It was not the full, staggering panoply of Qar types, but even this small embassy had enough variety to make those who had never seen them—perhaps three-quarters of those assembled—blanch and blink and mutter to themselves. Most frightening was the immense creature known as Hammerfoot, a war leader of the Deep Ettins, taller and heavier than even the largest cave bears. His jutting brow overshadowed his face so completely that nothing could be seen of his eyes except two gleaming coals far back in the darkness. He was wrapped in furs and armor made of stone plates held together by massive leather straps, and his two-fingered hands were each as wide as one of the Funderling shields. The giant found his way to the far side of the table and then sat down on the floor, almost knocking the table over when he nudged it with his great chest.
He was the largest of the Qar who came to the table, but not the strangest. Vansen had seen all these shapes before, and others, but he was still far from used to it. Here came the one named Greenjay, who looked like a cross between an exotic bird and a costumed Zosimia fool. Some of the other Qar looked almost human, their origin betrayed only by the shapes of their skulls or their coloring—Vansen knew no ordinary man or woman whose skin was touched with hues of lavender or mossy green. Others like the Elementals were manlike only in seeming to have a head and four limbs: Vansen had seen them in their fiery, naked forms in the Qar camp, and still saw those shapes in his dreams, but the two present today had been more discreet, wrapping themselves in robes that betrayed nothing of what smoldered beneath.
Bent or straight, small or tall, the Qar filed in to fill the other side of the table, as varied as the bestiaries so carefully painted in the margins of old books. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was the quality of watchfulness: as they took their seats they did not speak to each other, but only looked across at the gathered Funderlings and their guests.
And then, at long last, Yasammez herself came into the chamber, tall and silent, wearing her angular black armor and strange cloak like a cloud of dark fog. She looked neither to one side nor the other as she walked slowly to her place at the far side of the table, although she was the lode-stone to all eyes. She seated herself in the center of her people.
After a silence Yasammez spoke, her voice as slow and baleful as a funeral bell. “This battle is already lost. You must know that before we begin.”
One voice rose above the flurry of disapproving murmurs—Cinnabar Quicksilver. “With all respect, Lady Yasammez, what does that mean? If there is no chance of victory, why are we here instead of at home making peace with the gods?”
“I cannot speak for you, delver,” she told him. “But this is how I make peace with the gods.”
Ferras Vansen could only stare as the room exploded into confusion. He had worked so hard to bring both sides together and now the Qar leader’s arrogance was going to smash the alliance to pieces before it even started.
“Stop!” He did not realize he had stood until he had already begun to speak. “Funderlings, you are fools to argue with these people, whose suffering is so much greater than any of us can even imagine.” He turned to the other side of the table. “But you, Lady, you are a fool if you think you can make peace while you still treat us as your enemies and inferiors.”
“Make peace?” asked Yassamez in a voice like a cold wind. “I did not come here to make peace, Captain Vansen, I came here to make common cause. The wounds run too deep for peace between my race and yours.”
Vansen pitched his reply above the tumult of unhappy voices. “Then let’s speak of common cause, Lady Yasammez. Enough of the past—for now.”
She stared at him, still and silent as a statue. At last the noise began to subside as the others waited to see what she would say.
“But it is always the past, Captain Vansen,” she said at last. “This room is crowded with the ghosts of those who have gone before, even if you cannot see them. But, of course, your delver allies know—they know very well, which is one of the reasons they did not want this council to happen.”
“What are you talking about?” Cinnabar did not sound as confident as his words suggested: he sounded like a man prepared to flinch. “What do the Funderlings know?”
“That the blame for the destruction of the Qar is not on the sunlanders alone. Yes, Vansen’s people captured my many-times-great-granddaughter Sanasu and killed her brother, Janniya—but we had been coming back to this place for a thousand years and more to perform the Fireflower ceremonies, always secret except to you delvers, and were never troubled before that day. How did Kellick of the Eddon know we were coming?”
Vansen had been told the story of the prince and princess of the Qar (or so he thought of them, though those were not Qar words) and how their pilgrimage during King Kellick’s day had resulted in disaster, but what Yasammez was saying now was new to him. “Does it matter, Lady? It is two hundred years in the past ...”
“Fool!” she said. “There is no past. It is alive this moment, in this rocky chamber. How did the Eddon know that Sanasu and Janniya were coming? Because the treacherous delvers told him.”
Now the uproar was complete, with several of the diminutive Funderlings actually climbing onto the table to shake their fists and declare the innocence of their people. The ruckus became so great that Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps thumped a broad fist down on the table with a noise like a wall falling; his deep, rumbling growl of warning quickly silenced the Funderlings. In the sudden stillness, the only voice was Malachite Copper’s.
“Stop!” the Funderling said. “Enough shouting! She is right. May the Earth Elders forgive us, she is right.”
“What are you talking about, man?” Cinnabar asked, frowning. “Right about what?”
Copper looked around. “You Funderlings know me. All our people know me and my family. My many-times-great-uncle was Stormstone Copper, the draughtsman and chief mover of the Stormstone Roads. It was the great work of his life, meant to make his people safe and secure, to give us ways to come and go from Funderling Town that were not dependent on the moods of the Big Folk in the castle above. But he could not create an entirely new network of tunnels. Some of the most important passages already existed and had for centuries.” Copper paused for a moment. “This is hard to tell. He brought such honor to our family name—there is not a single child of the Copper clan who has not thought, ‘I am of Stormstone’s blood,’ and walked taller.”
The rest of the Funderlings were clearly confused again. Vansen had learned enough in his time underground to know that they revered the famous Stormstone as his own people did the gods’ holy oracles.
“All this is known, friend Malachite,” said Cinnabar, his voice gentle, as though he spoke to someone who had fallen ill. “Tell us what we do not know.”
“He… he feared that as long as the Qar came to Southmarch, one day the upgrounders—the Big Folk, and I beg your pardon for the crudeness, Captain Vansen—would discover the network of tunnels he had created. It was a terrible decision for him… but we are still shamed by what happened. I am sure he meant only for the Southmarch soldiers to frighten the Qar away ...”
“You seek to put a kind face on murder,” said Yasammez. “Because that is what happened. The delvers whispered to Kellick the Eddon that the Qar were coming. The Eddon went himself with his soldiers to stop them. He stole Sanasu and killed her brother Janniya and so doomed my people ...”
“It was a fight,” Vansen said to her. “You make it sound like murder!”
Yasammez’s look was stony. “Janniya and Sanasu were accompanied only by two warriors and one eremite—a priest, you might call him. The Eddon met them with over two score of armed men, and afterward Sanasu was a prisoner and the rest of the Qar were dead. Call that what you will.”