Shadow (20 page)

‘You may know who I was,' she said in a flat voice. ‘I'm nothing now.'

‘Oh?'

She wiped her eyes, went to the window and stared through it.

‘Maybe I know the feeling,' he said, taking a seat on the floor behind her. ‘I'm not what I used to be either.'

‘Has your heart ever been spat out of your true love's mouth like coughed bile?'

‘Not exactly. My true love pretty much thinks I'm pathetic and has from the start. Can't argue either.'

The wolf meanwhile writhed on the floor. Its hair and fur were already shed. Its bones began crunching and breaking. It made a vomiting noise so horrible Eric had to cover his ears for a minute or two. When that finished he said, ‘I seem to remember you two used to fight each other. What changed?'

Stranger laughed bitterly. ‘I'm lucky he didn't tear my throat out. Dyan gave him every chance.'

‘Dyan? Who's that?'

She began to speak, hesitated, then smiled. ‘Why not? Why not tell you all I know of him?'

‘Not yet,' said Far Gaze hoarsely. ‘Wait until I've rested. Then tell us together. Till then, not a word about it.' He stood naked among a litter of white wolf's hair, then bent over, clutching his belly. ‘Mongrel! How much rot did he eat? Never again. Damn him!' With a retching noise no less horrid than the wolf's in transition had been, Far Gaze vomited down the steps to the whirlpool below. When at last he'd finished he stood, swayed, muttered to Eric, ‘Your friend is dead,' then passed out.

BENEATH THE SURFACE

1

When Siel lurched back into the regular flow of time it felt like she'd been dropped from a height to land with a jolt that jarred her senses. She'd found herself alone in the underground chamber. The wall's shackles all hung limp and empty, the walls behind them crisscrossed with gouges from what might well have been Anfen's sword.

The place – to her immense relief – had been left unguarded, as had the surrounding rooms and tunnels. She'd run from there with no idea which way led back to the surface, only meaning to get away from those hooks before someone tried to put her there where Stranger had been.

That was some time back. There were precious few lightstones in the network she now wandered through, though she'd begun hearing voices and footsteps through its membrane-thin walls. How many hours of it went crawling by, this flitting about like a rodent in a house full of cats? Dead ends. Blocked passages. Footsteps so close they sounded right on top of her. One narrow escape, crouched behind a pile of rubble as two men went by sharing a joke. She'd been a heartbeat from striking at them with the fist-sized rock she'd adopted as her new weapon, could have sworn one of them looked right at her but kept on walking.

Rounding a bend where the lightstones were brighter, she hesitated, debating whether or not to risk a passage where she'd be so visible. It was this or hours of backtracking for likely the same ultimate result. Why not deal with it now, while she had some energy left to fight.

She prepared herself. Before battle she used to rouse her spirit with thoughts of her parents kneeling in their beautiful garden, the pride and envy of their street. Others of the neighbourhood kneeled with them, while pigs (her memory actually depicted them as beast-faced animals in men's clothes) went up and down the line, killing in Vous's name.

This time she thought of something else: of one day looking back on this moment as the most decisive in all the war, a thin thread bearing the weight of all history, when a barefoot woman with a rock in her hand used it to cause an avalanche of events, pouring down on the whole castle to bury it forever. She had that thread in her hand now. She must not let go.

For a while the better lit passage seemed safe enough, silent and deserted but for a not-too-distant
clunk,
clank,
scrape.
Then she was at another dead end. Four groundmen nattered quietly while they expanded the tunnel with tools. Their expert hands seemed to make the stone crumble away as if it were soft soil.

Their overseer lay with his back to her, one leg crossed lazily over the other. He had a sheathed sword at his side and a long forked prod. The scene was so reminiscent of the groundman art she'd seen it was disconcerting: this kind of thing actually
happened?
She'd always thought the little people somewhat demented.

She moved closer, at first unsure why the groundmen didn't simply run from their lazy captor. Then she saw the square metal device which held all four of them around their bleeding ankles. Similar to traps used in hunting, it allowed them only a forward shuffle. Backward motion would cut into their feet.

One pair of candle-bright yellow eyes turned her way, though she was sure she'd not made the faintest sound. Then another. All four paused in their work and stared. The overseer lifted his prod, debated for a moment between offenders and – despite their having quite frantically gotten back to their task – plunged it into the thighs of the groundman on the right. The victim squealed pitifully. The rest worked at feverish speed.

The overseer didn't get so far as drawing his sword before she swung down the rock, then swung it again to make certain. The groundmen didn't turn as his body slumped to the ground, not until she'd taken off his sword belt and strapped it around her own waist. They spared her a glance then kept working as though one overseer had simply been exchanged for another.

She reached for the keys hooked around the dead man's belt and said, ‘I think we can be of use to one another. Do you agree?'

2

They had walked for at least two hours and the little creatures' gratitude had only just begun to lose its hyperactive zeal. Thankfully. It was touching at first to have them pause every few paces to embrace her legs, but soon she'd had to keep in check the urge to kick some sense into them. ‘Let's just get moving. Please. That's the best way to thank me,' she repeated through clenched teeth.

The groundmen's bright eyes found secret passages she'd never have seen, where what looked like a wall was actually an empty space. She might well have passed dozens of these earlier without knowing it. With the same ease they spotted old traps, long ago set off but still best avoided. Now and then were parts they had to tunnel through, digging holes in dead ends with the tools they'd kept from their enslavement. The way the stone seemed to melt and crumble in their fast-moving little hands indicated there was more at work than just the small picks and hammers. She'd heard no talk that these creatures held a kind of magic about them, but it could be nothing else. Soon they were well away from those districts under castle control and into other networks, long abandoned. These were not made for human travel, and in parts Siel had to crawl to fit. There were no lightstones. She could see nothing but the thin gleam leaking into the gloom from her companions' eyes.

‘We are going deeper,' she said. ‘Why? I asked you to take me to the surface.'

‘Bad up there,' said the most vocal of them, the one who had been jabbed by the overseer's prong. ‘Bad things, up now.'

‘Bad things? What bad things?'

‘Your word. Tor-
men
-tor. We say, bad things. Up now, above. In trees.'

‘How can you tell where they are?' she said. ‘You have been enslaved for years. Weren't you cut off from the outside world? Where do you get your news?'

A little laughter broke out. She heard one of them patting the wall. ‘This! Stone tells. Tells lots. Feel it. Touch it. All up there, comes through here. Here!' Pat, pat. ‘Just faint. But we feel. All time, while we slave, we know what pass, up there. Big war. They think we blind, dumb. It's fine, make us slaves.'

‘They make slaves of us too,' said Siel. ‘Of other big people. Have you not felt
that
going on up there?' The groundmen made sounds like they didn't believe her. ‘It's true. Some big people are very bad, some are good. We are trying to kill all the very bad ones. You can help us. We would like that very much. The world would be better for everyone.'

There was a very awkward silence. ‘You, our friend,' said one of them, turning to embrace her knees reassuringly and nearly tripping her in the process. ‘
You
are. Not them.'

She took this as a request to cease that line of conversation. They had evidence of one non-evil human being, so there must be just the one, which was her. Flattering, kind of. ‘Do you know where the Tormentors come from?' she said, suddenly wondering how valuable this friendship could become.

‘We know.'

‘Do they come from the castle?' she said.

‘Not there.'

‘We can show. Is far. Long way.'

She asked them to describe it but they wouldn't; the bad things came from ‘far away' and that was all. ‘Some close by now,' one said in a grim voice. ‘They move, still. Feel it?'

‘Nearby?' she said, alarmed. ‘Where?'

They nattered to each other briefly. ‘We show. Come. Is down from here.'

It was not a small detour. She soon regretted agreeing to it as they went further and further below, down long stretches that were almost vertical, with the help of stone grooves functioning as ladders. The little people climbed down the vertical rock faces as though their hands could stick to stone at will. The air grew clammy and cold. Siel had an indefinable feeling that she, indeed any living thing, should
not
be here, that these parts of the world had not been made for her. The groundmen however seemed unconcerned, chatting happily in their incomprehensible speech until one long final descent when they ceased all talk.

‘Here,' one whispered, crawling with Siel over a raised hump of smooth icy rock shaped like a wave. Its crest looked down over a wider passageway cut into the stone. There were small lightstones very sparsely placed along the secret highway. Not much could be seen. ‘Slaves make this,' a groundman whispered in her ear. ‘Long time back.
Big
long road. When road done, they kill slaves. No good, big people.'

A foul and familiar smell was in the air. She fought not to cough. There was a sound of wooden creaking and cracking, hints of something moving along directly beneath them. Then came a flash of blue light which hurt all their eyes, making even the groundmen reel back in surprise. It had come from the tip of a short staff, held by a castle grey-robe who had not been visible before. Its flare was like a small lightning flash which revealed three Tormentors. They were smaller than those Siel had seen invading Elvury from the high inn's window.

More bright flashes some distance away showed another grey-robe, surrounded by three of the creatures which he prodded along like someone steering cattle. ‘Where do they take them?' Siel whispered as quietly as she could.

‘North. All north. Big under-country, there. Near castle. They fill it. Hard to do. See? Lots dead!'

She did not see. ‘Dead? Big people you mean, in the grey robes? The ones who try to move them along?'

‘Dead. All up and down road. Hard to move bad things. Kill movers. Kill
everyone.
But they keep on, to bring more, more. Always more. What plan? We can't see. This,' it patted the stone wave they all lay upon, ‘don't say what big people think. We leave here now. Must!'

It was no small relief to be out of earshot of the quiet insistent creaking sounds of death creeping beneath the world. For a long time after they'd left that spot the sound still seemed to be in her ears.

3

Their way had climbed for uncounted hours when Siel's body at last refused to go further. She slept, though claustrophobic nightmares made her regret it. The groundmen gently woke her and she went from one such bad dream to another.

A draft indicated they'd come through the cramped spaces into a more open area. Glittering light far ahead had the groundmen excited and rushing off. When she cried out, ‘Come back!' one of them returned to guide her along the raised path, which even with eyes well accustomed to the dark she could barely see at her feet. ‘What's got into your friends?' she said.

‘New picture,' he said, impatient to rush off for a look. Before it the other little people were talking in awed, hushed voices. It was a spectacular display of glowing patterns cast on a flat, forward-tilted slab of wall. She had to laugh for a moment when she saw that it depicted Eric.

Eric's face, unmistakeably. A group of little people surrounded him, kneeling in reverence. ‘Why laugh?' one of the groundmen demanded, the first time any of them had spoken to her with anything like anger.

‘I know him. That's a companion of mine.' They looked at each other uneasily and didn't speak. Their body language was difficult to read but she had a sense they felt she had lied. ‘His name's Eric. He's—' (Was there harm in revealing it? she quickly debated.) ‘— he's from Otherworld. A Pilgrim.'

There followed several minutes of fast conversation between the groundmen, of which she understood not a word or even its mood.

‘Where is he?' said one of them at last.

‘A strange tower. Far to the south. I should be there with him. I was abducted.' She described the location as best she could remember. They quizzed her for a while. Many of their questions she could make no sense of and couldn't answer. ‘Why do you ask all this?' she said. ‘Why is he in this art?'

‘Message,' said one of them, nodding at the portrait of light. ‘He free us. Free all of us. Make everything good. This picture is message-picture. Eh-Rick, you call him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Not his name. Says here, name
H'lack-til.
Your word, Shadow.'

She looked at the portrait's eyes. They were Eric's eyes, not Shadow's dead little pits. She had seen a similar picture before too. Where?