Antimony pointed to the nearest fold of stone and its honeycomb of holes. For the first time, Vansen regretted the coral lamps. If they faced something that lived down here without light, or some of the many Twilight folk who thrived in darkness, their own lamps, however dim, would make them into nothing but slow-moving targets.
Vansen stepped out in the lead now, skirting dark places in the floor that, as far as he knew, might be holes that would drop him into the center of the earth. As he drew nearer he saw that the closest cell was occupied, its inhabitant fallen halfway out, arms splayed and twisted. In the sickly light of the coral, the victim looked to be little more than a youth. Vansen moved forward and touched the Funderling acolyte’s skin. It was warm, but he was otherwise limp as a rag, his eyes halfway open. He pressed his ear against the Funderling’s chest, but could hear nothing. Dead, then, but for how long?
As Antimony had said, motionless forms filled several of the sparsely furnished cells on the bottom row, one of the bodies so small it made even Vansen’s hardened heart ache in his breast. As Jasper and the other Funderlings crouched over Little Pewter, murmuring angrily, Vansen moved around the edge of the outcropping, wondering how many more cells might contain bodies, and how they had all died with no mark on them. Each dead man was in his own cell, which seemed to suggest that the catastrophe had struck them all at the same time, or else with extreme silence and swiftness.
The first cell in the next stony slope was empty, and Vansen was about to pass on to the next when his lamp showed him something he had not seen in the other cells—a hole at the back of the small space, leading deeper into the rock. He leaned closer. The floor of the cell, which in all the others he had seen so far had been kept scrupulously clean, was a mess of broken stone and dust. The hole in the back wall looked like something that had been done swiftly with a mallet and chisel. But why… ?
Vansen suddenly realized what he was seeing. He climbed out of the cell as quietly as he could manage and returned to where the others were waiting, most looking fearful now that their anger was spent.
“I think I’ve found the place they came through,” he whispered. “Come this way.”
Jasper was the first to follow him, with Antimony not too far behind, but the others hung back. Vansen felt a pang of renewed worry. These untrained Funderlings were not soldiers—they were nowhere near being reliable. He would have to remember that.
Sledge Jasper turned and glared at his warders, his face a grotesque mask in the light of their lamps. His men scrambled to their feet, but their reluctance still showed.
“It is a hole, dug through from the other side,” said Antimony as he stared at the opening in the back of the empty cell.
“And not with Funderling tools, either,” growled Jasper quietly. “Or Funderling knowledge. This is foul-looking work. See, the edges are ragged.”
“The tunnels Chert spoke of—the Stormstone tunnels,” Vansen said to Antimony. “Are we close to one?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” Antimony stood up from examining the hole. “Yes, I think so, although we would never go through the Boreholes to reach it—there is a connecting passage much closer to the temple. But yes, it passes along behind this formation here.”
“Then this may well have been done by the Qar,” Vansen said. “Their invasion may already have begun. We must go through to the far side and see what is there,” he told the warders. “We cannot report back to Cinnabar and the others without learning the truth. Follow me. Stay close together. And remember—silence!”
The low tunnel beyond the cell was an uneven path over scree and larger loose stones, sometimes through spaces so small Vansen was forced onto his knees and into the very real worry that he might become stuck. Once his coral lamp faltered, dimmed, and died, leaving him for some moments in near-total darkness until one of the Funderlings behind him passed forward a spare piece. At last the passage widened and he was able to climb to his feet; a few hundred stumbling paces later he stepped through another crude hole in the stone and, on the other side, could stand upright again.
As the Funderlings moved up beside him into the much wider space, the light of their combined lamps reached out and illuminated a passage half a dozen paces wide, a monument to careful workmanship and masterful craft whose ceiling, floor, and walls (except for the hole through which they had just come and the pile of debris beside it) were all finished with smoothly sanded stone.
“A Stormstone road,” said Antimony with something like reverence. “I have never seen this one, so far even from the temple.”
“The Guild is going to have to start keeping a better watch on them, as of this moment,” said Vansen. “Someone has definitely broken through from here into the Boreholes. We must get back to Cinnabar and the others with this news.”
He turned and led them back into the new tunnel, which seemed even more of a brutal, animalistic shambles now that he had seen good Funderling work. They had only gone back a little ways when a glimmer of light caught his attention. For an instant he thought that one of the other Funderlings had somehow got in front of him, but the part of the tunnel in which he stood was scarcely broader than his shoulders.
An instant later, the thing coming the opposite direction stood upright, blocking out the light behind it, and Vansen took a staggering step backward. It was manlike, but only just, bigger than he was and covered with leathery, scaly skin. Its eyes were sunk so deep under a shelflike brow so that they barely reflected the light of Vansen’s lantern. He had only an instant to see that there was something in its brute face that was a little like the apelike servitors of Greatdeeps, then one of the massive fists, big as a sexton’s shovel, swung toward his head. Vansen only just managed to get his ax up, but the sheer strength of the thing smashed the flat of his own weapon against his head so that he fell back, stunned, collapsing partway onto the Funderlings behind him as they shouted in terror and confusion.
“Aa-iyah Krjaazel!” someone screeched. “It can’t be!”
“Deep ettin!” shouted Antimony. “Run, Captain, it’s an ettin!”
But there was nowhere to run. The thing in front of him grunted, a deep sound Vansen could feel in his chest. He lifted his ax once more but as he did so a long, hollow stick appeared from behind the monstrous creature’s shoulder, swaying like a serpent. A puff of smoke or dust came from the opening and suddenly Vansen could not breathe. He dropped his weapon and grasped his throat, trying to find the hands that strangled him, but there was nothing, only a growing red emptiness in his lungs. As he slid helplessly to the ground, Ferras Vansen felt his thoughts flicker out like a candle dropped down a well.
10. Sleepers
“There are several types of goblins according to Kaspar Dyelos.The smallest are called Myanmoi, or mouse-men, the middling are named Fetches, and then there are several which are as large as children and can live to be very old.”
At first it was all Barrick could do to stay on his feet. The slope was uneven, vines and brambles grew in tangles between the trees, and every few steps a vast knob of pale, yellowish stone thrust out of the greenery like a broken bone to block his way. The silkins, however, did seem to be falling back: he could still see them in the trees behind him, white figures leaping from branch to branch like ghostly apes, but without the aggressive haste they had shown before.