Shadowrise (56 page)

“How can we trust you?” Nickel demanded. “You have let him run wild, let him meddle in the affairs of holy men . . .”

“This temple and Funderling Town are under attack,” Chert said loudly. “And you know it as well as I do, Brother Nickel. We all have far more to fear than this boy—you should be organizing these men to defend the temple, not to attack a child. Now, will you let me go? I am very sorry Flint touched the books but it looks like no harm was done. I’ll take him with me and he’ll get into no further mischief. Please, let us all remember what’s important now.”

Nickel was scowling, but one of the other monks said, “Antimony told me that Chert Blue Quartz is a good man.”

“He’s right about defending the temple, that’s certain,” said another. “If Chert gives his word, perhaps we should allow him this one chance.”

“Thank you.” Chert looked around. The anger on the faces of the other monks had begun to fade like the disappearing sheen of water as it dried on a rock face: talk of an attack had reminded them of the true danger. Nickel, though, did not look satisfied. “Come along, Flint,” Chert told the boy. “Say you’re sorry and we’ll be going—I have important errands for Captain Vansen.” He grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him away from the library.

Flint did not say sorry, of course, but Chert hoped that in the racket of the monks beginning to argue among themselves they hadn’t noticed the boy’s silence.

 

He found the physician upstairs in his small dormitory cell and told him what Vansen had asked. Chaven thought about it for a moment before saying, “I think that the best solution in the short run would simply be to tie a cloth soaked in water across their faces. Anything more complicated will take me some time.”

Chert stood, amazed at his own stupidity. “Cloth—water! By the Elders, I have been so preoccupied it is like I did not even hear Vansen. If there is one thing we Funderlings have, it is dust masks! With a little stuffing around the edges they should keep out the fumes of the Qar’s poison dust.” He began to pace. “In fact, the craftsmen who do the near-work, as we call it, the sanding and polishing, even wear hoods with mica over the eyes. What a fool I am!”

“Do not condemn yourself,” Chaven told him. “We are all much distracted. Is there anything else I can do for you? If not, I have a few matters of my own . . .”

“Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is.” Chert grabbed the boy. “Keep an eye on this young scamp for me—I must try to find some dust masks for Vansen. Even now he and Jasper’s men are trying to keep the Qar out of the Festival Halls, if you haven’t heard. But don’t let this fellow out of your sight! He has been up to all kinds of outrage and mischief according to Brother Nickel. And especially keep him away from the library.”

Chaven seemed to notice the boy for the first time. His round face relaxed into a smile, but Chert fancied he saw something else there, too, something more . . . calculating? “Ah, Master Flint, I hear you have been up to all kinds of interesting things since I saw you last. A visit to the Skimmers, was it? And now the library. Perhaps you can tell me about all of it while we keep each other company.”

Flint was persuaded into the room with the bad grace of a cat being coaxed down off a high place.

“Remember,” Chert said as he went out, “you can’t let him out of your sight!” The physician waved a hand in acknowledgment.

Chert’s search of the small forge where the temple smith repaired tools and other simple household objects turned up two fire-hoods, one of which the temple smith himself was wearing, pushed back on his bald, sweating head. The large-armed monk objected angrily to giving up either of them, but Chert asserted Vansen’s guild-given authority and grabbed the unused hood, then scampered out before the smith lost his temper entirely.

In the temple undercroft he found some heavy cloth dust masks, the remains of an old rebuilding project. There were only a dozen, but he thought they might at least keep those in the front safe against the fairy poisons. He was about to go when he saw something else, a stone chest with a heavy wooden lid. Chert opened it and stared for a while at the wedge-shaped iron objects carefully stacked inside.

Why not?
he thought to himself, and carefully lifted one out and tucked it into his belt. It was heavy and it dug into his belly, but Chert tightened his belt and decided it would have to do. He replaced the lid on the stone box, then cut some cord from a loop hanging from a peg on the wall before closing the storeroom door.

He put water in a bucket for the dust masks and hurried back across the temple and out the front hall, pleased to see that the monks seemed finally to have understood the danger: half a dozen of them were dragging the most valuable statuary inside, and the temple’s ancient iron siege doors were being swung into place. Chert doubted the temple had ever been besieged—certainly it hadn’t happened within his memory—but the Funderlings’ native dislike of windows and other such upground fripperies would serve them in good stead now. As with most large Funderling buildings, the temple’s air and water came in by ducts from other parts of the great limestone labyrinth beneath Southmarch and its storerooms were kept full of food even in lean times. An enemy would find it hard to drive them out quickly.

 

Chert met two of Sledge Jasper’s warders on the far side of the Curtainfall. One was all but senseless and being dragged by his comrade, who was bleeding in a half-dozen places.

“Go back!” the upright warder said, gasping. He shook blood out of his eyes. “The wardthane and the big man, the upgrounder, are surrounded. The fairies made a cloud of blindness around them. They’ll reach the temple any moment—they’ll kill us all!”

Chert could get nothing else of use from the man and let him drag his wounded fellow toward the temple. Terrified by the thought of what lay ahead, he wondered for long moments whether he should not follow them back, but the sloshing bucket in his hand, carried so wearyingly far already, helped him make up his mind. Captain Vansen was in trouble. Only Chert could help him, at least until Cinnabar showed up with more men.

By the time he had gone another few hundred steps he could hear shrieks of pain and anger in the distance and his heart was pounding faster than a craftsman’s hammer.

Forgive me, Opal
, he thought. In that moment he missed his wife so fiercely that it felt like a hole, like cold wind blowing right through him.
Forgive me, my old darling, I’m doing it again.

Ferras Vansen was in the middle of a waking nightmare—strange shapes, guttural cries, and mad shadows cast by the flickering light of torches. Vansen, Sledge Jasper, and five of the remaining warders had barricaded themselves as best they could in the narrow hallway between the last two of the Festival Halls in an effort to keep the attackers from breaking through—at least two or three dozen Qar, he felt sure, although it was hard to tell in the darkened passages. He doubted the fairies had expected so little resistance or they would have sent more than this scouting party. But the number of invaders wasn’t important: if Vansen and the others failed, nothing would remain between the Qar army aboveground and the temple caverns.

And then they will be through into Funderling Town,
Vansen thought, wiping at his stinging eyes.
Innocents—women and children.
And from there the fairy folk would find it easy enough to break through into the castle above.

Five of us. And even if we somehow stop them for a while, there’s no guarantee they won’t send reinforcements pouring down from above.
Vansen did his best to catch his breath, squatting behind the barrier of rocks Jasper and his men had thrown across the narrow passage to give them protection from the occasional arrow that came hissing out of the hall beyond.
But why so much effort to take the underground part of the castle? They’ve lost near a hundred of their fighters here in the past days
. The battle had gone on for hours today, but the Funderlings and Vansen had the advantage of defending narrow tunnels: they had killed far more than they had lost.
The Qar must know that the gates of Funderling Town can be shut on the castle side, sealing it off from the rest of Southmarch.
Did they honestly think they could sneak through without resistance? It made no sense.

He wiped at his eyes again. The invaders, primarily the ugly little imitations, the drows, had almost filled the far chamber with the choking dust they blew out of tubes, a weaker mixture than they had used on the acolytes in the Boreholes, but still enough to make it hard for Vansen and the others to fight. Even in small amounts it not only filled their eyes with tears but made their heads reel and their chests hurt with every breath. Vansen prayed that Chaven could come up with something, although there was scant chance it would do them any good now. The Qar were too close to breaking through.

Vansen took a breath and coughed, his throat stinging. “Could we get more of your people here to wall off this passage completely?” he whispered to Sledge Jasper.

Jasper started to speak, then ducked his bald head as an arrow snapped past overhead and rattled away behind them. “Can’t do it, Captain. Anything we could throw up that fast they could pull down. Those are drows—likely they know near as much about stone as we do.”

“Perin’s Hammer,” Vansen swore bitterly. “What a place to die!”

Jasper laughed, a harsh bark that turned into a cough. “None better, Captain. With the earth herself beneath you and around you.”

“Ho, Thane.” One of the Warders was peering over the makeshift barrier, taking advantage of the lull between arrows. He turned to Jasper, eyes wide and white in his dust-smeared face. “I think they’re coming at us again.”

“Out of arrows,” said Jasper, rising to a crouch. “Now they’re going to try to finish the job. Up and show them, boys—if we die, we die like stonecutters!”

Vansen put off standing as long as possible. The corridors were low for him anyway, and the thin cloud of the poison dust still hovering in the air was less overwhelming behind the barricade.

He climbed to his knees and peered through the angle where the makeshift barrier met the corridor wall. Not all the Qar could see as well in the dark as the drows and Funderlings, and he was grateful for that: some of the attackers carried torches, which allowed Vansen to make out what was going on. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fight for his life in total blackness.

The torches were bobbing and fluttering now, but their light was mostly blocked by the dark shadows of advancing Qar. They knew Vansen and his defenders had no arrows: they were not afraid of making themselves targets.

They’re just going to rush us and rely on numbers,
he realized.
All or nothing.

“Fight for your homes!” he bellowed, rising himself until he filled the passage almost to the top. “For your people and your city!” Then the enemy came rushing toward them, howling and shouting, and Vansen could not think anymore.

 

Ferras Vansen stood gasping, his eyes stinging not from the Qar’s poisons but from his own blood, which streamed from a cut on his forehead. Their enemies’ first rush had failed—the attackers had dislodged several rocks from the makeshift wall, but Vansen and the warders had killed several of them and their bloody corpses now fouled the Qar side of the barricade, making it harder for the attackers to keep their footing. However, when the bodies got high enough—if Vansen and his men lived long enough to pile more bodies—the invaders would simply climb over the stone wall on a ramp of their own dead.

“They’re coming again, Captain.” Sledge Jasper’s face was covered with cuts and dirt, an ugly mask that made him look even more grotesque, like a wicked troll out of some old myth. “I can hear them getting nearer.”

Vansen wiped his eyes and lifted his warding-ax again. He wished he had a short sword or a stabbing-spear. The ax was useful for keeping the enemy at arm’s length, but its weight was wearing him down. The Funderlings must be stronger than they looked: two of the warders were still using theirs, although Jasper was carrying a pair of sharp rock picks instead, one in each hand.

“I’m ready.” Vansen wiped blood from his face and flicked it away. “Let them come.”

“You’re a good man, Captain,” Jasper said abruptly, eyes on the darkness beyond the barrier. “I had you wrong, I confess. You’re nearly a Funderling yourself, if a scrape on the tall side. I don’t mind dying with you at all.”

“Nor I you, Wardthane.” Vansen wished he had something to drink. They had finished the last of their water skins an hour before and his mouth was dry as the Xandian desert. “But first let’s take a few more of these unnatural things with us . . .”

Jasper’s reply was lost in the roar of the attack. A small, dark shape leaped up onto the top of the barrier, then quickly fell away again, howling, guts spilling from a blow of one of the warders’ axes. Two or three more figures swarmed up to take its place, one of them thrusting a blazing torch into Sledge Jasper’s face so that he had to lean back to avoid being burned. Vansen slammed the blade of his weapon into the torch-bearer, piercing what felt like leather armor and skin, although it was impossible to tell if the blow was mortal or not. A moment later he and one of the other warders were wrestling with another of the shapes which had come scrambling over the top, a drow with a long, pointed knife that sliced Vansen’s forearm below his chain mail and almost reached his face before he tightened his hands on the attacker’s arm. He squeezed as hard as he could and heard a thin shriek above the tumult as the drow’s wrist broke in his grip. The creature dropped the knife, but before Vansen could pull it to him and snap its neck the drow fought its way free and fell to the ground on the defenders’ side of the barrier.