Shadowmarch

“Beetledown! Fissure and fracture, I’ve left him up there alone for an hour or more!” And sick, too, having trouble getting a full breath. Chert was stabbed with the sharp point of his own helplessness—so many things gone wrong and no way to fix any of them. The boy—everything in life had gone wrong since the moment he and Opal saw that sack dropped beside the Shadowline.

We should have left him there, he thought, and even with the aching in his heart, the love he had to admit he felt for the pale-haired child, it was hard to argue with that thought.

He scrambled back up the path, which was really little more than a goat track—but whoever heard of goats living a thousand teet below the ground? That thought had scarcely passed through his head when he saw something gleaming farther up the cliffside, something pale that stood between himself and the balcony at the end of the Maze. He stared in amazement at what he could only believe in these hot, flickering depths must be a sort of fever-vision.

Even on the surface in the waking world—at least this side of the Shadowline—there was no such thing as a deer with skin white to the point of translucence, a ghostly stag with weirdly slender legs and antlers like a tangle of sprouting roots, not to mention those huge, milky-blue eyes that glowed bright as candleflame. But that was what seemed to be staring down at him, at least for one astonishing moment. A heartbeat later it was gone.

Chert paused, clinging to a jutting outcrop, suddenly light-headed and fearful he might fall. Could it have been real? Or had he breathed too deeply of the Mysteries?

Oh, Lord of the Hot Wet Stone, help me —was that what I saw on the island, too? One of those things and not Flint at all? But unless the light and shadow had distorted the island-shape beyond anything he could credit, surely what he had seen there walked on two legs, had a round head—had been, in fact, a person.

When he reached the spot where the glassy-white deer had stood, he found no sign of anything living.

Chert was feeling quite sickened with terror of the gods and their sacred places by the time he reached the spot where he had left Beetledown it took him a few stupefied moments to be quite certain he was standing before the same knob of stone where he had left the Rooftopper, even though his own coral lantern was sitting where he had placed it, still gleaming.

The little man, however, was nowhere to be seen.

His stomach now roiling so that he feared he might be sick—he had lost everyone in his charge, all those who needed him most!—Chert got down on his hands and knees, holding the lantern close to the ground as he searched desperately around the base of the limestone knob for some sign of his companion. He could only pray to the very gods he had impinged upon that when he found him, Beetledown would still be alive.

It was an undignified position to be in, but he did not care at all until he heard a small voice, a yard or so from his ear, say, “Didst tha drop somewhat?'

“Beetledown! Where are you?'

“Just here, hinden this clutter of stone whatnots, but mind tha come quiet. Don’t scare un away.” “Scare who away?” The Funderling crept forward, his gloom lightening a little for the first time since he realized he could not reach the Shining Man’s island. Against all reason, he felt a small swell of hope. “Is it Flint? Did you find my boy?”

“Not unless thy boy wears whiskers and long tail.”

Chert stopped. The bowman was crouching a bit unsteadily in the fork of a two-part stalagmite, a formation that did not reach Chert’s waist but was a hilltop for the little man. Beetledown had his bow trained on something Chert couldn’t see until he crawled closer and marked the shiny black eye and twitching nose in the shadows. Startled by his appearance, the rat flinched and began to skitter along the stone wall, but one of Beetledown’s tiny arrows smacked against the wall just in front of its head and it froze again, only its nose moving.

“How long have you been trying to kill it?” Chert asked, amused as well as relieved. He would never have taken the Rooftopper for such a poor shot, but he supposed the heady, close airs of the caves had taken a toll. “Are you really that hungry?'

“Hungry? Th’art a huge, daft thing. No idea to eat it, I foremeant to ride it.” “Ride it?”

“Too far for me to walk back to the good air,” explained Beetledown. “But now here tha stand with thy huge, daft shoulder.” The tiny man smiled weakly. “So will tha carry me back home again?”

“You were going to ride this rat?” Chert was coming to his understanding slowly, but he had the beginnings of an idea. “All the way back up?”

“A Gutter-Scout am I,” Beetledown said a little indignantly. “Well-used am I to breaking a wild ratling to the saddle.” He shook his head. “And I’ll tell ‘ee true—I cannot take this heavy, choking air much longer.”

“Then let’s catch that rat. He might make us both happy.”

Beetledown was putting the last touches on a makeshift saddle—more of a harness, really—constructed from one strap of the coral lantern knotted with threads and fraying cloth from Chert’s shirt. The saddle’s eventual recipient was currently a prisoner in the bottom of Chert’s bag, happily scavenging up the crumbs left there from the meal Chert had purchased at the Salt Pool. And after he ate, Chert hoped, the beast might stop trying to bite. “But why will tha stay?”

“Because there has to be a way onto that island—the boy’s there, after all. And I’m going to find it.” “P’raps a boat there is, that un’s found and crossed with.”

Chert’s heart sank. He hadn’t thought of that. “Well, even so,” he said at last, “if he comes back across, I’ll be here to make certain he doesn’t get away again. And what if he needs help? How do you cross quicksilver with a boat, anyway? What if it… overturns or comes apart. They come apart sometimes, don’t they?”

“Never tha hast been on a boat, true?” said Beetledown with a little smile. “True,” Chert admitted.

“And I’m to ride away, then send ‘ee help. From where, good Master Funderling?”

“My wife Opal, if you can find her again. Otherwise, ask any of my folk to take you to her.”

Beetledown nodded. He pulled a knot tight on his rat-bridle, squinting at it with a sharp, experienced eye. “Un’ll do.” He stood. “Perchance ‘twould be better were I to send some of yon temple fellows—what did tha call uns? The Metal Marching Brothers, somewhat?”

“The Metamorphic… Oh, fissure and—I never thought of that! And they’ve already met you—they’ll know who you are. Of course.” He was angry with himself for not coming up with such an obvious idea, but events had overwhelmed him.

He helped Beetledown fasten the harness. The rat was calmer now but still not precisely docile and it took no little time. The Rooftopper was patient and skillful, however, and at last Chert was gingerly holding the rat in place while Beetledown climbed onto the creature’s back. As soon as Chert took his hand away, the rat tried to bolt, but the Rooftopper gave the creature a stinging slap on the muzzle with his bow; the rat squealed and tried to take off in another direction and was again punished. When all the cardinal points had proved equally dangerous, the rat crouched low and motionless except for huffing sides and anxiously blinking eyes.

“Un’s learning,” said Beetledown with satisfaction.

“Take a little of the coral light,” Chert told him, breaking off one of the brightest bits; the Rooftopper fastened it under one of the straps of the rat’s harness. “It’ll make it easier to see in some of the dark places Good journey, Beetledown. And thank you for your help and kindness.” He wanted to say something more—he had a sense that this exceptionally small man had become more than an odd acquaintance, that a friendship, however unlikely, had sprung up between them, but Chert was not a man comfortable with sentiment. In any case, he was tired and very frightened. “The Earth Elders protect you.”

“And the Lord of the Peaks watch over ‘ee in thy turn, Chert of Blue Quartz.” The Rooftopper kicked his booted heels against the rat’s sides, but the animal didn’t move. Beetledown smacked his bowstaff against the creature’s flank and it scuttled forward. He was still flicking its hindquarters with the bow, this time trying to get it to turn, as rider and mount vanished into the shadows of the path leading away uphill; all Chert could see of them in the last moments was a moving point of light, the piece of coral strapped to the rat’s back.

“That is, if un can find ‘ee again ‘neath all this mucky stone!” Beetledown called back to Chert, his small voice already sounding as though it came from miles away.

* * *

The straggling end of the army had finally disappeared around a bend in the coastal highway, heading toward the Settland Road and the hills, leaving behind only a few hundred watchers and a muddy, trampled field. It wasn’t right, Briony knew—this army should have marched out with trumpets, with a parade through the streets, but there hadn’t been time to arrange such a thing—nor, to be honest, would she have had the heart for it. But the