“And the others?”
“One dead. The others only have a few small wounds.”
Briony scrambled to her feet. One dead? Estir Makewell was on her knees, sobbing. Briony hurried toward her but one of the soldiers grabbed her arm and held her back.
Estir turned from the tall man’s corpse and pointed in fury at Briony. “It’s your fault—your fault! If not for you, none of this would have happened and poor Dowan would be living still!”
“Dowan? Dowan’s dead? But… I didn’t ...” There was nothing Briony could say. Even the other members of the troop, Estir’s brother, Nevin Hewney, even Finn, seemed to stare reproachfully at her from the spot where the guards had rounded them up.
The soldiers wore Syannese colors but an insignia Briony had never seen—a fierce red hound. Their captain stepped forward and looked her sternly up and down. His beard was long but carefully shaped; a bright white plume adorned his tall helmet. Briony thought he had the look of a man who thought himself quite elegant. “You are Princess Briony Eddon of Southmarch, late of our king’s court in Syan?”
No point in denying it now—she had done enough harm. “I am, yes. What will happen to my friends?”
“Not for you to think about, Mistress,” he said with a grim shake of the head. “We’ve been looking for you for days and days. Now come with me and don’t make trouble. You’re being arrested, you are.”
36. Hunting the Porcupine
“The fairies who survived the second war with men and fled back into the north called down behind them—in an act of sorcery unseen since the days of the gods—a great pall of cloud and mist that men named the Shadowline. All mortal men who cross into those lands are now in danger of losing at least their wits if not their lives.The few who have gone and returned claim the whole of the north is now beneath the cover of that shadow.”
I seem doomed to be part of strange trios in strange places, thought Ferras Vansen as they clambered up the curving track that Antimony called the Copper Ring. First across the Shadowline with the heir to the throne and a Qar soldier with no face, now through the depths of the earth with two little people. I survived the first one… if only just… But even now he was still dumbfounded by what had happened: why should he have fallen through a doorway behind the Shadowline and come out in the Funderlings’ own halls beneath Southmarch?
There was no answer, of course. Perhaps the gods had a hand in it, although he wasn’t certain about even that. The one thing that had become clear during this year of madness was that even the gods did not seem to be masters of their own fate.
Antimony and the grubby little creature known as Browncoal were arguing. The monk was a head higher—he was the largest Funderlings Vansen had met, the top of his head reaching the bottom of Vansen’s ribs—but he could not match the drow’s ferocity: the little man was snarling like a cornered cat. It was strange to see the two of them so close together, see both their similarities and differences, as though one were a wild pony, bristly and undersized, the other a handsome, stolid farm horse.
“What is all this about?” Vansen demanded.
Antimony scowled. “It is a trap or a trick. He wants to lead us up Old Quarry Way to Tufa’s Bag, but I was there only yesterday. There is no way out of it! We call it a bag because that’s how it is—you can only come out the way you came in.”
Vansen looked at Browncoal, who was glowering like a badger who’d just been dug up. “Does he say why he wants to go there if there’s no way out?”
“He says there is. And he says I’m a blind fool for thinking I know otherwise.” Antimony balled his fists. If Vansen had been Browncoal’s size it would have made him very nervous.
“Let’s see where he leads us. If it’s a trap, it’s a rather strange way to go about it, leading us down a dead end. Besides, I’m sure he knows if he proves false he’ll be the first to die.” Vansen showed the sullen drow his ax. “But it wouldn’t hurt to remind him of it.”
Browncoal led them farther up Old Quarry Way until they had left all but the most occasional cross-passages behind them. The corridor took a distinctly downward slant; then, after a bit more silent trudging, they reached a fork.
Antimony pointed to the rightmost of the branching tunnels. “That’s Tufa’s Bag.”
“And where does Old Quarry Way go from here? ” Vansen asked, pointing along the other branch.
“Back up again until it finally connects with the Copper Ring on the far side of Funderling Town. That’s one of Stormstone’s roads.”
“And why would somebody make a dead end here?”
“That was the original path of Old Quarry Way, but the digging proved too hard—there was no blasting powder in those days. They went this way instead,” he said, gesturing to the left hand fork, “where the stone was softer.”
Despite Antimony’s distrust, Vansen allowed Browncoal to lead them both down the spur tunnel, which twisted and turned and grew low enough in places that Vansen had to get down on his haunches and move forward in an awkward crouch. At last they came to a slightly wider spot. By the pale golden light of Antimony’s coral lamp Vansen could see that the monk’s summation seemed accurate: the corridor ended in an abandoned scrape and a pile of rubble. There was no way out.
Even as Antimony shook his head in dour satisfaction, Browncoal stepped forward, bent, and reached under one of the broken stones piled in front of the scrape. He grunted as he lifted; to Vansen’s surprise a few individual rocks rolled away but the rest of the stones came up together in a single block. Vansen hurried forward and saw that one of the drows’ round battle-shields had been covered with some kind of cement and garnished with stones so that anything except a very careful inspection would reveal nothing more than an innocuous pile of rubble.
“Perin’s Hammer!” he said. “A secret door!”
Browncoal looked up them with a near-toothless grin of triumph, then slipped his legs into the hole revealed beneath. He pulled at the rope around his ankle until the length between him and Brother Antimony had gone taut, then dumped the rest of the coil down the hole before letting himself drop in after the rope. For a moment after the drow had disappeared Antimony and Vansen could only stand, staring, as the rope first went slack and then tight again.
“By the Elders,” said Antimony in sudden shock, “he is down there by himself!” He tossed his pack over the edge of the hole and quickly followed. When he was gone, Vansen hesitated for a moment. He did not like the idea of letting himself down into something he could not see and did not know.
“Brother Antimony?” he called at the edge of the hole. “Are you there? Are you well?”
“Come down, Captain Vansen,” the monk called up from what sounded like only a short distance below. “You can jump. The landing is easy, and down here there is… stay, you must see it for yourself. Wonderful!”
Vansen had his doubts, but was reassured to hear the Funderling. He dumped his pack in and then turned around and let himself drop, shielding his face with his arms.
His armor shirt didn’t weigh much, but it still made his landing clumsier than the others’: Vansen slid, stumbled, slid again, and just managed to turn around before his feet went out from him altogether and he landed on his tailbone in a pile of hard stones.
“By the Thunderer!” he swore, groaning as he got to his feet. “You call that an easy landing?”
“But look,” Antimony said. “Is it not worth the tumble?”