Shadowheart (93 page)

Suddenly Olin sat bolt upright, swaying like a hood snake, his mouth split in a clench-jawed grin of intense pain. His eyes had rolled up until only the whites showed.

It was so very near to her now—Qinnitan could feel the gap in the world that had been clawed open, and the huge, horrible presence that was forcing its way through. How could the priests go on chanting? How could Sulepis stand so straight, showing no more emotion than the weird half-smile on his face? The autarch, his soldiers, the priests—they all hardly seemed to notice the dreadful presence that was killing both her and the northern king.

Olin’s breathing had grown even faster, a chain of rasping, percussive grunts. His arms rose up from his sides like the wings of a bird, as if he was being forced to embrace this terrible visitor. Blood started from his nose and his head rolled from side to side.

Qinnitan felt the thing thrusting itself into the body of the king, but somehow just by being near it burned into her as well. It was climbing into her world . . . into this very place . . . !

A stab of pain made her writhe and for a moment everything went black. When her sight came back, she saw that Olin had thrown back his head, his neck bent at a terrible angle as though he hung on a fishhook. The king’s gasping breath had become a single, moaning cry of pain.

“Oh, gods, if you have any mercy,
help us . . . !
” she cried . . . but no god answered.

At the sound of her voice, Barrick’s eyes opened. For just that instant, for perhaps the only instant Qinnitan would have again in this world, their gazes met . . . then the hot, remorseless blackness swept over her, swallowing her whole.

—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”

 

 

 

T
HOSE WHO DIDN’T FLY THEM didn’t know anything about it—flittermice and birds were just different. A bat didn’t push as smooth as a bird, and the glide was shorter. A rider also had to cling close to the creature’s furry body or else he’d wag from side to side and slow the bat’s progress even more.

Beetledown the Bowman knew all this and more—he had been riding on bats since he had been big enough for his father to tie onto the saddle in front of him. People said nobody knew flyers better than old Beetle-wing had, and his son was proud of that legacy. What glory was to be found exploring the heights of the world on a docile rat, or on your own legs? A winged mount was the mark of a true Gutter-Scout.

But his command over Muckle Brown was more than a matter of pride, it was a matter of life and death—especially now. The farther into the depths he flew, the more the fetid air began to affect him as it had when Chert had first brought him down. He was already finding it hard to keep his mind on his journey, and each time his mount flew into a cold downdraft and dropped suddenly, or banked and turned him upside down in a matter of a single pulse, Beetledown felt himself less and less in control of either the flittermouse or himself.

Tha hast promised
, he kept telling himself.
Tha hast promised Chert the Funderling and thy queen. Beest tha the man thy father named!
But it had already taken him an hour and more simply to find his way across Funderling Town and through the dark passages beyond the Silk Door, as Chert had once shown him, and more time had passed since then. It was work to stay alert, work to stay balanced on Muckle Brown’s velvety back, and Beetledown had already been wearied by days of constant riding and flying when the queen’s order had come. As the flittermouse plunged deeper and deeper into the pestilent depths he was finding it very difficult to stay awake.

A new smell tickled his nose, distant but unmistakable, and with it came a gradually swelling murmur, like the sound of ocean that echoed deep in the Royal Spindle Shell. The murmur continued to get louder even as the air itself grew thicker, until the report of his addled senses began to make him think that he and his mount had somehow turned downside-up: surely a roar like that could only come from the great ocean itself! But how could that be? Could he have so badly lost his way?

No,
he decided a moment later,
that be no smell of good and honest ocean.
He had encountered the thick, cloying scent before, if not the noise.
No proper sea that, but Chert’s foul silvery pond in the earth’s heart.

But where did this scent and the sounds come from? He was still far from the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple, let alone the distant deeps to which Chert had sent him—and his time to reach them was also dwindling, he had no doubt.

He hesitated for only a moment before pulling on the reins and leaning to bank the flittermouse hard. Beetledown and the bat sailed on, farther and farther away from the one path he knew. After passing through a long and intricate series of narrow places, one of which was a crevice too tight to fly through, so he had to get out and lead the balking Muckle Brown through it, he began to smell the odd salt-and-metal scent stronger than ever. The echoes changed, too, the murmur spreading to take up space in what was clearly a huge, wide cavern.

He pushed down on the stirrups; the bat dipped her head and dove, spiraling down so quickly that Beetledown could feel the air press his ears until they ached. For what seemed a very long time they swept downward through the vast, vertical tunnel until, with no warning, they dropped out of extended darkness and into a massive cavern whose dimly glowing stones burst out before his dazzled eyes like the stars themselves. For a moment even Muckle Brown was disoriented: the bat hit a wall of cold air and suddenly tumbled into a dive. Only as they plummeted toward the surging, bellowing shapes beneath them—the source, he now realized, of the roar his clouded wits had mistaken for the sea—did he pull the flittermouse back into his control.

Beetledown skimmed the great cavern once, twice, thrice, trying to make sense of what he saw. Many men hurried like ants across an island in the middle of the silvery lake. Some of these appeared to be defending the island against a motley assortment of creatures, many of which looked to be Funderlings, or at least were of a size to be. These must be his quarry, Beetledown decided, but he could not simply drop into the middle of a deadly struggle and expect to survive.

He circled until he found a small group of Funderlings who were snatching a moment of rest on the outskirts of the fighting. He brought Muckle Brown down in their midst. One or two of them started back in surprise, but the rest of the bloodied, filthy little men barely even looked up at his sudden arrival.

“Have a message for Cinnabar, I do!” Beetledown shouted as loud as he could, hoping they could hear him and would not simply swat him or his mount dead. His flittermouse did not like to be surrounded by these giant shapes, and it was all Beetledown could do to hold her down; he could hear the bat’s protests at the edge of his hearing, a shrill and angry squealing. But the Funderlings, overcome by exhaustion, only stared at him.

“I need Cinnabar the Magister!” he shouted. “Lord of the Peak blast your ears clean, can none of you hear me? Cinnabar! I am Beetledown the Bowman and I bring a message from Chert Blue Quartz!”

One of the Funderlings pointed back toward the stony cliffs at the edge of the great cavern. “Magister’s with his boy,” he said. “He’s the one in armor. Look for him there.”

“I thank ’ee, good sir.” Beetledown touched the brim of his hat and kicked at Muckle Brown’s ribs. They vaulted into the air. One swift circle to orient himself, then he turned the bat toward the base of the cliffs.

He found Cinnabar sitting propped against a large stone amid a dozen of his wounded comrades. An even smaller Funderling lay beside him, pale and motionless. Beetledown landed only a short distance away, but Cinnabar did not turn from his sorrowful contemplation of the silent child.

Beetledown stood in the stirrups and waved his hands.

“Hear me! I come from Chert Blue Quartz! Are you Cinnabar the Magister?”

The wounded Funderling nodded but did not look up. “I am . . . for a little while longer. Then the Elders will decide.” He reached out his hand to touch the boy’s slack face. “They have killed my son. They have killed my dear Calomel . . . !”

Beetledown shook his head. “May the Lord lift him up. I grieve your loss and beg pardon, Magister, but my errand cannot wait.”

Cinnabar glanced at him without curiosity. “What can any errand matter now? Can’t you see we’ve lost everything?”

“Mayhap. Mayhap not.” Beetledown urged the bat nearer, and Muckle Brown reluctantly crawled toward Cinnabar. “But I am sworn to it. Now list. Chert says to tell ’ee that Brother Nickel has stopped un—that Chert cannot go forward to do what was planned.”

Cinnabar looked at him for a moment, his eyes dull and his face weary. “It was a foolish hope, anyway. Did you truly come all that way just to tell me of this failure?”

“No!” Beetledown was feeling the press of time very strongly now. “The
Astion
, Chert said. Send the Astion and still there may be hope.”

“Ah. Hope.” Cinnabar’s mouth twitched—the faint ghost of a smile. “The Astion, is it? Even at the end the Guild
will
have their rules followed.” He reached to his belt and drew out a leather purse, then shook its contents onto the stone of the cavern floor. Beetledown waited impatiently, listening to the sounds of men fighting and dying on the other side of the massive cavern. The Funderling picked up a shiny circle of black stone etched with a six-pointed star and extended it toward Beetledown. “Can you carry it?”

“If tha canst put un in the pack on my back,” the Rooftopper said, “then I can carry un.”

“Go then . . . but it will not matter,” said Cinnabar. “We are too few, the southerners too many, and we and the Qar spent too much of our strength on each other. Now we are all dead.”

But Beetledown could no longer hear him: he and his mount were already rising toward the vast chimney and the upper levels of the Mysteries.

There was no time now to return the Astion to Chert on the surface. Beetledown the Bowman knew he would have to fly directly up the great chimney to Funderling Town and hope that he could use Chert’s map to find Chert’s friend Brother Antimony from there, and that Antimony himself would be able to do what must be done. But even as they flew, Beetledown was weighed down by grief. What he had seen in the great cavern beneath the earth stank of failure and defeat.

Last hours of all, mayhap
, he thought.
For all of us. At least I must do my duty and make Lord of the Peak proud of me.

As he soared upward toward the cleaner air, he didn’t see the black shape detach itself from the perch where it had waited, brooding and patient. The great gray owl banked in gentle circles until Beetledown and the flittermouse had rounded a bend on their upward flight, then it flapped its wings and followed them, eyes glinting orange even in the near-darkness.

For just that moment their gazes met, then the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl called out Barrick’s name, convulsed, and collapsed. The Fireflower chorus went quiet in his head. He could hear only one voice—hers.

Barrick . . . !
Wordless now, dwindling as though a harsh wind swept it away.
Barrick, it’s ... the fire . . .

And then one more voice, his own, drifting up out of the new silence inside him like a forgotten prisoner in a deep cell.
Qinnitan . . . !

For just an instant he felt what she did—her terrible fear as the end came, the desperate spark of her bravery. And for just that instant, he felt the ice inside him melt away, the hardness that had separated him from his own heart. He was free again, naked of everything, even the Fireflower, but it was a freedom that felt like terrible weakness.

No. Not now. I cannot go back to being that useless thing again . . . !
Barrick forced himself to lift his throbbing head.
Strong. Strong . . . !
Qinnitan lay a short distance away, senseless, perhaps even dead. Blood trickled from her nose; one small drop hung poised, ready to fall from her cheek to the rough boards. For a strange moment, he could not pull his eyes away from that drop of blood, imagined it growing and growing into a vast, shiny red sphere, a
world
of blood into which one could dive and then vanish in living scarlet. . . .