At last, after long walking and many turns, and after descending what Briony guessed must be at least a dozen fathoms beneath the Guild Hall, the procession reached a place where the corridor widened out into a sort of broad staircase with shallow steps clearly cut for Kallikan feet that led to a door in the far wall decorated with carved designs that stretched weirdly in the flickering lamplight. Briony could see an image of a man riding a fish and another tying a vast serpent into a complicated knot, but most of the carvings were harder to make out.
Several of the Underbridge folk sprang forward and banged on the metal of the door with sticks. After a long wait, the great portal swung open, revealing more lamplight inside. Highwarden Dolomite stepped forward and led them all through the doorway.
Even as the last of them stepped through into a room only slightly smaller than the great hall outside, and the door clanked shut behind them, a group of Kallikans in black robes like Whitelead’s appeared from a passage at the back of the room, scuttling and slipping on the polished stone floors as they hurried forward, as though on an icy lake. They prostrated themselves before the highwarden and the priest, and then one rose and made a series of ritual gestures, although with a certain anxious haste. He was almost as small as Whitelead but a great deal younger, very thin, and his eyes bulged in his face as though he was terrified.
His eyes only grew wider as he finished his ritual and looked up from Dolomite and Whitelead to the others who stood watching. He goggled at Briony, Eneas, and the prince’s guards, all towering over the Kallikans like ogres; for a moment Briony thought the little man might faint dead away. “Oh, Great Anvil,” he said at last to Dolomite, “Great Anvil of the Lord, how did you know? How did you know?”
The highwarden stared at him for a long moment, then snorted in annoyance. “How did I know what, Chalk? What in the name of the Pit are you babbling about? We’re here to use the drumstones. The prince of Syan himself has commanded it!”
Chalk looked at him in surprise, then back at the imposing visitors before suddenly bursting into tears.
When Chalk had composed himself he led them all back into the inner recesses of what was clearly some kind of temple, although the Kallikans were very reluctant to talk about it.
“It’s just… well, we haven’t had a message through the stones for decades—not since my father’s day,” Chalk explained, “and that was when he was nearly a boy! So you can imagine, Great Anvil, that when we heard… well, I was just on my way to tell you and the others!”
“Hold your tongue a moment, man, you are making my head ring,” said the highwarden. “Are you saying that someone else has been using the drumstones?”
“Who could do that without authority? ” demanded Whitelead, his little beard bristling like the ruff of an angry rooster. “We will have him in front of the Guild immediately!”
“No, no, my lords!” said Chalk so miserably Briony feared the little fellow would start weeping again. “The drumstones spoke! They spoke to us! For the first time since my father’s day!”
“What? What do you say?” demanded Dolomite, truly surprised for the first time. The revelation sent a flurry of whispers and gasps through all the other assembled Kallikans. “Who speaks to us?”
Chalk pushed open the door to a final chamber, darker than any of the others. A great circle of smooth but otherwise unworked stone dominated the high wall before them, the space around it filled with other kinds of stone cut in fantastic shapes. “The folk of Lord’s House—our kin in Southmarch.”
Briony could not stay silent any longer. “Are you saying that you’ve had a message from the Funderlings in Southmarch? For the love of the gods, what did they say?” A kind of giddy excitement almost but did not quite overcome the chill that swept over her. As Dawet had reminded her, strange things were happening—more of them every moment. She had dreamed a demigoddess and her dream was taking shape in the waking world.
Chalk looked to his masters for approval before speaking. “The others… the ones in Southmarch said… it is hard to put it exactly in ordinary speech, because the drumstones speak in a tongue of their own—our old tongue, but shorter of speech.” He furrowed his pale forehead, staring at his hands as he did his best to remember correctly. “The message was, ‘A Highwarden of the Big Folk has come back alive from the Old, Dark Lands. He leads us now. Outside the walls, the Old Ones oppress us and we cannot hold out long. We call on you to honor our shared blood and our shared tale. Send help to us.’ ” He looked up, blinking his large eyes. “That was more or less the whole of it.”
Briony shook her head. “But what does it mean? ‘Highwarden of the Big Folk’—Big Folk is us, yes? That’s what you call us. But we have no Highwarden, only a king.” Her heart suddenly beat faster. “Do they mean my father? Has my father come back? Where are the Old Lands?” Her pulse was racing, but Dolomite was shaking his head.
“I do not think it means your father, Princess—everyone knows he is held in the south, in Hierosol. The Old Lands are what we call the country that lies behind the Shadowline. The lands of those you call the fairy folk. The Qar.”
For a moment she felt only disappointment, then it came to her suddenly, startling as a sudden blare of trumpets. “A Highwarden of the Big Folk has come back from the lands ruled by the fairies?” Her heart began speeding again. “My brother—it can only mean my brother, Barrick! He has come back to Southmarch! He has come back! Oh, praise Zoria!” And to the tiny man’s surprise and terror, she suddenly bent and kissed little Chalk on the head. Prince Eneas laughed, but the rest of the Funderlings were quite astonished. “Quickly, quickly!” she said to Dolomite and Whitelead, “Can we send a message back? Tell them I am here—tell them I must speak with my brother!”
With the permission of their leaders, Chalk and his comrades got out ladders and long striking-wands, objects that had obviously been used only for ceremonial purposes for some time (and not even that very frequently as suggested by how hard it was to find some of them—Chalk started sniffling again, this time in mortification, as the temple was ransacked for the last ladder, which had been used to refill a ceiling lantern and not returned). At last everything was in place. Chalk sat by Briony’s feet with a tablet of clay and a stone stylus as he wrote down her message and did his best to translate it into words the drumstones could carry.
Underbridge to Lord’s House, Hail! We hear your words and praise them! Our Highwarden and Hierophant attend. Also a Highwarden Mother of the Big Folk of Lord’s House, who comes here but seeks her brother there. Please drum to us his words. We greet you, brothers, and will try to help you, but must know more.
“Highwarden Mother?” asked Briony as Chalk relayed these words to his underlings, who then began to beat at the circle of stone set into the wall as though it were a true drum, their stone-headed, wooden wands plinking and plunking a strange, arrhythmic music. “It seems a touch confusing.”
“They have no word for ‘princess,’ it seems,” said Eneas, amused. “I wince to think what they would call me.”
When the message had been drummed and then drummed a second time, they waited, but although they stood—and then, after a long while, sat down where they could find places to do so—no message came back.
“Either they are gone,” said the hierophant, “which seems strange when they had just sent a message to us, or something has broken the chain of drumstones. We will try to drum to them again tonight, and send word to you in the castle if we hear anything.”