“Balanced. Not so difficult—if we work hard!” Spelter said breathlessly. He had clearly begun already. Vansen and several of the Funderlings hurriedly clambered onto the curving shelf of rock beside him and jammed their spears into the space between the round stone and the wall. Vansen set his booted foot against the stone and leaned back hard, testing the flexibility of his spear. If it broke, he might well kill himself or one of his fellows with the shards before the monster even reached them, but for the moment it was holding together.
“Everybody!” Vansen shouted. “Now!” The other Funderlings did their best to find a place to throw their own weight and strength against the perched stone, their spears bending like saplings. Vansen felt blood in his temples threatening to boil and burst out, but the stone was not moving and the glowing, spiderlike monster was moving toward them, in no hurry now that it had them out from behind cover and against a wall with nowhere else to run.
Something was pulling hard at his leg. For a terrifying moment Vansen thought it was another one of the creatures, then he realized it was the half-naked form of Sledge Jasper, with armor and helmet gone and a blistering burn up the side of his face, trying to use Vansen’s leg to climb up and help.
“Give me room, you cursed, gawky upgrounder!” Jasper cried, then shoved the butt of his spear into the crack between stone and floor and lifted his legs off the ground, swinging on the spear until it bent nearly double. The others, too weary now to do anything but keep pulling, leaned back into their own spears. Vansen shoved his back down against the wall so he could use both legs at the same time. The creature lifted its snapping claws, each the size of a fiddler’s bass viol, and reared up on its hindmost legs. Then the stone moved.
Vansen had only a moment to notice that nothing was holding him up before he fell heavily to the floor of the cavern, Funderlings tumbling all around him like frozen sparrows dropping from winter branches. The boulder tottered, then tipped and rolled down the short incline. At first it seemed to move so slowly that Vansen thought it was impossible the monster would fail to evade it, but either the thing’s tiny eyes or its weak wits betrayed it, and it only waved its claws impotently as the rock, three times the monster’s height, rolled over it and crushed it with a dreadful, wonderful wet crunch. By the time the boulder came to a halt again some twenty paces on, part of the monster was still stuck to it, but most lay in a ruined smear of shadow on the cavern floor, only a leg or two that the stone had missed still showing any last, fitful movement.
“Go!” Vansen shouted. “Back the way we came in, before another one finds us! Go now, and stay together . . . !” The indescribable smell of the thing was so strong as they ran past it that Vansen had to stop shouting and clamp his teeth together to keep from being sick.
If Sledge Jasper had not dragged back a monstrous claw from the thing that had tried to kill him and the other warders and Captain Vansen, and then proudly showed it to nearly every living person in the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple, Chert would have had trouble believing that such a horror could exist, even after all the other mad things he had seen in the past year.
The claw itself was almost as long as Jasper was tall. As Chert stared, the chief warder beamed and pointed to his blistered cheek. “See? This is where he spit his poison on me. Would have killed me, too, but Spelter rubbed it off with his own shirt.” Sledge nodded proudly. “One of them drows, but he risked his life to save us. That’s a pretty tale, isn’t it? But true. He’s all right, that Spelter.”
“Does it hurt?” Chert asked.
“My skin, you mean?” Jasper asked. “Burned like fire at first. Better now, but the healer-brother says I’ll always have scars. ‘More scars, you mean,’ that’s what I told him. More scars, ’cause I’d got plenty already. Have I showed ’em all to you?”
“Later,” said Chert quickly. “I’d love to see them, Wardthane, truly I would, but Captain Vansen’s waiting for me.”
“Ah, yes, certain then you’d want to be going. We’re lucky to have the captain, you know. Almost as good as . . . no, I’ll say it; he is as good as a Funderling. Thought of that dodge with the big stone right on the spot, he did, while that Elders-cursed crab-spider was trying to kill us. We’d all be in its belly, weren’t for Captain Vansen.”
“Yes, we’re lucky to have him,” Chert agreed.
He left Jasper looking for anyone else who hadn’t seen the massive, odiferous claw and made his way down the hall toward the refectory, which Vansen and Cinnabar and the rest had made the stronghold of the defense effort. Chert was a little worried about what Vansen wanted of him, not because he was afraid of being put back into danger—just being alive beneath Southmarch was danger enough these days—but because he was terrified that Vansen would want to send him somewhere and he would have to tell Opal he was off again. She had not been back long and was already distraught over how strange Flint had become: Chert felt sure having to give her bad news would be a more terrifying adventure than any monstrous spider-crab.
He was surprised to find Vansen sitting in the refectory by himself, poring over a pile of parchments and—even more surprising—piles of the Temple’s precious mica sheets. Brother Nickel must have nearly soiled himself when Vansen asked for those and Cinnabar backed him up, thought Chert, not without some satisfaction.
Vansen looked tired, his eyes shadowed as if bruised, his shoulders slumped, but he found a smile for Chert. “Ho there, Master Blue Quartz. How is your family?”
Chert was touched to be asked. “Well as can be expected, sir. The boy is very quiet and thoughtful, so that we can hardly get a word from him, but that’s better than him traipsing everywhere and getting into trouble.”
The big man laughed quietly. “He is not the chiefest delight of the Metamorphic Brothers, is he?”
“That’s fair to say.” Chert couldn’t quite muster up the energy to smile himself. “I do not know what we’ve let ourselves in for with this child, to tell the truth, he is often so strange. It is like living with a fairy child—a changeling.”
Vansen looked at him absently for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. “He is deep in these doings. I suddenly wonder why we have not spoken of him to the Qar—and especially to Lady Yasammez.”
Chert suppressed a shiver. “I stood before her once as a prisoner—a condemned prisoner, at that. I’m in no hurry to seek out another audience.”
“In any case, there is something important to be understood about your boy, Chert, that I feel certain—but it would take a keener eye than mine to see it clear. Perhaps Chaven can solve the riddle.” Vansen sighed. “Ah, well. We have troubles enough without inviting more. I was wondering if you could do me a kindness, friend Chert.”
“Of course, Captain. We are all here to help you.” But now that the moment had come, Chert Blue Quartz could not help flinching a little in anticipation of some new, mad venture—being ordered to sneak into the castle to steal Hendon Tolly’s handkerchief, or sent out to demand the autarch’s surrender.
“Since I have been here beneath the castle,” Vansen said, “I have had difficulty making sense of things. Not all,” he said hurriedly, “but certainly your people’s directions. I do not know what is meant by ‘fro-wards’ and ‘upwise’ and whatnot, but ...” he put out his hand to forestall Chert’s explanation, “but more importantly, I simply do not know the ground.”
“We have many maps ...” Chert began.
“Yes, and I have most of them in front of me,” said Vansen. “Come, look. Here is one. It shows Funderling Town and what lies below as a single circle. We are looking down, as from the sky is my guess, if there was no castle and no earth in the way to block our gaze. Am I right?”
Chert nodded. “It does not show the Mysteries, or most of the Stormstone Roads, but those are secret ...”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have known that from looking. I can make no sense of it at all.”
Chert smiled. “I can show you easily enough. Here, the different thickness of li
nes indicates the level, and these marks mean ...”
“No, I mean I can make no sense of it. I cannot see it with your eyes no matter how I try, no matter how your folk try to instruct me. Brother Antimony spent half of last night grimly explaining over and over again, but it is like trying to describe Orphan’s Day to a fish.” His smile was sad, now, and the weariness plainer than ever. “You have spent much time on the surface, Chert, I know. You of all people here might be able to make maps that an upgrounder can understand. Will you do that?” He spread his hands over the documents before him. “It need not be perfect. I do not need every single passage—although I would not quibble at it. But the most important thing is that I need to understand how close the different passages are to each other, especially which of them are above which others. Also, which ways are passable by anyone, which only by Funderlings. Then I can ask questions. Then I can make decisions. Will you do it for me?”
It was potentially a huge task, but Chert could understand how important it was. And, he realized, he could accomplish much if not all of it from the safety of the temple, so that Opal would not fret too much, and he would see her and the boy every day.
“How soon?” he asked. He would have to make sure Cinnabar knew about it, in case Brother Nickel made a stink about Chert using the temple library.
“I need it a tennight past.” Vansen rose and stretched, his joints popping so that even Chert could hear them. “I will take it as soon as it is ready—sooner. Show me what you have as you work. Now, if you will pardon me, friend Blue Quartz, I think I should find Jasper and Cinnabar and the others before they say something to turn the Qar back into enemies.”
“... So I will be in the library much of the day most days, and perhaps some nights until I finish this for Captain Vansen,” he explained to Opal. “But I can do a good deal of the work here at home, too, after I’ve finished with the Brothers’ books, since I doubt that Nickel will let me carry those home under my arms.”
“Home,” Opal sniffed. “I would not call a cramped, crowded room in the drafty, cold temple a home . . . but I suppose it is all we have for now. At least we don’t have to share it with your giant friend anymore.” The “giant friend” was Chaven, who on Opal’s return had moved to other quarters.
Chert was reassured. If Opal was complaining, she was . . . if not happy, then at least in reasonable spirits. “Yes, well, the mark of a noble character is how it stands up to suffering, my only love.”
“Then if I become any nobler, I’ll have to start screaming.” She gave him a sharp look. “Do you have time to talk to the boy before you go hurrying off to play your map games? He said you would understand, and if you do, you may explain it to me because I don’t.”
“Explain what?”
“Ask him. He’s gone down the hall to Chaven’s room.” She fluffed the straw mattress into a more pleasing consistency, but the look on her face made it clear straw would never compare with their swallow-fluff bed at home. He was surprised she had not carried the mattress down from Funderling Town on her back. “I have things of my own to do, in case you didn’t know.”
Chert turned back—he knew that tone and knew he should pay attention. “Of course, my love.” He waited, hoping she would go on without making him ask. Of course she didn’t. “And those things are . . . ?”
“Chert Blue Quartz, you are the flaw in the crystal of my happiness, I swear.” She was only half-serious, but the problem was that even half meant he was in trouble. “I told you several times, Vermilion Cinnabar asked me to help making sure all the men get fed. By the Elders, do you really think we can bring hundreds of men down here without providing for them? Do you think the monks have a magic garden that simply grows more food when you ask it?”
“No, of course not. ...”
“Of course not. So we are putting many of the women to work in the fungus gardens themselves, and replanting some of the old ones that have gone fallow. We are also bringing food down from the town, of course, which means someone has to organize the caravans.”
“Caravans?”
“What else would you call a dozen donkey carts a day, twice each way?” Funderling Town’s few donkeys, descended from upground ancestors almost twice as large, had never bred well in the depths, and the fact that the Guild had given so many to this cause showed how worried they were—and how much power Vermilion Cinnabar wielded. And now Opal was her second-in-command. Chert was proud of his wife. “Donkeys, and drovers, and we have another twenty men carrying the smaller goods, along with warders to protect them all. It makes quite a parade going down Ore Street.”
“The men down here are lucky to have you looking after them.”
“Yes.” She was slightly mollified. “Yes, I suppose they are.”
It didn’t matter where he found the boy; the circumstances always seemed to be slightly unexpected. This time Flint was indeed in Chaven’s room, as Opal had suggested, but the physician was not present. The flax-haired boy was on his knees atop Chaven’s stool, leaning on a table as he squinted at a leather-bound notebook.
“That looks costly,” Chert said. “Are you sure Chaven will not mind you handling it?”
Flint did not seem to hear the question. “The talk is all of mirrors,” he said as if to himself. “But no earthly glass could be large enough for a true god’s gateway ...”
“Flint?”
The boy turned and saw him, and for a moment seemed nothing more than a child caught doing something he shouldn’t, opening his blue eyes innocently wide. He closed the book quickly, but Chert saw that Flint kept his finger between the pages, marking his place until Chert went away again. “Hello, Papa Chert. Mama Opal sent you to speak to me, didn’t she?”
“I suppose. She said that I might ‘understand.’ Understand what, Flint?”
The boy pulled up his legs to sit cross-legged atop the stool like an oracle on a pillar. “I’m not like other children.”
Chert could not argue with that. “But you’re a good boy,” he said. “Your mother and I . . . we ...” He did not know quite what to say next.
“But the problem,” Flint went on, “is that I don’t know why. I don’t understand why I am so full of thoughts and ideas that seem . . . like they don’t belong. Why can’t I remember more?”
Chert spread his hands helplessly. “Where we found you . . . beside the Shadowline . . . well, we always knew there had to be some kind of magic on you. I knew it from the first. Opal knew it, too, but she would never admit she knew.” He let his hands drop. “I’m sorry, lad. I didn’t know it was hard on you, too.”
“Someday, I think I will have to go away,” Flint said. “To find out all the things I want to know. All the things about why I’m . . . this way.”
“When you’re grown, son, if that’s what you want to do. ...” But even as he said it he knew that Opal would see even this distant consent as a form of betrayal. “Just remember, your mother loves you very much . . . and I love you, too ...”
The boy shook his head, but not, it seemed, at what Chert had said. “I do not think I can wait so long,” he said. “I’m frightened that if I don’t understand, I’ll . . . I’ll miss something.”
“Miss what? I don’t get you, boy.”
“That’s just it!” His pale face had gone red. “I don’t understand it myself. But I can feel that things are bad, so bad! And I think I know the answers, or some of the answers, that I can . . . I don’t know, reach in and find them. But when I try, they all just fly away, like bats, like ...”
To Chert’s astonishment, Flint’s eyes were shiny with tears. He had never seen the boy like this. He hesitated, then stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. Flint swayed on the flimsy stool but hung on tightly, his chest moving with sobs like small hiccoughs. At last the boy pulled himself away and slid down to the floor.
“Will you let me go when I need to?” he asked. “When I truly, truly need to?”
“Before you’re grown? We can’t,
son. We can’t do that!”
The boy looked up at him, and precisely now, when his flushed face was as childlike as Chert had ever seen it, another look stole across, something strange and sly and somehow alien. “Then I will go anyway without your blessing, Papa Chert.”
“No!” He took hold of the boy’s shoulders. “You must promise me you’ll do nothing of the sort. It will break your mother’s heart—that’s the truth! You must promise me that, until we say you’re old enough, you will stay here with us. Promise!”
Flint tried to squirm out of his grasp, but years of working stone had given Chert strong hands and the boy could not get away. “No!”
“You must promise, boy. You must.” Chert was almost weeping himself. “That’s all I can say. Promise me you won’t go without our . . . without my permission.” Opal would never allow it, but if he had to—if he felt it was the only way not to lose the boy in other, deeper ways—he knew he would go against her. And that would be a terrible day. “Promise.”
The boy at last stopped struggling. “Only with your permission?”
“Until you reach a man’s age.”
“But how old am I?”
Chert was so upset that it surprised him how suddenly the laugh came. “Well struck, lad. So, let us say . . . five more years, shall we? By any standard, that should give you time to do some growing.”
“Five years?” He looked dully resigned. “In five years the world might be ended, Father.”
“Then what you and I do won’t be such a worry, will it?” He had won, but Chert did not feel particularly good about it. “Come,” he said. “You like the temple library, don’t you? I have business there. Come and spend the afternoon with me.”
Silent and thoughtful again, his tears all but dried, Flint followed Chert back through the busy temple halls, past priests and soldiers and more than a few women, all silent, all apparently in a hurry. Each and every one of them wore a face as grim as Black Noszh-la, Gatekeeper of the House of Death.