Shadowmarch

The murk regarded him. A hand as vast as a wall slowly lifted and spread above him —a benediction? A curse? Or did his god simply mean to crush him like a fly? The groaning stopped for a moment, then began again, and for the first time Chert began to hear something like words in it, a dim, gnashing cadence.

He is speaking to me, Chert realized But it is too slow, too deep, for me to hear!

Too slow too deep. The light was flickering now, the massive shape hard to see. Too deep. He couldn’t understand the words His god was speaking to him, but he couldn’t make sense of what was being said. “Tell me!” he shouted as the darkness closed in “Tell me so that I can understand…! “ But his god had no comprehensible tale to tell.

He woke up shivering from the oppressive dream—if dream it had truly been. For a moment he couldn’t remember what place he was in, but the boy’s body pressed against him brought it back. Shivering, Chert was shivering—no, shaking all over.

So cold he thought, but realized a moment later that the air was actually hot, hot enough to suck the sweat off his skin. Nevertheless an unpleasant chill was on him, an icy, bone-deep discomfort, nor could he stop shaking. Also, and far more frightening, the voice of the god still rumbled in his ears.

No, it was the earth itself growling—one of the tremors his people called a Wakeful Elder, unusual but not exceptional Chert himself was not trembling—the ground beneath him was moving. He darted a fearful glance up at the Shining Man, in size and threatening juxtaposition so much like the god in his dream, but where earlier it had flashed and smoldered it had now gone strangely dark at its center, only a few glimmers moving beneath the surface of the crystalline stone like silvery fish in a pool.

The ground shuddered again, then the groaning died and the greater movement stopped. For another heartbeat or two he could hear the hiss of the beach stones around him as they continued to slide, to find new arrangements, then everything was silent once more.

Flint whimpered Chert, who had been certain he held a dead child, almost dropped him in surprise, then his heart leaped with unexpected joy and a new terror. “Lad! Talk to me! It’s me, Chert!”

But the boy was still again, his skin still clammy-cold beneath the dirt and dust.

The tunnel. I must carry him back.

He tried to stand, but it was too much effort—he couldn’t even rise to his knees while holding the boy. He set Flint down as gently as he could and then clambered up to stand unsteadily over him. The boy was his own height, weighed almost as much as Chert did there was only one way to carry him, and that was to get the boy’s entire weight up onto his shoulders, as it was said that Silas of Perikal—or was it one of the other heroes of the big folk’s tales?—had carried a young bullock every day, so that as the bullock grew into its maturity, Silas also grew more and more powerful, eventually to become the mightiest knight of his age.

Or was, that Hihometes the Kraaan? Chert wondered bleanly as he squatted beside the senseless child. Absently, he pulled the mirror out of the child’s grasp—the boy’s grip was fierce, even in near-death—and put it in his own pouch. It felt like nothing special, no heavier or lighter than it did before, no warmer, no cooler. Yes, it was the Kraaan. No, wait, Hihometes was a demigod — he needed no training to lift great weights. Chert could never keep all the stories of the big-folk heroes straight. So many of them, killing monsters and saving maidens, and they all seemed more or less the same.

He hauled the top of Flint’s body up onto his shoulder, then grabbed him around the thighs and lifted until the side of the boy’s belly was against his neck. Grunting, cursing under his breath, yet all the time able to watch his own ludicrous travails as though he were two people at the same time, Chert slowly rose to his feet with the boy’s legs dangling in front and his head dangling down behind. For a moment he was full of the glory of having accomplished the near-impossible, then he took a step and felt his legs already trembling with the exertion, his back knotting at the weight it must bear. Worse, he remembered that he did not know where he had come up out of the tunnel and onto the island. Chert knew he should put the boy down and search instead of trying to carry his weight any farther than necessary, but he also knew that if he did that, he would never manage to lift him again.

It was hard to be certain in the dim light which were footprints and which only shadowed valleys in the piles of smooth stones, but he turned his back to the darkened Shining Man and did the best he could. At the beginning each step was very hard, by the time he had staggered fifty yards and still had not found the tunnel mouth, each step was a sweating, wheezing agony.

Lie down and wait for help, a voice in his head instructed him.

Lie down and die, suggested another as he missed his footing and almost tumbled, almost dropped the helpless child.

The gods help those who help themselves, he thought, and then I hate the gods Why should the Elders torture me in this way? Why should they use the boy to hurt me and to hurt Opal?

Another step. Gasping, he almost fell. One more step. But what can you know about what the gods want? Who are you, little man?

I am Chert of the Blue Quartz clan. I know stone. I do my work. I take care… I take care of my…  my own…

But then he did stumble, and fell, and lay panting on the stones with the boy on top of him. When he tried to make himself move again he could not because something dark was covering him, closing his eyes, stealing his wits.

He came up out of exhausted sleep to find himself face to face with horror.

Something was touching his chin and his cheek: a small but ghastly, malformed mask stared down on him from only a short distance away, flare -nostnled, fang-toothed, with leathery black skin. Chert squeaked—he had the breath for nothing more—and tried to beat away the looming, blurry monstrosity, but he was lying on his belly and something was pinning his arms.

“Demon!” he moaned, struggling. The thing retreated, or its horrid face did, but he could still feel something scratching at his neck.

“Not pretty, mayhap,” a voice said, “but un’s carried me well. Seems sour t’name un so.”

Chert stopped fighting, astonished, wondering if he had lost his wits again or was wandering in the tunnels of dream. “Beetledown?”

“Aye.” A moment later the little man clambered down Chert’s shoulder and into his view. “Why can’t I move? And what was that thing?”

“For movin’, well, it’s thy boy lying athwart ‘ee hampering thy arms. That thing, as tha says, well… a flittermouse, I calls it. Rode it back here, did I.”

“A flit… A bat?”

“Aye, likely.” Something dark leaped past Chert’s face. “There un goes,” said Beetledown a little sadly. “Gone now, afeared because tha would try to roll over un.” He shook his head. “Testing and fidgeting, thy flittermouse may be, but a treat to ride once going along proper.”

“You rode a bat?”

“How else to get over yon evil-smelling silver water?”

Chert slid out from under Flint, letting the boy down onto the stony beach as gently as he could. “How fares thy boy?” asked Beetledown.

“Alive, but I don’t know anything more. I have to get him away, but I can’t carry him.” He wanted to laugh and cry. “Good as it is to see you, you won’t be much help there. And now you’ve lost your bat, so you’re stuck here, too.” It seemed impossibly sad. Chert sat on the loose stones, staring out across the Sea in the Depths.

“Mayhap if tha tell how tha came here, yon temple fellows who followed me can come across and help carry thy boy.”

“Temple fellows… ?” He looked up.There were shapes on the far side of the quicksilver sea, small dark forms moving atop the great balcony of stone. Chert’s heart sped. “Oh, Beetledown, you brought them! The Elders bless you, you brought them!” He cupped his hands around his mouth, tried to shout, coughed, then tried again. “Hoy! Nickel! Is that you?”

The temple brothers voice came down to him, faint but echoing with urgency. “In the name of the Elders, how did you get across?”

Chert started to reply, then stopped. When he did speak, he couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice,