Shadowplay

first— words that were not words, that were almost pictures.

A long way, the words seemed to say. A long, dangerous way.

Ferras Vansen could think of nothing to do but shake the reins, turn his horse, and ride out in the direction Barrick had indicated. Vansen had lost his mind to madness once before in this place, or as near to it as he could imagine. Perhaps madness was simply something he would have to learn to live in, as a fish could live in water without drowning.

3. Night Noises

O my children, listen! In the beginning all was dry and empty and fruitless. Then the light came and brought life to the nothingness, and of this light were born the gods, and all the earth’s joys and sorrows. This is truth I tell you.

—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One

The face was cold and emotionless, the skin pale and bloodless as Akaris marble, but it was the eyes that terrified Chert most: they seemed to glare with an inner fire, like red sunset knifing down through a crack in the world’s ceiling.

“Who are you to meddle in the gods’ affairs?” she demanded. “You are the least of your people—less than a man. You betray the Mysteries without apology or prayer or ritual. You cannot even protect your own family. When the day comes that Urrigijag the Thousand-Eyed awakes, how will you explain yourself to him? Why should he take you before the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be judged and then welcomed, as the righteous are welcomed when their tools are at last set down? Will he not simply cast you into the void of the Stoneless Spaces to lament forever...?”

And he could feel himself falling already, tumbling into that endless emptiness. He tried to scream, but no sound would come from his airless throat.

Chert sat up in bed, panting, sweat beading on his face even in the midst of a chilly night. Opal made a grumbling sound and reclaimed some of the blanket, then rolled over, putting her back to her annoying, restless husband.

Why should that face haunt his dream? Why should the grim noblewoman who had commanded the Twilight army—who in actuality had regarded Chert as though he were nothing more than a beetle on the tabletop—rail at him about the gods? She had not even really spoken to him, let alone made accusations that were so painful it felt as though they had been chiseled into his heart and could not be effaced.

I can’t even protect my family—it’s true. My wife cries every evening after Flint has fallen asleep—the boy who no longer recognizes us. And all because I let him go dashing off and could not find him until it was too late. At least that’s what Opal thinks.

Not that she said any such thing. His wife was aware of the weapon her tongue could be, and since that strange and terrible time a tennight gone, she had never once blamed him. Perhaps I am the only one blaming me, he thought, perhaps that is what the dream means. He wished he could believe that were true.

A quiet noise suddenly caught his attention. He held his breath, listening. For the first time he realized that what had awakened him was not the fearfulness of the dream but a dim comprehension of something out of the ordinary. There it was again—a muffled scrabbling sound like a mouse in the wall. But the walls of Funderling houses were stone, and even if they had been made of wood like the big folks’ flimsy dwellings, it would be a brave mouse indeed that would brave the sovereign territory of Opal Blue Quartz.

Is it the boy? Chert’s heart flopped again. Is he dying from those strange vapors we breathed in the depths? Flint had never been well since coming back, sleeping away most days, speechless as a newborn much of the time he was awake, staring at his foster parents as though he were a trapped animal and they his captors—the single thing that tore most at Opal’s heart.

Chert rolled out of bed, trying not to wake his wife. He padded into the other room, scarcely feeling the cold stone against his tough soles. The boy looked much as always, asleep with his mouth open and his arms cast wide, half on his stomach as though he were swimming, the covers kicked away. Chert paused first to lay a hand on Flint’s ribs to be reassured by his breathing, then felt the boy’s forehead for signs that the fever had returned. As he leaned close in the darkness he heard the noise again—a strange, slow scratching, as though some ancient Funderling ancestor from the days before burning were digging his way up toward the living.

Chert stood, his heart now beating very swiftly indeed. The sound came from the front room. An intruder? One of the burning-eyed Twilight folk, an assassin sent because the stony she-general now regretted letting him go? For a moment he felt his heart would stutter and stop, but his thoughts kept racing. The entire castle was in turmoil because of the events of Winter’s Eve, and FunderlingTown itself was full of mistrustful whispers—might it be someone who feared the strange child Chert and Opal had brought home? It seemed unlikely it was someone planning thievery —the crime was almost unknown in FunderlingTown, a place where everyone knew everyone else, where the doors were heavy and the locks made with all the cunning that generations of stone-and metal-workers could bring to bear.

The front room was empty, nothing amiss except the supper dishes still sitting on the table, ample witness to Opal’s unhappiness and lethargy. In Endekamene, the previous month, she would have dragged herself across the house on two broken legs rather than risk a morning visitor seeing the previous night’s crockery still unwashed, but since Flint’s disappearance and strange return his wife seemed barely able to muster the energy to do anything but sit by the child’s bedside, red-eyed.

Chert heard the dry scratching again, and this time he could tell it came from outside the front door: something or someone was trying to get in.

A thousand superstitious fears hurried through his brain as he went to where his tools were hanging on the wall and took out his sharpest pick, called a shrewsnout. Surely nothing could get through that door unless he opened it—he and Opal’s brother had worked days to shape the heavy oak, and the iron hinges were the finest product of Metal House craftsmen. He even considered going back to bed, leaving the problem for the morning, or for whatever other householder the scratching burglar might visit next, but he could not rid himself of a memory of little Beetledown, the Rooftopper who had almost died helping Chert look for Flint. The castle above was in chaos, with troops in Tolly livery ranging everywhere to search for any information about the astonishing kidnapping of Princess Briony. What if Beetledown was now the one who needed help? What if the little man was out there on Chert’s doorstep, trying desperately to make his presence known in a world of giants?

Weapon held high, Chert Blue Quartz took a breath and opened the door. It was surprisingly dark outside—a darkness he had never seen in the night streets of FunderlingTown. He squeezed the handle of his pick until his palm hurt, the tool he could wield for an hour straight without a tremor now quivering as his hand shook.

“Who is there?” Chert whispered into the darkness. “Show yourself!”

Something groaned, or even growled, and for the first time the terrified Chert could see that it was not black outside because the darklights of Funderling Town had gone out, but because a huge shape was blocking his doorway, shadowing everything. He stepped back, raising the shrewsnout to strike at this monster, but missed his blow as the thing lunged through the door and knocked him sideways. Still, even though he had failed to hit it, the intruding shape collapsed in the doorway. It groaned again, and Chert raised the pick, his heart hammering with terror. A round, pale face looked up at him, grime-smeared but quite recognizable in the light that now spilled in through the doorway.

Chaven, the royal physician, lifted hands turned into filthy paws by crusted, blackened bandages. “Chert...?” he rasped. “Is that you? I’m afraid...I’m afraid I’ve left blood all over your door....”

The morning was icy, the stones of Market Square slippery. The silent people gathered outside the great Trigonate temple of Southmarch seemed a single frozen mass, packed shoulder to shoulder in front of the steps, wrapped in cloaks and blankets against the bitterly cold winds off the sea.

Matty Tinwright watched the solemn-faced nobles and dignitaries as they emerged from the high-domed