Shadowplay

slipped away like sand running from a seam but Chert still did not know the purpose of their errand, let alone actually getting to it.

“They were—and may still be, for all I know. I broke with them years ago when they began to take gold from Parnad, the old autarch of Xis.”

Chert knew little about any of the autarchs, living or dead, but he tried to look as though he routinely discussed such things with other worldly folk. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

“I grew up in Falopetris, in a house overlooking the Hesperian Ocean, atop a great stone cliff riddled with tunnels just like these.”

Chert, who knew that the honeycombed fastness of Midlan’s Mount was not merely the chief dwelling, but the actual birthplace of his race, that the Salt Pool had seen the very creation of the Funderling people, felt a moment of irritation to have it compared to the paltry tunnels of Falopetris, but checked himself—the physician had not meant it that way. Chert was anxious to be moving on and he realized it was making him unkind. “I have heard of those cliffs,” he said. “Very good limestone, some excellent tufa for bricks. In fact, good stone all around there...”

Now it was Chaven who looked a little impatient. “I’m certain. In any case, when I was small my brothers and I played in the caves—not deeply, because even my brothers knew that was too dangerous, but in the outer caverns on the cliff below our house that looked out over the sea. Pretended we were Vuttish sea-ravers and such, or that we manned a fortress against Xixian invaders.” He scowled, gave a short unhappy bark of a laugh. “A good joke, that, I see now.

“It was on such a day that my older brothers grew angry with me for something I cannot even remember now and left me in the cave. We came down to it by a steep trail, you see, and at the end there was a rope ladder we had stolen from the keeper’s shed that we had to clamber down to reach the entrance. My brothers and my sister Zamira went back up ahead of me, but took the ladder with them.

“At first I thought they would return any moment—I had scarcely five or six years, and could not imagine that anything else could happen. And in fact they probably would have come back once they had frightened me a little, but the younger of my brothers, Niram, fell from the trail higher up onto some rocks and broke his leg so badly that the bone jutted from the skin. He never walked again without a limp, even after it healed. In any case, they managed to lift him back to the trail and carry him home, but in their terror, and the subsequent hurry to bring a surgeon from the town, no one thought about me.

“I will not bore you with my every dreadful moment,” Chaven said, as if fearing the other man’s impatience, although that had faded now as Chert considered the horror of a child in such a situation, thought of Flint just days ago, alone in the depths, going through things he and Opal could never know. Chert shuddered.

“Enough to say that I heard screaming and shouting from the hillside overhead,” Chaven continued, “and thought they were trying to frighten me—and that it was succeeding. Then there was silence for so long that I at last stopped believing it was a trick. I became certain they had forgotten me in truth, or that they had fallen to their deaths, or been attacked by catamounts or bears. I cried and cried, as any child would, but at last the barrel was empty—I had no tears left.

“I do not remember much of what happened next. I must have found the hole at the back of the cave and wandered in, although I do not remember doing so. I dimly recall lights, or a dream of lights, and voices, but all that I can know for certain is that when my father and the servants came for me, bearing torches because it was hours after nightfall, they found me curled in a smaller, deeper cave whose entrance we had never found in all the times we had played there. My father subsequently had that inner cavern blocked and the ladder to the caves taken away. We never went there again—Niram could not have climbed down to them in any case.” Chaven ran his hands over his balding scalp. “I have had a horror of dark, narrow places ever since. It took all I had those three days past simply to come down into FunderlingTown seeking you, although I knew I would die if I did not find help.”

It was hard to imagine feeling stone over your head as oppressive instead of sheltering—how much less secure to stand in some wide open space with no refuge, no place to hide from enemies or angry gods! But Chert did his best to understand. “Would you like to go back, then?”

“No.” Chaven stood, still trembling, but with a resolution on his face that looked a little like anger. “No, I cannot leave my house to the plundering of the Tollys without even knowing what they do there. I cannot. My things... valuable...” The physician dropped into a mumble Chert could not understand as he pushed himself off from the wall and began walking again, heading bravely into the long stretches of shadow between stonelights, shadows which Chert knew must seem darkness complete and hopeless to a man from aboveground.

As he paused to drop a fresh piece of coral stone into the saltwater of the lantern Chert could not help thinking of his last two journeys through these tunnels, passing this way with Flint when they took the strange piece of stone to Chaven, then the other direction with Gil on their march to the fairy-held city on the other side of the bay. How could his life, such an ordinary thing only a year before, full of orderly days and restful nights, have been turned inside out so quickly, like Opal readying shirts to dry on a hot rock?

“And the stone, Flint’s stone, was the thing that killed a prince...” Chert said half-aloud as he hurried to catch up to physician. Even after all the other things that had happened to him in the last days, he still found it hard to believe— found Chaven’s entire story nearly impossible to grasp. He, Chert Blue Quartz, had carried that stone in his own hand!

Chaven, walking grimly ahead, did not seem to have heard him.

“If I had put that what-was-it-called stone in my own mouth,” Chert said, louder this time, “would I have turned into a demon, too? Or did I have to say some magical words?”

“What?” Chaven seemed lost in a kind of dream, one that did not easily let go. “The kulikos stone? No, not unless you knew the spell that gave it life and power, and that would have needed more than words.”

“More than words?”

“Such old wisdom, that men call magic, does not work like a door lock that any man can open if he has the key. Those among your people who work crystals and gems, do they simply grab a stone and strike it and it falls into shape, or is there more to the skill than that?”

“More, of course. Years of training, and still often a stone shatters.”

“So it would be even if you held the kulikos in your hand right now and I told you the ancient words. You could say them a hundred times in a hundred ways and it would remain nothing but a lump of cold stone in your fingers. The old arts require training, learning, sacrifice—and even so, the cost is often greater than the reward...” He trailed off. When he spoke again his voice shook. “Sometimes the cost is terrible.”

Chert put a hand on his shoulder. “We are coming near to the bottom of your house. We should go quietly now. If they have not found the lower door they might still hear us through the walls and come looking for what makes the noise.”

Chaven nodded. He looked drawn and frightened, as though after telling the story of his childhood terror he had never managed to shake it off again.

Two more rough-hewn corridors and they stood in front of the door, which was as strange a sight as ever in this empty, untraveled place, its hardwoods and bronze fittings polished so that even the dim coral light raised a gleam. Chert suddenly wanted to ask whether Chaven had actually stepped out into the passage from time to time to clean the thing, since none of his servants had known of its existence, but he had to be quiet now until they learned who or what was on the other side.

Chert stared at the featureless door. It had no handle or latch or even keyhole on this side, nothing but the bellpull— and clearly they were not going to use that.

The physician tugged at his sleeve to get his attention, then made a strange gesture that the Funderling did not immediately understand. Chaven did it again, waving his bandaged fingers with increasing impatience until Chert realized that Chaven wanted him to turn around—that there was something the bigger man did not want him to see. It was impossible not to feel angered after all they had both been through, after he and Opal had given Chaven the sanctuary of their home and nursed him back to health, but now was not the time to argue. Chert turned his back on the door.

A quiet hiss as of something heavy sliding was followed by the chink of a lifting latch; a moment later he felt Chaven’s touch on his shoulder. The door was open, spilling a widening sliver of light out into their passageway. Chaven leaned close, urgency on his face—he looked like a starving man who smelled food but did not yet know what he must do to get it. Chert held his breath, listening.