Flint groaned. “But I feel… Oh, Papa Chert, it hurts so!”
“Don’t fear, boy. I’ll get you back.”
“No, it’s not me. That is ...” The boy struggled in Chert’s arms so that he could barely hold him. “It’s there. I felt it. There!” He pointed to the crevice at the end of the passage. “Dying!” he said, and moaned as if caught in the claws of some agonizing disease.
Chert let the boy down gently and crawled closer, letting the fragile beam of his lantern play over the crevice. “What do you mean? Is there something in there?”
“Something… something I do not ...” Flint shook his head. He was pale, and in the lantern light Chert could see that beads of sweat covered his face. “It frightens me. It hurts. Oh, please, Papa, I’m dying… !”
“You’re not dying.” A shiver ran up Chert’s back and neck. Long ago, in the Eddon family tomb, the boy had acted the same way, even before he had disappeared into the Mysteries. “It’s a hole, boy, or rather it’s a crevice where two big slabs come together. Why does it frighten you?”
Flint could only shake his head, his expression sullen and a little trapped. “Don’t know.”
Chert moved forward until he could look inside the crevice, but saw nothing by the pale, yellow-green light except more stone. The crevice was no wider than his two hands flattened side by side. “It seems ordinary enough to me ...” he began, but then realized something about it did seem familiar. But how could that be? It was nothing but two great pieces of stone and the narrow space between them…
“That smell,” he said suddenly. It was faint, but now that he’d noticed it the scent was as clear as the sound of a tap hammer ringing on crystal. “I’ve smelled it before ...”
The memory when it came was as powerful as a blow—the dark, massive cavern of the Mysteries, the lake of gleaming metal and the Shining Man itself…
“By the Hot Lord,” he swore, and did not even realize he had voiced such a fierce oath in front of the child. “That’s where… that smell… ! In the cavern. The quicksilver pool. The Sea in the Depths!” He remembered that he had wondered at the time where the air escaped to, because quicksilver vapors were poisonous, but he and the boy—and, presumably, many monks over the years—had all come away from the Sea in the Depths alive. Also, now that he thought about it, quicksilver itself had no scent.
He leaned back to the crevice, sniffing. He could detect another smell as well—something of the sea, which must be air drifting down from the surface above—but it was the scent he identified with the silvery pool that was most noticeable. He would have to ask Cinnabar what it could be.
“Come on,” he said to the boy. “Up now and let’s go back to the temple.”
Flint did his best, but he was weak and could hardly stand. He was too big to be carried on Chert’s back, but Chert found that if he let the boy lean on him they could make slow but steady time. They would be late for supper, though. At another time that would have made him very bitter indeed, but the fright the boy had given him, coupled with the strange smell of the Sea in the Depths, had largely taken away Chert’s appetite.
It made him think again about the strangeness of this little world beneath Southmarch—a world not only vaster and more complicated than the Big Folk living on the surface dreamed, but clearly more than even Chert and the other Funderlings realized. If the Sea in the Depths vented to the surface, as it must then the opening should be somewhere within the walls of Southmarch Castle. Nothing strange about that—the limestone of Midlan’s Mount was full of holes, and there were many such cracks that kept air moving through Funderling Town and the depths, otherwise so many people could not have made their home there—but for reasons he could not even begin to guess, the knowledge that there was only air between the Shining Man and the surface of the world now troubled Chert’s thoughts like an ache.
Getting past Five Arches seemed to do much for Flint’s strength: by the time they were making their way up the lower Cascade Stair he was able to walk unsupported, although he was still short of breath and had to stop often to rest.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he said during one such pause, “I was… I thought I was dying. But it also felt like someone I loved was leaving me—as if you or Mama Opal were going away.”
“Never mind, Son. You’ll feel better with some soup in you. No shame in any case—those are strange passages down there, everyone knows it.”
As they approached the temple along the path through the ceremonial fungus gardens they saw a bulky shape standing at a point where two paths crossed, looking down at a lacework of white fungal strings that had been induced to grow over a frame in the shape of the sacred mattock. As they drew closer, Chert began to think he recognized who stood there.
“Chaven? Is that you? Chaven!” He hurried forward. “Praise the Elders, you’re back!”
The physician turned, his face mild and smiling. “Yes, I am,” he said, but with the air of someone who has only been out for a short walk.
“Where did you go?”
Chaven looked past him to the place where Flint had stopped in the middle of the path. The boy seemed in no hurry to come closer. “Hello, lad. Hmm, where did I go?” He nodded as though the question was a wise one, one that required proper thought instead of a rushed answer. “Out to the passages beyond Five Arches. Yes.”
“We just came back from there. How did we miss you? Have you been back long?”
Still the mild, surprised look. “I was… you know, I cannot completely recall. I was looking into some ideas… some… thoughts… that I had.” He frowned a little, in the way of someone who has just remembered an undone errand. “Yes, I had some thinking to do, and I just… wandered.”
Chert was going to question him further, determined to get some better answers than this unsatisfying fare, when one of the monks suddenly appeared at the top of the path, waving both arms and clearly excited.
“Blue Quartz, is that you? Come quickly! We are invaded.”
“Invaded?” Chert felt terror rise inside him. Would there never be any peace? Did this mean Vansen had failed?
“Yes,” the monk said. “It is dreadful. There are women everywhere!”
“What? Women? What are you talking about?”
“Women from Funderling Town. The magister’s wife and all, they just arrived. Dozens of them! The temple isn’t meant for all these women!”
Chert laughed in relief. “Yes, you brothers are in for it now, you poor scrapers!” He turned to Flint. “That means our Opal’s come back, too. Come on, boy.”
As they followed the anxious monk, Chaven fell a few steps behind them as if still pleasantly distracted by his thoughts.
Flint leaned close to Chert. “He’s not telling the truth,” the boy whispered. He did not sound as if he disapproved, but instead simply reported dry fact. “Not all of it. He’s hiding something important from us.”
“I had the same feeling,” murmured Chert. Up ahead, monks swarmed the colonnade in front of the temple like mice escaping a cat. “The same feeling. And I do not like it at all.”
So I’m back in armor again, thought Ferras Vansen with weary amusement as he adjusted the byrnie the Funderlings had given him, a chain-mail shirt made from a surprisingly delicate series of barred links that was so light it scarcely needed any underpadding. Ah, well, at least I didn’t have enough time to grow used to freedom.
“I packed some food, as you asked, Captain,” said Brother Antimony. “Some bread and cheese and a couple of onions. Oh, and we are lucky—look!” The monk held out an open sack. “Old Man’s Ears!”