they could help it.
“Too noisy,” the boy said. “Too many voices.”
“Last night?” It was true that in the early part of the evening Cinnabar and some of the other Guildsmen had stopped by to talk about where Chert was going today, but they had been gone by the time the darklights came on. “Really? Well, we’ll try to keep it more quiet.”
“It’s too crowded,” Flint said. Before Chert could ask him to explain, he added: “I have bad dreams. Very bad.”
“Like what?”
Flint shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Eyes, bright eyes, and someone holding me down.” His chest heaved with a sob. “It hurts!”
“Come on, lad. Don’t be feared. Things will get better, you’ve just had a rough time.” Helplessly, Chert put his arm around him and felt the child’s entire body shudder.
“But I want to go back to sleep! Nobody understands. They won’t let me sleep! They keep calling me!”
“Lie down, then.” He did his best, half helping, half forcing the child back into the bed. He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Ssshhh. Go to sleep, now. Opal’s just in the other room. I have to go out to work, but I’ll be back later.”
Flint miserably allowed himself to be stroked and soothed into a thin, restless slumber. Chert got up as quietly as he could, desperate not to wake him.
What have we done to that boy? he wondered. What’s wrong with him? Odd as he was before, he was always alert, lively. He seems only half alive since I found him down in the Mysteries.
He didn’t even have the heart to talk about it to Opal, who felt the boy’s distraction and strangeness even more than he did: he only waved to her as he passed, tying on his tool belt.
“Vermilion Cinnabar had a message for you from her husband,” Opal called.
Chert stopped in the doorway. “What’s that?”
“She said to tell you that Chaven wants to see you again before you go upground.”
He sighed. “Why not?”
The physician was waiting in the middle of the mirrored floor of the Guild’s great hall. Several Funderlings were preparing the hall for the next meeting, politely avoiding him as he stood staring down, like children circling an absentminded father. For the first time Chert’s own people looked small to him in their own great hall.
The physician didn’t look up even after Chert coughed politely. “Chaven?” he said at last. “You wanted to speak to me?”
Startled, Chaven turned. “Oh, it’s you! Sorry, so sorry, it’s just...this place. I find it strangely...restful is not the right word, not quite. But it is one of the few places where my cares, they just...slip away...”
Chert had never felt the presence of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be particularly restful, even
in statue form. He looked up to the image of Kernios sunk deep in the ceiling, then down to the mirror-version below their feet. Being suspended, as it were, between two versions of the blackeyed, somber-faced earth god seemed even less soothing, especially when the mirroring rendered Chaven and himself as blobs with feet in the middle and heads at each end, suspended halfway between Heaven and the Pit. “I heard you wanted me.”
Chaven dragged his attention away from the representation of the god. “Oh, yes. I just felt I should talk to you again about what you should say.”
“Fracture and fissure, man,” Chert cursed, “we’ve been over this a dozen times already! What more can there be to say?”
“I am sorry, but this is very important.”
Chert sighed. “It would be different if I were actually going to pretend to know something I don’t, but if he asks me something I don’t know an answer for I’ll just make important-sounding humming noises, then tell him I need to confer with my Funderling colleagues.” He gave Chaven an annoyed look. “And then, yes, I’ll come right to you and tell you, and find out what to say.”
“Good, good. And what will you look for to know if it’s my mirror?”
“A dark frame of cypress wood, with wings that open out. It is carved with pictures of eyes and hands.”
“Yes, but if there’s no frame, or if he’s put a new one on it?”
Chert took a deep breath. Patience, he told himself. He’s been through a great deal. But it was more than a little like dealing with a drunkard, someone forever trying to shake the last dribbles of mossbrew out of an empty jar. “The glass itself has a slight outward curve to it.”
“Yes. Good!”
“May I go now? Before Okros decides to ask someone else to do it instead?”
“Will you write down anything you are unsure about? It will help me understand what Okros is trying to do. Do you promise?”
Chert said nothing, but tapped the slate hanging on a string around his neck. “Really, I must go now.”
Worriedly repeating all that they had just discussed, Chaven followed him to the door but, to Chert’s relief, went no farther, as if he did not want to travel far from the reassuring presence of the earth lord and the haven of the guildhall’s great room.
Chert hadn’t been out of Funderling Town for many, many days—was it almost a month?—and he was surprised by the obvious differences since the last time he’d been upground. The spirit of ragged camaraderie he’d seen everywhere in the castle had now just as obviously expired, overcome by weariness and fear of the unchanging siege conditions, the strange, suspended watchfulness that in some ways was worse than even a real and imminent danger of attack.
The faces bundled up in scarves and hoods were red with cold and very grim, even as he reached the Raven Gate and the vicinity of the royal residence itself, where at least the people did not yet have to worry about starving. Still, these comparatively well-fed courtiers had a wolfish look about them, too, as though even the most kindly and cheerful of them were spending a large part of their thoughts considering what they were going to do and to whom they were going to do it when things became really bad, when they would have to struggle to survive.
The castle itself looked different, too. The walls around the Inner Keep were built over with wooden hoardings and crawling with guards, the greens were full of animals (mostly pigs and sheep) the wells were guarded by soldiers, and there seemed to be twice as many folk as usual milling in the narrow roads and public squares. Still, when he showed the letter from Okros he received only cursory attention before being allowed through Raven’s Gate, although he thought he heard a few of the guards mutter uncomplimentary things about Funderlings. That was certainly not the first time in Chert’s life such a thing had ever happened, but he was a little surprised by the vehemence in their voices.
Well, bad times make bad neighbors, he reminded himself. And there were always rumors that the king fed us —as though we were animals in a menagerie, instead of us earning our own way, which we always have. Just the kind of thing to make the big folk resentful when times are hard.
It was disturbing to find that Okros had openly usurped Chaven’s residence in the Observatory, but Chert supposed it made sense. In any case, he was not even supposed to know Chaven, so he certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it.
A young, jug-eared acolyte in an Eastmarch robe opened the door and silently led him to the observatory itself, a high-ceilinged room with a sliding panel in the roof, permeated with the smell of damp. Okros rose from a table piled with books, brushing off his dark red smock. He was a slender man with a fringe of white hair and a pleasant, intelligent expression. It was hard to believe he was the villain Chaven believed him, even though Chert himself had heard Brother Okros talking to Hendon Tolly about Chaven’s glass.
In any case, he would let discretion rule. He bowed. “I am Chert of the Blue Quartz. The Guild of Stone-Cutters sent me.”
“Yes, you are expected. And you know much of mirrors?”
Chert spoke carefully. “I am of the Blue Quartz. We are part of the Crystal clan and a mirror is merely an object made from crystal or glass, so all Funderling mirror-work is overseen by us. And yes, I do know some few things. Whether that will be enough for your needs, my lord, we shall see.”
Okros gave him an appraising look. “Very well. I will take you to it.”
The scholar took a lantern from the tabletop and led Chert out of the high-ceilinged observatory and down a succession of corridors and stairways. Chert had been in Chaven’s house before, of course, but not often, and he had little idea where they were now except that they were traveling downward. For a moment he became fearfully certain that the man was taking him to the secret door Chert himself had employed when Chaven lived here, that he knew exactly who Chert was and what had brought him here, but instead, when they had gone down several floors, the little physician opened a door off the hallway with a key and beckoned him inside. An object covered with a cloth stood in the middle of an otherwise empty table, like an oddly shaped corpse waiting burial—or resurrection.
Okros removed the cloth with careful fingers. The mirror was just as Chaven had described it, but Chert did his best to look at it as though he had never seen it or heard of it before. Carved hands, the fingers spread in different arrangements, alternated with crude but compelling eyes around the dark wood of the frame. The curve was there, too, just enough of a convexity to make the reflection slightly unstable to a moving observer: in fact, it was disturbing to look at it for more than a few moments.
“And what exactly did you wish to know, my lord?” Chert asked carefully. “It looks like an ordinary...that is, it looks as though it is...unbroken.”
“Yes, I know!” For the first time, Chert could detect a hint of something strange under the physician’s words. “It is...it does nothing.”
“Nothing? I’m sorry, what...?”
“Don’t pretend you are ignorant, Funderling.” Okros shook his head angrily, then calmed himself. “This is a scrying glass. Surely you and your people did not think I would send for help to deal with an ordinary mirror? It is an authentic scrying glass—a ‘Tile,’ as they are sometimes called—but it remains dead to me. Do you still pretend ignorance?”
Chert kept his eyes on the glass. The man was not just angry, he was frightened somehow. What could that mean? “I pretend nothing, Lord, and I am not ignorant. I just wished to hear what it was you wanted. Now, what more can you tell me?” He tried to remember Chaven’s words. “Is it a problem of reflection or refraction?”
“Both.” The physician seemed mollified. “The substance seems intact, as you see, but as an object it is inert. As a scrying glass, it is useless. I can make nothing of it.”
“Can you tell me anything of where it comes from?”
Okros looked at him sharply. “No, I cannot. Why do you ask?”
“Because the literature of scrying glasses, and the unwritten lore as well, must be ap
plied to that which is known, to help discover that which is unknown.” He hoped he didn’t sound too much like he was making things up (which he was): Chaven had told him a few facts and a name or two to drop when the occasion seemed to warrant, but there was no way of knowing ahead of time precisely what Okros would want to know. “Perhaps I could take it back to the Funderling Guild...”
“Are you mad?” Okros actually put his arms around the thing as if guarding a small, helpless child from a ravening wolf. “You will take nothing! This object is worth more than Funderling Town itself!” He stared at Chert, eyes narrowed to slits.
“Sorry, my lord. I only thought...”
“You will remember that it is an honor even being called to consult. I am the prince-regent’s physician—the royal physician!—and I will not be trifled with.”
Chert suddenly and for the first time felt frightened, not just of Okros himself—although the man could call the guards and have Chert locked in a dungeon in moments if he wished—but of his strange feverishness. It reminded him more than a little of the odd behavior he had seen from Chaven. What was it about this mirror that turned men into beasts?
“If anything,” Okros said, “I should come and examine the library in Funderling Town. The Guild would make it available to me, of course.”
Chert knew this would be a bad idea in many ways. “Of course, my lord. They would be honored. But most of the knowledge about subjects like these glasses cannot be found in books. Most of it is in the minds of our oldest men and women. Do you speak Funderling?”
Okros stared at him as though he were joking. “What do you mean, speak Funderling? Surely no one down there speaks anything but the common tongue of the March Kingdoms?”
“Oh, no, Brother Okros, sir. Many of our older folk have not left Funderling Town in years and years and they speak only the old tongue of our forefathers.” Which was not entirely a lie, although the numbers who could only speak Old Funderling were tiny. “Why don’t you let me go back to the Guild with your questions—and my observations too, of course—and see what answers I can bring back in a day or two. Surely for someone as busy as yourself, with all your responsibilities, that would be the best solution.”
