But the Funderlings have fires, don’t they? They have fires for cooking and for warmth—I’ve seen them! And what about their forges? Of course, from what Chaven had told him, they also had very elaborate systems to draw the smoke up out of Funderling Town, with lazily spinning fans like water-wheels that pulled the foul air upward and then puffed it out into the air over the stony hill on which Southmarch had been built.
Chimneys up where we live, was his bemused thought. Roads that travel under the bay to the mainland, and others that tunnel down far beneath the water, if Chert Blue Quartz told me the truth. These Funderlings own more of this rock than we do!
Near the bottom of the Cascade Stair, with the stone walls looming so far above them now that their little lights could not reach the top, Vansen and the others trooped through into a large open space full of pale stone columns that were wider at the top and bottom than at their middles. After walking for some time, they paused at last in front of a wall pierced by several stone tunnel mouths.
“They call this place Five Arches,” Jasper whispered.
Brother Antimony prayed for a little while in a language Vansen didn’t understand, words full of harsh kah and zzz sounds, as the dozen warders dipped their heads reverently.
“Beyond this,” the acolyte said to Vansen when he had finished, “lies the Outer Halls. We go now from That Which was Built to That Which Grew.”
This made no sense to Ferras Vansen, but he was getting used to that. “Are we far from the place… what was it called… where your monks are?”
“The Boreholes? We are not far now,” Antimony told him.
“Close enough that we should keep our mouths shut,” said Jasper, and reached out a long hairy arm to smack one of his warders sharply on the back of the head, silencing him midmurmur. “All of us,” Jasper added sharply.
The young man who had been disciplined shot the wardthane a sulky look. For all Sledge Jasper’s ferocity, Vansen was worried that the rest of the warders might not be up to the task if there proved anything to it.
“Just around this bend,” Antimony whispered. “Let me go first and find someone who can talk to us. We should not disturb them more than we have to—they are on their Elder Walks, after all. That is what we call this time of retreat and prayer.”
“You’ll not go alone—you, Pig Iron,” Jasper said to the warder he had chastised earlier. “Go with him. Keep him out of trouble and bring him back safe.”
The one named Pig Iron looked pleased to have been given a suitably manly task: he puffed himself up inside his heavy cloak and lowered his short Funderling halberd, which was more like a spike-headed spear than like a proper halberd. Pig Iron had no helmet, no armor; but for the weapon, he might have been another monk.
How can we hope to fight anyone? Vansen wondered. Our army is knee-high and dressed in wool.
The pair trotted down the winding passage and were quickly gone from sight. Vansen, whose back was sore because he had been forced in so many places to walk almost doubled over, had what seemed scarcely more than a few breaths to rest before the two came clattering back.
“Dead!” Antimony’s eyes were so big they looked like they might never fully close again. “All of them, in their cells!”
“How?” demanded Jasper before Vansen had a chance to speak.
“Couldn’t tell,” said Pig Iron excitedly, “But one of them was Little Pewter. I know him—he’s no more than thirteen years old!”
“But what killed them?” Sledge Jasper demanded. “Was there blood?”
Ferras Vansen was a stranger and Jasper was their familiar leader: Vansen could understand why they might want to stick to that which was familiar, but confusion now might cost lives later. “Let me ask the questions, Wardthane,” he said, softly but firmly. “Brother Antimony, what did you see? Just what you saw, not what you think might have happened. And let’s keep it quiet.”
Antimony took a deep breath. “The cells are side by side, only a few paces apart, and open to the outside. They are all still in the cells, slumped over like they died sitting up. Four of them—no, five. There were five, and the other cells were empty.” He paused for a moment—Vansen could see him calming himself, collecting his thoughts. “The other cells, as far as we went, were empty. Perhaps a dozen. We turned back then.”
“Was there any sign of what killed them? Were they cold?”
Antimony looked surprised. “No blood, but they were all dead. Their eyes were open, some of them! We did not touch them. We did not know who might still be out there, watching us…”
Vansen scowled. “It sounds very strange. If they all died like that, in their cells, they were not fighting back. They must have been surprised. But no blood? Very strange.” To get a better grip on his warding ax he wiped his hands on his breeches. Chert’s wife Opal had spent two days combining articles of Funderling clothing to make him a proper pair. “Let’s go. Pig Iron, you lead for now, but when we get there I will go first.” He turned to the others, who looked more than a little worried— all except for Sledge Jasper, who was grinning in a bloodthirsty sort of way. “We will go silently from now on. If you need to speak, truly need to, then for the gods’ sake, speak softly. If these are the Twilight folk, they are quieter, cleverer, and crueler than you can guess, and they can hear a whisper from a hundred paces.” Even as he said it he felt a momentary pang of shame. Had not Gyir been his friend, of a sort? But he had lost too many of his men at Kolkan’s Field and elsewhere to think of the rest of the Qar as anything but deadly enemies. “Do you understand me? Good. Jasper, you come behind me. Show your fellows how a man walks into danger.”
Ferras Vansen wanted no part of losing untrained men (or at least men who were not soldiers) while trapped behind them, unable to help, so he was determined to lead the way as soon as he could. But there was a risk to that as welclass="underline" if he got caught in a tight enough spot, they might not be able to help him even if they wanted to.
Like Murroy used to say, he thought, if you can’t be a soldier, hurry up and die so you can be a shield for someone else. If Vansen got wedged in a tight spot it might give the others a chance to retreat and take word back to Funderling Town.
Still, it would have been nice to have a proper soldier’s shield. Especially in the tight places, especially with all this darkness around them. Their quiet footsteps were beginning to sound like drumbeats to him. Surely the Qar had heard them coming long ago.
Vansen and his little troop stepped out of the narrow defile at last, into the open space of what Antimony had called the Boreholes, an underground chamber like a mountain valley, its sides scored with vertical creases that sloped upward into the darkness beyond the coral light. The great folds of stone between the creases were perforated with holes, some natural, some clearly chiseled out or at least enlarged by intelligent hands. Vansen could not see much in the thin, greenish light, but what he could see reminded him of the rockier heights of Settland where the old Trigonate mystics had hidden themselves away from the lures of daily life. But surely even the oniri would have found living in these heavy, lightless depths too hard to bear. Vansen had never thought you could miss the sky like a starving man missed food, but it was true. Oh, gods in heaven, he thought, please let me live long enough to see the light of day again!