Shadowrise (55 page)

With the permission of their leaders, Chalk and his comrades got out ladders and long striking-wands, objects that had obviously been used only for ceremonial purposes for some time (and not even that very frequently as suggested by how hard it was to find some of them—Chalk started sniffling again, this time in mortification, as the temple was ransacked for the last ladder, which had been used to refill a ceiling lantern and not returned). At last everything was in place. Chalk sat by Briony’s feet with a tablet of clay and a stone stylus as he wrote down her message and did his best to translate it into words the drumstones could carry.

 

 

“Highwarden Mother?” asked Briony as Chalk relayed these words to his underlings, who then began to beat at the circle of stone set into the wall as though it were a true drum, their stone-headed, wooden wands plinking and plunking a strange, arrhythmic music. “It seems a touch confusing.”

“They have no word for ‘princess,’ it seems,” said Eneas, amused. “I wince to think what they would call me.”

When the message had been drummed and then drummed a second time, they waited, but although they stood—and then, after a long while, sat down where they could find places to do so—no message came back.

“Either they are gone,” said the hierophant, “which seems strange when they had just sent a message to us, or something has broken the chain of drumstones. We will try to drum to them again tonight, and send word to you in the castle if we hear anything.”

“You are very kind,” said Briony, but the dizzying happiness of only a little earlier was fading. Perhaps she had been wrong about what the message meant. Perhaps the Kallikans themselves were wrong somehow about receiving it at all.

“Come, Princess,” Eneas told her. “It’s time to go back now.”

She allowed herself to be led back through the maze of corridors toward the real world and the late afternoon sun.

—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”

 

 

“T
HEY’VE BROKEN THROUGH! The Twilightfolk have broken through!” One of Sledge Jasper’s warders fell through the doorway of the drumstone chamber, bleeding and staggering like a drunk.

Ferras Vansen leaped to his feet so quickly he almost knocked over the monk beside him. Luckily, the Funderling had just finished pounding on the drumstone wall with what looked like the ramrod for a cannon and Vansen’s message had been sent out into the earth—and more important, he hoped, to the Funderlings of Tessis. “Where have they broken through?” Vansen demanded. “And how many of them?”

Two of the other temple brothers were now holding up the bleeding guard. “Just above the Festival Halls,” gasped the wounded man, “but they’re almost to the temple cavern. Wardthane Jasper and the others have fallen back to the narrows in front of the Curtainfall, but they . . . will not last long . . . you must . . . must send . . .” The man wobbled and his head sank.

“Leave him with the older Brothers to be cared for,” Vansen said, “and if he is well, let him rest a while and then send him back—we need every hand. Where is Magister Cinnabar?”

“Cinnabar took a troop of warders to look at a suspicious cave-in below Five Arches,” said Brother Nickel. “He will not be back for hours.”

“Then I need someone else. I need men to go with me to the Festival Halls. I cannot find my way around without a Funderling guide.” He had learned from harsh experience that any tracking skills he possessed meant nothing in these lightless tunnels. He turned and surveyed the drumstone chamber. “In fact, we need all these men, Brother Nickel. Half our guards or more are out of the temple, as well as Copper and most of the men he brought. If the Qar break through, we shall be separated from them and under siege.”

“These are religious men, not fighters,” said Nickel angrily, waving his hands at the half-dozen fearful-looking Brothers listening to the argument. “In any case, it is their task to listen for the drumstones—especially now, when we have just sent messages! What if our kin in Underbridge or Westcliff reply to us?”

“Then leave one, preferably someone too lame to fight. Send me all the rest and tell them to bring any weapon they can find—hoes and shovels from the gardens if there is nothing else. They must meet me in front of the temple as quickly as they can—we have no time to lose.”

 

It was a ragged crew, there was little doubt of that: Ferras Vansen had only a dozen men, most too old or too young, and none of them looked as if he had ever raised a hand to fight before. Vansen had the armor the Funderlings had made for him, but none of his volunteers had anything to protect themselves but the mica goggles, leather helmets, and thick blousy jackets they wore for digging in the wet and dangerous depths.

“Nothing to be done about it,” he told himself, but his heart was heavy. When had troops like these ever won a battle? They were sacrifices, not soldiers. “Where is Chert Blue Quartz?”

“Here,” the Funderling said from the doorway of the temple. The small man hurried down the stairs. “What do you need, Captain?”

Vansen leaned close so only Chert could hear him. “Someone must hurry to Cinnabar below Five Arches. Tell him that if he and his men don’t come quickly we are lost—the Qar have broken through above the Festival Halls. But do not go yourself, do you understand? I need you to stay and make sure Copper and any others who come back are also sent to help us as quickly as possible. It must be you, Chert—I do not trust these priests to understand the danger.”

Chert frowned, considering. “I’ll send someone after Cinnabar right now, Captain, I promise. But it will be hours before he can reach you at the Stair, even if he starts when the messenger finds him.”

“Can’t be helped.” Vansen shook his head. “Ah, I almost forgot. Go to Chaven and ask him . . . no, lean closer, I must whisper it to you.”

When Vansen had finished Chert looked at him with wide eyes. “Truly? Poison?”

“Quiet, I beg you! I am afraid so.”

“Then we must pray that the Earth Elders are sleeping no longer—that they will wake and help us.”

On an impulse, Vansen thrust out his hand for the small man to clasp, surprising Chert more than a little. “Farewell, Master Blue Quartz. I hope I will see you again, but if the gods wish otherwise, take care of your family—and watch out for that boy of yours, especially. I wager he will play an important part before this is all over.”

Chert nodded. “And be thrifty with your own life, Captain Vansen. We need you. Don’t sell yourself for the first nuggets out of the seam.”

Ferras Vansen had no idea what that meant, but he squeezed Chert’s hand once more, then turned and motioned for his ragtag troop to follow him.

“The Earth Elders protect you!” Chert called after him, and several of the older brothers gathered on the steps echoed him, their voices dry and whispery as mice scuttling in a hay barn.

Chert found one young acolyte who seemed to have more sense than some of his fellows. “Go find Magister Cinnabar down below Five Arches,” he said to the youth. “Tell him the fairies have broken through near the Festival Halls and Vansen needs every man he can get. Go, lad, and hurry.”

A furious Brother Nickel was waiting as Chert passed the chapter house on his way to find Chaven.

“What do you think you are doing?” Nickel demanded. “You cannot give orders to my acolytes. I was given the authority during this crisis.
I
act for the abbot, not you!”

“Captain Vansen is in charge of defending this place and all of Funderling Town,” snapped Chert. “Cinnabar and the guild told you so. The Qar have broken through and Vansen needed a message sent. There wasn’t time to find you and ask your approval.”

Nickel scowled, but seemed unable to find a response. “Just don’t get too big and shiny, Townsman Blue Quartz,” he said at last. “It was you and your mongrel son who started all this trouble—little people, fairies, outsiders in our Mysteries. Some others may have forgotten that but I haven’t. And now I’m told your monstrous child has caused even more trouble for me.” Nickel stuck a bony finger in Chert’s face. “If it is as bad as I suspect, I will see him sent back to Funderling Town—and you, too, no matter what the guild and your Captain Vansen say.” The monk stamped off like a man intent on crushing every insect in his path.

Chert was in a hurry to find Chaven the physician, but it sounded as though the boy had got himself onto some kind of scree slope again. Could the errand to Chaven wait? He did not want to leave the boy to be bullied or worse by Nickel—the monk was clearly developing a grudge against him. And what if the monk frightened the boy off somewhere? What if Flint fled the temple entirely? It was too dangerous now for the child to be outside on his own.

“Fracture and fissure!” Chert smacked his hands together in frustration: Vansen’s errand would have to wait, at least for a while. He set off after Brother Nickel.

 

The loud voices seemed to be coming from the library and they sounded angry indeed. As Chert crossed the front hall he had a sudden premonition of what he would find there.

To his sorrow, he turned out to be right: Flint stood in the middle of a crowd of furious, dark-robed monks, half a head taller than most of them and as serene as a tall stone in the middle of a rushing river. The boy’s eyes met Chert’s for a moment and then continued roaming the walls as though he were sizing up the stone before carving a stringcourse.

“What’s going on here?” Chert had to struggle to keep his temper. He knew the boy was unusual—it made his stomach churn sometimes just to think of how carelessly he and Opal had brought the child into their lives—but had never seen a scrape of harm in him. The Metamorphic Brothers were acting as though they had caught a thief or murderer.

Brother Nickel turned toward him, face flushed. “This is beyond all bounds, even for you, Blue Quartz,” the monk said. “This child walked into the library—the greatest library of our people left in the world!—and began to put his hands on the texts! His filthy hands!”

Despite his own rage, Chert was shaken: trespassing in the library was no simple prank. It was worse even than entering the Mysteries, because the books in the library—some of them ancient prayers scratched into fragile slate in letters so shallow that they had become almost entirely unreadable, or etched on parchment-thin sheets of mica—were rare and easily damaged. The great Funderling library in Stonebeneath, a settlement that for centuries had lain beneath ancient Hierosol, had been destroyed along with most of the city in the floods of four centuries earlier, along with almost half of the lower city’s inhabitants, and the library had been lost completely. The dreadful toll of the Stonebeneath Floods had been taught to Chert since he had been big enough to walk—the single greatest tragedy of Funderling history. No wonder the monks were so upset.

“Flint,” he said as calmly as he could. “Did you go into the library? Did you handle the books?”

The pale-haired boy looked as if Chert had asked whether it was good to eat when you were hungry. “Yes.”

“Do you see?” Nickel cried. “He feels no shame! He breaks into the Mysteries like an invader and then, not content with that outrage, comes to play his wicked tricks in the very heart of our people’s memory.”

Chert struggled for composure. “I’m sure with all those clever words you truly will be abbot one day, Nickel, but let’s not completely lose our heads. Flint, why did you do it?”

The boy now looked at him as though he were actually a bit surprised, something Chert had scarcely ever seen from him. “I needed to learn something. I went to look at the oldest books. It’s important.”

“What? What did you want to learn?”

“I can’t tell you.” He said it with such clarity that Chert knew arguing would be useless. The assembled brothers were no longer just murmuring, but crowding forward as though they meant to lay hands on the boy and administer punishment. Chert stepped in front of Flint and held up his hands.

“He didn’t understand. He doesn’t mean harm, but he . . . he’s different.” He was ashamed to capitulate to the monks so easily, but there was no time to waste. “I’ll take him with me. You won’t have any more trouble with him—I promise that on my honor as a Guildsman. Just . . . just go about your business.”