Shadowplay

The minutely carved roof of the cavern that shielded Funderling Town was renowned throughout Eion. In better times people actually traveled up from distant countries like Perikal and the Devonisian islands just to see the fantastical forest of stone, the loving work of at least a dozen generations of Funderlings.

The ceiling of the House of the Stonecutters’ Guild was not so famous, and certainly nowhere near so large, but was in its own way just as stupefying a piece of art. In a natural concavity on the underside of Southmarch Castle’s foundation slab a combination of limestone, cloudy quartz, beams of ancient black ironwood and the Funderlings’ own matchless skills had been crafted into something the gods themselves might envy.

Chert had seen it many times, of course—his grandfather had been part of the team which had performed its last major repairs—but even so it never failed to impress him. Staring up at it from his lonely position at the ceremonial Outcrop, the ceiling seemed a window through quartz crystal and limestone clouds to some distant part of heaven, but those clouds were braced with great spars of ironwood far too thick and workmanlike to be merely ornamental. It was only when the viewer’s eyes adjusted to the darkness (which grew paradoxically greater as the empty space ascended) that he saw the robed and masked figure surrounded by smaller robed and veiled figures, all seated upside down at the apex, glaring down from the vault, and he realized that the view was not that of someone looking up, but looking down into the depths of the earth—a great tunnel leading downward into the J’ezh’kral Pit, domain of the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone— Kernios, as the big folk called him.

But of course, the true cleverness of the room was beneath the viewer’s feet—something Chert had time to appreciate now as he waited for the noisy reaction to his last words to die down. The Magisters’ semicircle of benches and the four stone chairs they faced sat around the edge of a huge mirror of silvered mica, so that everything above was reflected below. Chert and the others seemed to be sitting around the rim of the great Pit itself, looking down into the very eyes of their god. To approach the Highwardens was to seem to walk on nothing above the living depths of Creation.

It was disconcerting at the best of times. Tonight, with the whole Guild joined together to judge Chert’s actions, it was downright frightening.

“You did what?” His own brother, Nodule, was predictably leading the charge against him. “You cannot imagine the shame I feel, that one of our family...”

“Please, Magister,” said Cinnabar. “No one here has even determined that anything wrong’s been done, let alone that Chert has brought shame to the Blue Quartz family.”

“To the entire Quartz clan!” cried Bloodstone, Magister of the Smoke Quartz branch. Fat and bulging-eyed, he was an ally of Nodule’s and quick to join Chert’s brother in most things—including, it seemed, in being horrified by what Chert had done. He was not alone: the Magisters of the Black, Milk, and Rose Quartz families had also been grumbling all through Chert’s appearance at the Outcrop.

Nice to see my family hurrying to my aid. Chert could only hope that the silence of the other members of the large Quartz clan augured more open minds.

“Strangers in the Mysteries?” Bloodstone shook his head in apparent amazement. “Big folk hiding from their rightful lords here in Funderling Town? What madness have you brought to us, Chert?”

“Your concern has been noted,” said Cinnabar, sounding as though he meant the opposite. As Magister of his own Quicksilver family and one of the most important leaders of all Metal House—most thought he would someday replace old Quicklime Pewter as one of the four Great Highwardens, the most exalted of Funderling honors—he was a good ally to have. On top of everything else, he was also fair and sensible. “Perhaps,” he said now, “we should see if any of the other Magisters or our noble Highwardens have questions before we start shouting about shame and tradition.”

Scoria, Magister of the Gneiss family since his father was lifted to the rank of Highwarden, stood up, his thin face full of fretful anger. “I wish to know why you took in this newest upsider, Chert Blue Quartz. The rest is beyond my understanding, but this seems simple enough. He is a criminal and the king’s regent searches for him. If he is found here we will all suffer.”

“With respect, Magister,” Chert said, “the physician Chaven is a good man, as I said. He was also one of King Olin’s most respected advisers. If he swears that the Tollys have murdered people to seize the throne, and will murder him as well to silence him—well, I’m only a foreman, a working man, but it seems more complicated to me than merely saying he’s a criminal.”

“But that doesn’t change the risk we’re in,” pointed out Jacinth Malachite, one of the few female Magisters. “Chert, many of us know you, and know you as a good man, but there’s a difference between doing a deed of good conscience on your own and dragging all Funderling Town into a quarrel with the castle’s rulers...”

A noise like wet sand rubbing on stone interrupted her: Highwarden Sard Smaragdine of Crystal House was clearing his throat. Unlike the Magisters, the Highwardens did not rise to speak; ancient Sard remained shrunken in his chair like a sack of old chips and samples. High on the wall above his head the Great Astion, seal of Funderling Town, gleamed like a star buried in the stone. “Too many questions here to go about it in such a backward way,” rasped Sard. “Which questions are the most important? That must be answered first. Then we will move our way down, layer after layer, until we have reached the bedrock of the whole matter.” He waved a spindly arm. “What do the Metamorphic Brothers think? Has this...incursion...into the sacred Mysteries angered the Earth Elders?”

Chert looked around, but it seemed nobody at this hastily assembled meeting of the Guild had thought to bring along any of the order. “They knew I went down into the Mysteries in search of my...in search of the boy, and they knew I brought him back up.” The Metamorphic Brothers did not know everything that had happened down there, of course, and Chert didn’t intend to tell the entire story to the Guild, either; as Opal liked to remind him, there was such a thing as having too much trust in your fellows. “They knew the little Rooftopper went down part of the way with me. The only thing that they seemed worried about was that somehow this all seemed to match some of old Brother Sulfur’s dreams.”

“When it comes to the Earth Elders,” said Travertine, another of the Highwardens and almost as old as Sard, “Sulphur has forgotten more than the rest of you ever knew...”

“Yes, thank you, Brother Highwarden,” Sard rasped. “Let us continue. Chert Blue Quartz, why did you first bring this upgrounder boy among us? It is...not our custom.”

“It was something about the strangeness of where we found him, I suppose. But if truth be told, much of it was because my wife Opal wanted to take him home and I could not argue her out of it.” A ripple of laughter passed through the room, but only a small one: the matters at hand were far too daunting. “We have no children, as most of you know.”

Sard cleared his throat again. “Is there anything other than the timing that makes you think there is any connection between what this physician claims is happening in the castle above us and the strange child you brought home?”

Chert had to think for a moment. “Well, Flint found the stone that Chaven says was used to murder Prince Kendrick. That may be happenstance, but for a child who found his way to the Rooftoppers when no one else has seen them, let alone spoken to them, for generations...”

“I take your meaning,” the oldest Highwarden said, nodding. He waved his hand, looking like an upended tortoise struggling to rise. “Do any of my fellows have anything more to ask or to offer?” He squinted his old, near- blind eyes as he looked to the masters of Fire Stone and Water Stone houses, but they shook their heads. Only Quicklime Pewter, the Highwarden of Metal House, had anything to say.

“Is the physician here, brothers?” he asked. “We cannot make up our minds on hearsay alone.”

One of the younger Magisters opened the chamber door and beckoned. Chaven came through with his bandaged hands clasped before him, head lowered and shoulders hunched, although the door to the Magisterial Chamber was one of the few in Funderling Town he could walk through upright. He saw the size of the room and stopped, then looked down at the mica floor, startled by what appeared to be an abyss beneath his feet.

“It’s a mirror,” Chert said from where he stood at the Outcrop. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’ve never seen one even near such a size,” said Chaven, half to himself. “Wonderful. Wonderful!”

“You may step down, Chert Blue Quartz,” wheezed Sard. “Chaven of Ulos, you may take his place at the Outcrop. We have some questions we wish to ask you.”

The physician was so fascinated by the mica mirror beneath his feet that he almost bumped into the Magister nearest the end, but at last made his way to the Outcrop and stood at the edge of the circular floor, the tall stone chairs of the Highwardens on his left, the stone benches of the Magisters at his right.