In that second, the coldwhites ceased to fall, and as the last few whirled down, it seemed to Bily that the whole of the white and storming night took form about those terrible wintery eyes, and a mouth opened beneath them red and full of sharp white teeth.
‘Please don’t eat me,’ Bily whispered.
Zluty woke to something scratching softly at his cheeks. He tried to open his eyes but they felt as if they had been glued shut.
A voice whispered, ‘Wake, unplanned strangeness. Oh, please, do not being emptied out!’
Zluty did not recognise the voice, but the anguish in it moved him to make an immense effort. He opened his eyes and found he was somewhere dark, but a light was illuminating the face of a digger leaning over him, its paw on his cheek. Metal glinted on its head, yet its eyes were full of concern. Then Zluty recognised it as the male digger that had followed him on his ill-fated trip to the foot of the mountains. He had sent the female back to warn Bily he was delayed, but the male had escaped only moments before the Monk found him.
‘How . . . how did you . . . ’ he croaked, but his mouth was too dry to let him say more.
‘Following,’ the he digger said, lifting a small gourd bottle to Zluty’s lips. As he drank with thirsty gratitude, the digger cast a quick wary look towards the light. ‘Watching how Monks did working up and downness and when dusk coming made metal object bring me to top of mountains. Followed path to Stonehouse and climbed in window. Waiting since for chancefulness to come up to topmost chamber where memory songs saying captives held until heads turned to metal.’
Zluty was awed by the courage and cleverness of the little digger. But he felt a sharp pang of guilt at the knowledge that his curiosity had brought them both here. ‘They caught you, too,’ he said contritely, glancing at the metal on its head. His head, he reminded himself.
To his surprise, the digger reached up and removed the metal form!
‘Did stealing of headmetal,’ he said with a wicked gleam in his eyes. ‘Wearing it so no dangerfulness for me, because many diggers here wearing same.’ He sobered. ‘Must be ancestors of diggers taken in the long ago. Must do telling of this to clan leader. But first must rescuing the Zchloo-tee.’
‘But what about the . . . ’ Zluty began, then he stopped, realising he could no longer feel the weight of the metal links about his leg.
He put his hand to his head and felt the strangeness of the metal there. Then the memory of all that had happened flooded into his mind and he shuddered as he remembered the Monks had put him inside the Machine. ‘How is it that my mind is not emptied?’ he whispered.
‘Must be because unknown strangeness not having Makers metal inside,’ the digger said. ‘Memory songs tell that metal outside needing metal of plan inside for Machine to doing emptying.’ He glanced at the light again. ‘Machine sleeping now so no harm can it doing to me. But Monks will be doing opening of Zluty to see why Machine is not working on metal, when they come back. Better to do escaping.’
‘Much better,’ Zluty said fervently, and struggled to sit up, but the roof was too low. Puzzled, he turned towards the light and discovered that he was still lying in the mouth of the Machine. He could see the great cauldron where metal to make the head shapes was melted. He could even see the entrance to his old cell.
‘Do not being hasty,’ the digger soothed. ‘Monks not coming back until morning. Timeliness to do escaping. Can doing walking?’
‘I will crawl if I have to,’ Zluty declared. He managed to clamber from the mouth of the Machine and dropped to the ground hard enough to jar his sore ankle badly, but nothing was broken. His head hurt, where the Monk had banged it, and when he tried to take off the metal shape, a savage pain bit into his ear. Somehow it was attached to him. He turned to look at the Machine, wondering where it and all of the other metal objects came from and how the Monks knew so much about their workings.
The digger had leapt to the ground too, and it caught his hand and tugged at it. ‘Must do going down and down.’
Zluty looked down at his little rescuer. ‘My name is Zluty. Do you have a name?’
The digger’s eyes shone as it released Zluty’s hand to bow deeply. Then it said very seriously. ‘Being Flugal, Zchloo-tee.’
Zluty bowed too, and then, as the digger replaced his metal head shape, he noticed the metal egg the Monks had taken from him, sitting atop a table by the wall.
He limped over and took it into his hands. Once again he was filled with the strange warm rightness he had felt the first time he had touched it in the Northern Forest.
‘Must going,’ Flugal urged, frowning at the egg.
Zluty nodded and tucked the egg under his arm. He would explain later that the metal egg was his and that the Monks had stolen it from him. But as they left the room and made their way down a curving ramp, Zluty remembered the Monks had said it was a message egg from the Makers.
Flugal stopped and listened and then he went on. He had insisted on going first because if they encountered any Monks he would excite no alarm for he would look the same as the other captive diggers. The ramp brought them to a room full of metal objects of all sizes. Many were in pieces. Zluty guessed this was where the small bits that were melted came from.
They passed from this room into another and another and another, all filled with metal objects, then they came to another ramp leading down.
A cluster of small dim lanterns hung from a hook embedded in the wall at the bottom of the ramp, casting soft light into the entrances of several long chambers. Flugal ignored these and led Zluty along a passage to another curving ramp.
Down they went and down again.
They passed a small window and, glancing out, he was astonished to see the ground far below. Only then did Zluty realise how truly immense was the dwelling place of the Monks.
Flugal stopped at another ramp entrance and clicked his tongue, making a gesture commanding silence, before continuing. This was the first time he had shown real caution and it made Zluty wary too, so he walked as softly as he could. He had taken several steps down the ramp before his sight adjusted to the dimness of the chamber they had entered, and he saw they were surrounded by Monks sleeping curled on fat round mattresses.
His heart began to pound so loudly that he thought the Monks must wake. But they did no more than snore and grunt softly in their sleep. Flugal led Zluty through to another chamber and then another full of sleeping Monks. Then to his immense relief there was another hole in the floor and a ramp curving down into darkness.
As they approached it a great hairy hand shot out, claws extended. Zluty and Flugal flinched away from it, stifling gasps, but the Monk merely settled back to sleep. Even so, they stood for a long moment, trembling, before they could bring themselves to continue.
The ramp led to a number of rooms so dark that Zluty had to be led by Flugal. Then they entered a hall where diggers lay in heaps along the walls. At first he thought with horror that they were dead, but then he saw movement and realised they were only sleeping. All wore metal shapes, but though Flugal looked down at them sorrowfully, he did not stop.
When they reached the empty room beyond it, the digger turned to Zluty and said in an anguished voice, ‘It does hurt me to leave them, but no use to doing waking the beloveds for Machine has joined metal inside and outside.’
Zluty knew Flugal was right, yet he felt sick at the thought of simply abandoning the pitiful blank-faced diggers to their fate. They continued walking down and down through endless rooms. Zluty noticed several woven bags hanging from a hook in one room and took one to slip the metal egg into.
Finally, when Zluty thought there could not possibly be any more rooms, there was a soft hooting call ahead. Flugal’s eyes went wide with astonishment, then he lifted his head and uttered the same sound. A moment later two diggers appeared. Neither wore metal shapes, and even as one of them hurled itself at Flugal and began crooning and crying softly, hissing and pulling at the metal shape on his head, Zluty recognise
d the she digger he had sent back to the settlement.
Flugal began to speak softly but animatedly to her, but the she digger would not be reassured until he took off his metal shape. She gave a cry of relief and he rubbed his face against hers joyfully.
Her companion, a small male, reached out to take Zluty’s hand. He said slowly and carefully, ‘It be a wonderment, Zchloo-tee, that the head is not emptied.’
Zluty lifted his hand to the metal, but remembering the pain in his ear, he did not try to remove it. ‘We should get out of here,’ he said.
‘Problem being,’ Flugal said, ‘Monks doing guarding of only door being big enough for Zchloo-tee.’
Zluty’s heart sank, but the other he digger patted the long narrow bag he carried over his shoulder saying, ‘Not to fearing. Having firesticks to doing diversion.’
‘What are firesticks?’ Zluty asked.
‘Not time to doing more telling now,’ Flugal said urgently. ‘Morning being nearful and Monks soon discovering missing Zchloo-tee. Must doing escaping now.’
‘Two must doing diversion so the Zchloo-tee can escape,’ his mate said. ‘One must running to getting Bee-lee so all can running as soon as Zchloo-tee being free.’
‘Bily!’ Zluty cried. ‘Bily is here?’
What are you, little speaking coldwhite?’
Bily stared up at the Monster looking down at him, so much larger than his Monster. It had the same long body and strong lithe legs, the same lashing tail, but its ears were more round than pointed and its pelt was thicker and all mist-whites and smoke-greys.
‘I am Bily,’ he managed to say, through chattering teeth. He was so numb his lips would hardly obey him. Indeed, if he had not been so frightened, he was sure he would have fainted out of sheer coldness.
The white Monster dipped its head and breathed its hot breath on him, melting the coldwhites caught in his eyelashes and crusted on his fur.
‘Are . . . are you a blizzard?’ Bily asked, somewhat restored.
‘I am the devourer of the plan,’ it answered in its growling, rumbling voice. ‘But there is no plan in you. What are you and what do you do here?’
Bily did not know how to answer. ‘I . . . I am Bily. I came to the Clouded Mountains to save my brother, O Blizzard,’ he said. ‘The Monks have him and they are going to fix his head. Only there was no way for me to get into the Stonehouse. I had to let the diggers go in my stead. Then I got lost.’
‘If your brother is like you, there will be no fixing of his head,’ the Blizzard said. ‘Monks are too stupid. They will kill your brother trying to fix him or they will kill him when they cannot, just as they kill all things that do not serve the Makers plan.’
‘No,’ Bily said, forgetting to be afraid of the Monster in his horrified fear for Zluty. ‘They mustn’t! I will stop them! If you are not going to eat me, won’t you help me find my way back to the Stonehouse?’
‘When the sun rises, I must be deep in my cave, for that is when the Makers power over my metal is strongest and most painful to resist,’ said the blizzard. ‘Besides, if you go to back to the Stonehouse, little coldwhite, you will be killed by the Monks.’
‘I have to save my brother,’ Bily said in an agony of despair, tears falling hotly down his cold cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t have said I would wait while the diggers went in. That was how it was in the cottage, but the cottage is gone. I should have been braver and bolder, like Zluty. I should have looked for another way in!’
‘There is no use in biting and scratching at yourself,’ the blizzard said, its great tail beginning to lash again. ‘I have near torn myself to pieces out of guilt and despair, but it changes nothing. In the end the dead cannot live again. Since you cannot save him, you must take solace in getting revenge for your brother. I do not know what sort of revenge such a small creature can do, but for myself, I have sworn to eat all who serve the plan, to punish the Makers that sent me and my doomed mate to this place to guard their Machine. I eat Monks and diggers and listeners alike to salve myself for her death. I will eat the Makers if ever they come. But I will not eat you, for the Makers plan is not in you, and in eating you I would be obeying them.’
Its rage had faded with its last words, and now it regarded him with what Bily felt was a mixture of irritation and puzzlement.
‘I don’t know why the plan is not in me, but you ought not to eat the diggers who came with me, for they ran away from the Makers and their plan too,’ Bily said. In his urgent desire to be understood, he put his hand on its great soft cheek. For a moment he saw the storm of pain and madness raging in its mind. It centred on the form of a she blizzard lying dead on the stone, red blood leaking from her mouth into white fur. Then the blizzard reared up, snarling so terribly that Bily staggered and fell backwards.
The blizzard looked down at him, lying on the soft pelt of the mountain, and Bily saw the glimmer of metal under its chin. Then it shook its head. ‘The Maker commanded me to kill all creatures that do not contain their metal, and their power over me grows for it is nearing sunrise,’ it growled in explanation. ‘But I will never obey the plan again. I hunt its servants at night when the power of their masters is weak, and in the sunlit hours I sleep deep in the mountains where the Makers Machine cannot reach me. I must go now.’ But then it came close to him and asked, ‘The diggers that refused the Makers suffer pain?’
‘They are the ancestors of the ones that ran away, but they still have Makers metal in them, though I don’t know how that can be,’ Bily said. Then he thought of the clan leader’s offer to heal the Monster’s metal. ‘They are very clever and I think they have learned some way of . . . of fixing the metal so the Makers can’t use it to find them or punish them. Maybe they could fix you so your metal does not hurt you any more.’
‘A greater pain is sorrow and that cannot be fixed,’ said the blizzard darkly. But then it looked into Bily’s eyes. ‘Yet I would like to be free of the Makers power for I am weary to death of darkness and revenge. I would lie in the sunlight again.’
‘Then show me the way back to Stonehouse and once I find my friends and rescue my brother we can go down from the Clouded Mountains together, and the diggers can help you.’
He was about to tell it of the Monster back in the diggers camp when the blizzard lifted its head and gave a long eerie howl that made every hair on Bily’s body stiffen, then it said, ‘I cannot leave the mountains while the Makers light burns. It has some power that holds me to these heights.’
Bily looked up at the great white light and then he reached out to stroke the blizzard’s soft, cold fur even as he had done so often to console his own dear Monster, and this time the blizzard did not pull away. It growled softly, and Bily would have taken his hand away, but then he realised it was not a growling but a purring like soft thunder.
After a time, it said, ‘Today you will stay with me inside the mountain and when night comes again, I will bring you to Stonehouse and I will smell these rebel diggers. If you have spoken truth, I will eat no more diggers.’
Before Bily could answer, there was a grinding, cracking noise that reminded him of the sound the plain made when it quaked. At the same time the clouds overhead suddenly parted to let the white crescent moon shine its light down and Bily saw the thick metal pole atop which the burning white Makers light rested. Beyond it, an endless line of white-clad mountaintops stretched away to the South; peak after peak, rising from a sea of cloud that lapped at its sides, hiding the world below.
Bily turned to the North and saw the high Western peaks that shielded the plateau and Stonehouse from the worst of the winds. They were black and stony for the most part, being too sheer for the coldwhites to settle. He could not see the plateau where Stonehouse stood, nor make out the path that led to the Monks’ platform. The mounded snowy ground he had crossed hid them from him.
There was another high, sharp, cracking sound.
‘What is it?’ he asked the blizzard.
‘I do not know, but it comes f
rom the Stonehouse where the Monks tend the Makers machine,’ it answered.
Bily felt a stab of fear for Zluty. ‘Something is happening and I need to find my brother. But I promise I will return with the diggers to help you as soon as ever I can.’
‘Climb on my back,’ said the blizzard. ‘I will carry you to Stonehouse.’
‘But morning is coming,’ Bily said. ‘The metal will hurt you unless you do what the Makers want.’
‘It is only pain,’ said the blizzard.
As he ran softly down the ramp to the lowest level, Zluty prayed all of the Monks had been drawn away from the front of the Stonehouse by the diversion the diggers had arranged. He knew he did not have much time. They needed to get well away from Stonehouse before day came, when the Monks would be able to pursue them. He only hoped that Flugal’s mate had found Bily and that they were already on their way to the place where they would go down from the mountains.
Zluty could not help marvelling that Bily had followed him to the mountains. He forced himself to concentrate as he eased his way through several empty Monk sleeping rooms and through a room with a great long trough that reeked of food. Beyond it was another of the long halls where diggers slept and he stopped dead, astonished to see they were rousing. Then he told himself they would not see or react to him unless the Monks commanded it. He took a deep breath to steady himself and stepped out to weave his way through them to the door at the other end. The diggers paid no attention to him.
There was a small window in the outer wall of the next room he entered, and he saw with astonishment that the ground did not merely look white in the light. It was white! He stood gaping for a long moment before gathering his wits to continue. At last he reached the dark room Flugal had described. Beyond it lay the brightly lit chamber that was the entrance to Stonehouse.