“Again, you’ve lost me, Doctor.” Ferras Vansen could only spend so much time talking about such things, considering, pondering. He was a soldier, after all—his country was in danger and he ached to do something about it. “But please, do not waste your strength explaining. I am too simple for such things.”
“You underestimate your own wit, Captain Vansen, as always.” Chaven laughed. “The question is, have you convinced yourself? In any case, do not mind me. I have much to think about before I can make even the beginnings of sense out of this. The horrifying thing is that Brother Okros was one of the best men on just these matters, and I ache to share this with him and hear his thoughts even as a part of me wishes I could cut out his heart.”
“I don’t know him, I fear.”
“Brother Okros? A traitor, a wicked traitor. I thought him a colleague and a friend, but it turns out he was in Hendon Tolly’s employ all along.” For a moment the physician seemed to be too full of emotion to speak. While he was wrestling with these feelings, the door opened and Cinnabar entered.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said, lifting his hand in salute.
Vansen had only spoken with him twice, but he liked the little man and understood why Chert spoke well of him. “It seems we must take your word for it, Magister Cinnabar—not that the day is good, but that it is day at all. I was a captive in the mines of the shadowlands before I came here—I haven’t seen the sky for longer than I can remember.” And he did ache to see the sun. He dreamed of it sometimes, in the way a person dreamed of a beloved relative who had died.
“That’s because the people upground would be more interested in putting an arrow in you than letting you sniff the fresh air, Captain,” said the Funderling leader cheerfully. “And that’s hardly my fault, is it? Now, what I came here for was Chert Blue Quartz, but I see I’ve missed him.”
“He’s getting his family settled in upstairs,” Vansen told him. “And Chaven and I have been talking about all kinds of things. I must confess, I had no idea of how much has been happening here in Funderling Town—hidden tunnels, Chert and Opal with their foundling son from behind the Shadowline, magical mirrors. To think I lived so long above such an exotic place without realizing it!”
“Mirrors again?” asked Cinnbar. “What is this talk of mirrors?” Chaven spoke up. “Nothing. Mirrors are not important, Magister.” Despite his earlier interest and all the questions that had quite worn Vansen out, Chaven now suddenly seemed to want to change the subject. “What matters is that we are very few here, trapped between the Qar outside the gates and the turncoat Hendon Tolly in the castle above us. And if they know about the Stormstone tunnels, as Chert suggested, the Qar may not remain outside the gates for long . . .”
Before the physician could finish what he was saying, the door opened and Chert Blue Quartz himself walked in, moving slowly as though he carried something heavy.
Which, in a way, he does,
Vansen thought. Chert had been shoved to the forefront of many of their discussions, although he clearly did not like the responsibility. Still, he had impressed Vansen, who thought he saw a bit of his old master Donal Murroy in the Funderling, especially in the sour-sounding witticisms that did not do a very good job of concealing the little man’s kind nature.
Cinnabar spread his arms. “Ah, here you are, Chert, my good fellow! Fresh from the table, no doubt. His wife is an excellent cook, did you all know?”
“With what those miserly monks give us Opal would be lucky if she could make stone soup,” Chert said. “The Metamorphic Brothers regard enjoying one’s food as a path to decadence.” He rolled his eyes. “Nickel told me, ‘Be grateful that you have crickets to roast. Our acolytes only get cricket mush once a week and consider it a feast.”
Nickel himself came in a few moments later, frowning as usual. “I cannot get any work out of the brothers. They would rather gossip about Big Folk and fairies than see to the Elders’ business.”
“These are strange days,” said Cinnabar. “Do not treat them too harshly, Brother Nickel.”
The Quicksilver magistrate was the representative of the Guild’s Highwardens, and it was the Guild, Cinnabar reminded him, who would decide whether Nickel would be promoted to abbot. Even Ferras Vansen couldn’t help notice the quick change in the Funderling monk’s demeanor.
“You are right, of course, Magister,” Nickel hastily agreed. “Quite right.”
Vansen caught sight of Chert Blue Quartz’s expression of disgust and had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
“So what you are saying is that it is
impossible
to defend Funderling Town?” Vansen asked.
“No, Captain,” said Cinnabar. “But this is not a walled city like Southmarch above us. The closer in to Funderling Town, the more roads there are to defend. Dozens!”
“Then it’s the temple itself we should be defending,” said Chert suddenly.
“What nonsense is this, Blue Quartz?” Nickel didn’t like Chert any more than Chert liked him, that seemed clear. “This is a holy place, not a battlefield!”
“A battlefield is where a battle happens, Brother Nickel,” Cinnabar pointed out. “We are trying to prevent the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple and Funderling Town from becoming battlefields. At least, that’s what I think Chert is saying.”
“More or less.” The little man looked around as though he was suddenly uncomfortable with the attention. “But here we are. The ancient roads the fairy folk are mostly likely to use, the ones that cross beneath the bay from the mainland, pass the temple long before they reach the town. Not only that, those roads and the roads they connect with begin to fork just above us, so that by the outskirts of the town the original few passages have split into nearly a hundred more—far too many to defend.”
“What about blocking them off?” Vansen asked. “You have stone and quite a lot of it, the gods know. In Greatdeeps I saw Jikuyin’s slaves using gunf lour . . .”
Cinnabar shook his head. “Blasting powder, we call it. Yes, we have that and stone, but it would take a year’s worth of quarrying and ten times the men we have to block off all the approaches into Funderling Town. There are roads from the town that lead out to a half dozen different quarries, to freshwater pools, to a dozen outer neighborhoods, not to mention the natural caverns and tunnels we have not bothered to shape. We would have to seal every one of them.” He sighed. “Chert is right. If the fairy folk make their way under the bay by the Stormstone roads, then we must stop them here, where we can reduce the number of entrances to a manageable few, or we will not stop them at all.”
“You cannot mean to turn the temple into an army camp—!” Nickel began, but a loud knock on the door interrupted him as husky young Brother Antimony pushed his way in, face flushed. “Forgive me, masters, forgive me! It’s just . . . some of the brothers . . . there’s been . . . they’ve heard noises . . .”
Cinnabar raised an eyebrow. “What in the name of deadly rockfall are you talking about, lad? Noises? What noises? Where? And why shouldn’t they hear noises?”
Antimony did his best to collect his thoughts. “At the Boreholes in the Outer Halls, Magister—a group of cavern cells connected by tunnels out beyond the farthest temple gardens. Several of the acolytes heard voices coming up from the depths and they sent someone to tell us.”
“Why didn’t they come to me first?” demanded Nickel.
Cinnabar waved his hand to quiet the older monk. “I am not certain I understand the concern, Brother Antimony. They fast, do they not, these acolytes? It is common to hear and see things when the stomach is empty for a long time.”
Antimony bowed his head, but stubbornly went on. “They do, Magister. They fast, and they hear and see things. But several of them heard the same thing, voices whispering like the wind, and the voices were not speaking a tongue the acolytes could recognize.”
Chert leaned forward. “Antimony, do these tunnels touch at any point on the Stormstone Passages?”
Antimony nodded. “Beyond the Boreholes, yes, of course, Master Blue Quartz. There is Blacklamp Row running below it, and beyond that the Stormstone roads begin.”
“So if the fairies—the Qar—decided to make their way down from the mainland as we discussed, that is one of the ways they might come,” Vansen said.
“And we have not even begun to secure the roads around the temple,” said Cinnabar grimly. “Collapses and slides! How can we defend all our tunnels if the Twilight folk already mean to invade? The ways are too many! We might not do it with all of the upgrounders and all their horses and cannons.”
“Nevertheless, someone must go to see these Boreholes, as you called them. Take heart—perhaps it
is
only the imagination of hungry monks. But we must go quickly, in case it is not.”
“We Funderlings have no army, Captain Vansen,” Cinnabar reminded him.
“You must have some who can fight.” Vansen looked around. “Who were those who came at me when I first arrived? Most had only shovels and picks, but a few were young and fit and carried what looked like real weapons.”
“The Warders of the Guild,” said Cinnabar. “They are like sentries—no, they are more like reeves. They help to guard the guildhall and other important places and things. But it has been long since they have dealt with anything worse than ordinary crimes like theft and public drunkenness, or putting down the occasional public riot.”
“It matters not.” Vansen’s heart was beating fast. Here was something he could
do,
a way he could truly help instead of merely answering Chaven’s endless mirror questions. “They must have some training and they will at least have weapons. Send me a troop of these warders, as many as you can spare, and with the Guild’s permission I will take them down to see who is whispering and spying out there.”
“It will take hours to get a messenger to the Guild and back,” Cinnabar said unhappily.
“Perhaps monks could accompany Captain Vansen,” Chert suggested.
“They could not!” Nickel said, scowling. “They have taken sacred orders to serve only the Elders!”
“Truly? Would the Elders prefer to have the Qar living in the temple and frolicking in the Mysteries?” Chert asked him.
“Enough,” declared Magister Cinnabar. “There are a half-dozen warders here who came with me as an honor guard for the Astion.” The Astion was like the Eddon family royal seal, Vansen had learned, a disk of stone that showed the bearer was doing the Guild’s official business. “They can go with Captain Vansen while messengers take a letter from me back to Funderling Town and tell the Guild of our fears and our need of more men.”
“That sounds like a wise plan, Magister,” Vansen said, nodding. “Can the monk who brought the news lead us back there?”
“He has run all day,” Antimony told him. “He collapsed after he gave us the news. He is in the infirmary.”
“We’ll think of something else, then. Chert, can you help me to prepare for this? I know so little about your people and this place.”
Chert gave an unhappy shrug. “Of course. Brother Antimony, would you find my wife and tell her I may not be back for the evening meal?” He watched the young monk go out. “Better him than me,” Chert told Vansen quietly. “The old girl won’t like it a bit.”
Cinnbar presented the newcomer with the distracted air of a man walking a dangerous dog on a very short leash. “This is Sledge Jasper,” he explained to Vansen. “He is the wardthane of the men you are taking. He wanted to meet you.”
The newcomer was not much taller than Cinnabar, which meant he barely reached Ferras Vansen’s waist, but he bulged with muscle so that he was nearly as wide as he was tall. His arms were long and his hands were as big or bigger than Vansen’s own. Everthing about him seemed aggressive—his shaved head was round as a cannonball, and he had beetling eyebrows and a fierce bristle of whiskers on his chin.
The intimidating little fellow stared up at Vansen for a long moment. “Have you commanded men?”
“I have. I was . . . I still am captain of the Southmarch royal guard.”
“In battle?”
“Yes. Most recently at Kolkan’s Field, but not all my commands ended as disastrously as that, praise the gods.” Vansen was amused by such harsh scrutiny, but he had waited a long time for Cinnabar to return and he was growing impatient. “And your warders—will they do what they’re told?”
“If I’m there,” Sledge said, still peering fiercely into Vansen’s eyes. “They’ll dig granite with their fingers if I tell ’em to. That’s why I’m going along. The question is, who’s in charge—me or you?”
Vansen wasn’t going to be drawn into a pissing contest with this brusque little hobgoblin. “That’s up to the magister.”
“Captain Vansen is the leader, Sledge,” Cinnabar told the wardthane. “And you knew that already.”
Vansen suppressed a smile: he had suspected as much. “However, I do welcome your help, Wardthane Jasper. We’ll be careful of your men’s safety. We’re only going to investigate some noises—I’m not expecting a fight.”
Sledge snorted, crossing his thickly muscled arms across his barrel chest. “ ’Course you are—if you weren’t, you’d be taking a troop of these temple fungus farmers with scrapers and baskets. The magister wants my warders, which means there’s a good chance someone’s going to get their faces pushed in.”
“We’ll see.” He turned to Cinnabar. “I’ll need a weapon, since I came here without one. Where are the rest of the men?”
“Waiting outside,” the magister said. “We’ll find you something by way of a fairy-sticker, then you can leave as soon as you want.”
“Let me go and tell Opal goodbye, will you?” said Chert, rising.
“Why?” Vansen asked. “You’re not going.”
“But you wanted me to tell you . . .”
“I wanted you to answer my questions and you have. But as far as a guide for the tunnels, I’ve got permission to take Brother Antimony, a young fellow with an excellent knowledge of the place and no family of his own . . . unlike you. So shut your mouth, Master Blue Quartz, and for tonight at least, go back to your wife and boy.”