But if we are so far from the ocean still, why does it roar so?
He pushed down on the stirrups; the bat dipped her head and dove, spiraling down so quickly that Beetledown could feel the air press his ears until they ached. For what seemed a very long time they swept downward through the vast, vertical tunnel until, with no warning, they dropped out of extended darkness and into a massive cavern whose dimly glowing stones burst out before his dazzled eyes like the stars themselves. For a moment even Muckle Brown was disoriented: the bat hit a wall of cold air and suddenly tumbled into a dive. Only as they plummeted toward the surging, bellowing shapes beneath them—the source, he now realized, of the roar his clouded wits had mistaken for the sea—did he pull the flittermouse back into his control.
Beetledown skimmed the great cavern once, twice, thrice, trying to make sense of what he saw. Many men hurried like ants across an island in the middle of the silvery lake. Some of these appeared to be defending the island against a motley assortment of creatures, many of which looked to be Funderlings, or at least were of a size to be. These must be his quarry, Beetledown decided, but he could not simply drop into the middle of a deadly struggle and expect to survive.
He circled until he found a small group of Funderlings who were snatching a moment of rest on the outskirts of the fighting. He brought Muckle Brown down in their midst. One or two of them started back in surprise, but the rest of the bloodied, filthy little men barely even looked up at his sudden arrival.
“Have a message for Cinnabar, I do!” Beetledown shouted as loud as he could, hoping they could hear him and would not simply swat him or his mount dead. His flittermouse did not like to be surrounded by these giant shapes, and it was all Beetledown could do to hold her down; he could hear the bat’s protests at the edge of his hearing, a shrill and angry squealing. But the Funderlings, overcome by exhaustion, only stared at him.
“I need Cinnabar the Magister!” he shouted. “Lord of the Peak blast your ears clean, can none of you hear me? Cinnabar! I am Beetledown the Bowman and I bring a message from Chert Blue Quartz!”
One of the Funderlings pointed back toward the stony cliffs at the edge of the great cavern. “Magister’s with his boy,” he said. “He’s the one in armor. Look for him there.”
“I thank ’ee, good sir.” Beetledown touched the brim of his hat and kicked at Muckle Brown’s ribs. They vaulted into the air. One swift circle to orient himself, then he turned the bat toward the base of the cliffs.
He found Cinnabar sitting propped against a large stone amid a dozen of his wounded comrades. An even smaller Funderling lay beside him, pale and motionless. Beetledown landed only a short distance away, but Cinnabar did not turn from his sorrowful contemplation of the silent child.
Beetledown stood in the stirrups and waved his hands.
“Hear me! I come from Chert Blue Quartz! Are you Cinnabar the Magister?”
The wounded Funderling nodded but did not look up. “I am… for a little while longer. Then the Elders will decide.” He reached out his hand to touch the boy’s slack face. “They have killed my son. They have killed my dear Calomel… !”
Beetledown shook his head. “May the Lord lift him up. I grieve your loss and beg pardon, Magister, but my errand cannot wait.”
Cinnabar glanced at him without curiosity. “What can any errand matter now? Can’t you see we’ve lost everything?”
“Mayhap. Mayhap not.” Beetledown urged the bat nearer, and Muckle Brown reluctantly crawled toward Cinnabar. “But I am sworn to it. Now list. Chert says to tell ’ee that Brother Nickel has stopped un—that Chert cannot go forward to do what was planned.”
Cinnabar looked at him for a moment, his eyes dull and his face weary. “It was a foolish hope, anyway. Did you truly come all that way just to tell me of this failure?”
“No!” Beetledown was feeling the press of time very strongly now. “The Astion, Chert said. Send the Astion and still there may be hope.”
“Ah. Hope.” Cinnabar’s mouth twitched—the faint ghost of a smile. “The Astion, is it? Even at the end the Guild will have their rules followed.” He reached to his belt and drew out a leather purse, then shook its contents onto the stone of the cavern floor. Beetledown waited impatiently, listening to the sounds of men fighting and dying on the other side of the massive cavern. The Funderling picked up a shiny circle of black stone etched with a six-pointed star and extended it toward Beetledown. “Can you carry it?”
“If tha canst put un in the pack on my back,” the Rooftopper said, “then I can carry un.”
“Go then… but it will not matter,” said Cinnabar. “We are too few, the southerners too many, and we and the Qar spent too much of our strength on each other. Now we are all dead.”
But Beetledown could no longer hear him: he and his mount were already rising toward the vast chimney and the upper levels of the Mysteries.
There was no time now to return the Astion to Chert on the surface. Beetledown the Bowman knew he would have to fly directly up the great chimney to Funderling Town and hope that he could use Chert’s map to find Chert’s friend Brother Antimony from there, and that Antimony himself would be able to do what must be done. But even as they flew, Beetledown was weighed down by grief. What he had seen in the great cavern beneath the earth stank of failure and defeat.
Last hours of all, mayhap, he thought. For all of us. At least I must do my duty and make Lord of the Peak proud of me.
As he soared upward toward the cleaner air, he didn’t see the black shape detach itself from the perch where it had waited, brooding and patient. The great gray owl banked in gentle circles until Beetledown and the flittermouse had rounded a bend on their upward flight, then it flapped its wings and followed them, eyes glinting orange even in the near-darkness.
For just that moment their gazes met, then the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl called out Barrick’s name, convulsed, and collapsed. The Fireflower chorus went quiet in his head. He could hear only one voice—hers.
Barrick… ! Wordless now, dwindling as though a harsh wind swept it away. Barrick, it’s ... the fire…
And then one more voice, his own, drifting up out of the new silence inside him like a forgotten prisoner in a deep cell. Qinnitan… !
For just an instant he felt what she did—her terrible fear as the end came, the desperate spark of her bravery. And for just that instant, he felt the ice inside him melt away, the hardness that had separated him from his own heart. He was free again, naked of everything, even the Fireflower, but it was a freedom that felt like terrible weakness.
No. Not now. I cannot go back to being that useless thing again… ! Barrick forced himself to lift his throbbing head. Strong. Strong… ! Qinnitan lay a short distance away, senseless, perhaps even dead. Blood trickled from her nose; one small drop hung poised, ready to fall from her cheek to the rough boards. For a strange moment, he could not pull his eyes away from that drop of blood, imagined it growing and growing into a vast, shiny red sphere, a world of blood into which one could dive and then vanish in living scarlet.…