"Another wise one," Axebourne murmured. "I can feel my brain growing already, just being on the same hill as you."
Sev smiled flatly.
"Yet I must agree with mistress Ess," he said. "If you know of one who may be able to solve the riddle, it would be best to go see him."
"Well if we're voting the outcome is clear," said Axebourne. "But we don't vote, though I like for everyone to agree, you all know that." Ess, Scythia, and Agrathor nodded. "To me, the course is clear, if not what my body aches to do." He cast his eyes toward the city ruins. "We should go see Eff."
"Must you?" asked Ess, but she didn't really seem annoyed.
Axebourne shrugged. "It doesn't have the same ring as Ess I admit, but I feel stupid calling him 'the First' every muck-ridden time. So Agrathor, are you in, or must we deliberate further?"
Agrathor had fallen quickly into the habit of bringing a hand to the side where he'd sacrificed a rib. He did it now.
"You know I'll go, old man," he said. Axebourne grinned.
"Easy for you to mock me, bone-man," Axebourne said. "You don't wrinkle or go silver."
"It's southward, then," said Ess. "Do we take the men?"
Everyone glanced down the hill, where the garrison soldiers were milling about the little camp.
"Can't see them doing any earthly good," said Agrathor.
"But we can't just leave them behind, possibly to die," said Scythia.
"I'd say there's safety in numbers," said Ess, "but it is true we would just be protecting them."
"And we would travel faster alone, them being unmounted," said Axebourne.
"I, too, have no steed," said Sev.
Pierce looked down again from the black sky.
"You could take Gash, Sev. I'll run."
"This kid," Agrathor mumbled but did not challenge Pierce's insinuation that he could run the whole way.
"Doesn't matter," said Axebourne. "I say we would be faster, but I know none of us would leave them behind. We'll scour the area for runaway mounts - there's bound to be dozens. If we are to protect these common soldiers, then protect them we shall. And who knows, another great hero may just emerge from nowhere, as this ridiculous kid's done."
"Me?" said Pierce, glancing back up to the sky. That blood-red sun on its black canvas. He should be used to it, but something about it had always seemed off, even since his childhood. Grandma's stories came to mind, and it clicked.
The way the Monstrosities had reacted to the light of his sword. The way the werewolves had hated it. Would it have made the gen uncomfortable too? It was said that the Underlanders hated Overland, that it was, in fact, poisonous to them, but that was clearly no longer true. Had it really been at one point? Every legend reflected some kind of truth.
"Ess," Pierce said, "you enchanted your entire tower." She nodded. "How large an area could the First, er... Eff, enchant?"
"Hmm," she said, "it would depend upon the effect. I am not too proud to admit his range would be greater than mine. What do you have in mind?"
Pierce didn't answer immediately.
"Sev, if you needed to, could you make more blue?"
The forgemaster's normally relaxed eyes lit up. "Yes, master Pierce, I do believe I could."
"You wouldn't happen to know why most of the Underlanders hate that color, would you?"
Sev shook his head. "Only the other forgemasters could stand to look at it. I admit, I did not really spend much time trying to understand why. I just thought it beautiful and rare. The others discouraged me from making more."
"I think I know," said Pierce. "Or at least I have a guess."
"Please, Pierce, enlighten us," said Ess.
"My grandma used to tell me all the old tales. Stuff from before we learned to write, from before the temples and the Path," he said. "She told me the sky used to be bigger - I don't have a clue what that means - that the sun was brighter, that more of the land was green. That people saw fires in the sky at night."
Agrathor narrowed his green flames at Pierce.
"She said her own great-grandmother used to dream of it, that the sky was a color she'd never seen, that the brightness of it scared the deep shadows back into their lairs and crevasses. That it was a better time."
"There is magic in light," said Ess. "Some say the seed of the world is made of it. Perhaps the physical and ethereal brightness of blue is simply too much for the Underlanders physiologically."
Pierce looked back at Ess and said, "I'd been thinking. What could be done to protect the whole of Overland all at once? Could we put a seal on the earth itself, to prevent those burrowing incursions on the surface? Then I remembered grandma's old tales of how Underlanders couldn't stand coming up here. That, in fact, it was dangerous for them. We might have a way to make it dangerous again."
He grabbed Sev's forearm, lifting it up as if it were evidence of the logic of his plan.
"We have Eff enchant the sky," Pierce said. "We use Sev's dust to make it blue."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Underlord
Kash had always thought he'd spend more time on his throne, being fed blackberries or spitberries by gen women with gleaming skin like crushed quartz. His female attendants would have their own beautiful servants, who would stand by waving their paper fans at him to dispel a bit of the Underlands' dank humidity. If he slept, they would drape him in rich, plush blankets and make sure his head didn't droop. If he desired entertainment, they would dramatize the myths of old for him, or dance, or bring in jesters from faraway lands.
It turned out that ruling the Underlands was not always so glamorous.
Women, and gen
