In Lonely Deeps
Tso and Zha had many sons, of whom the greatest was Zhafaris, the
Prince of Evening. On his great black falcon he would ride through the sky
and when he saw beasts or demons that might threaten the gods' tents he
slew them with his ax of volcano stone, which was called Thunderclapthe mightiest weapon, O My Children, that was ever seen.
— from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
"I KNOW YOU THINK it is… because I am stout," said Chaven as he sagged against the corridor wall and fanned himself with his bandaged hand. "But it is not. That is to say, I am, but…"
"Nonsense," Chert told him. "You are not so fat, especially after the past tennight spent starving and hiding. If you need to rest, you need to rest. There is no shame in it."
"But that isn't it! I am… I am afraid of these tunnels." Even by the glow of the stonelights, which made everyone seem pale as mushroom flesh, his pallor was noticeable.
Chert wondered if it wasn't the dark itself that was unnerving the physician: even to Funderling eyes, the light was very dim here on the outer edge of the town, where Lower Ore Street began to touch the un¬named passages still being built or begun and then abandoned when Guild plans changed. "Is it the darkness you fear, or… something else?" Chert remembered the mysterious man Gil, who had taken him to the city to meet the Qar folk. Gil too had been wary, not of the tunnels themselves
it had seemed, but of something that lurked in the depths below them. "Do I trespass by asking?"
"Trespass?" Chaven shook his head. "After saving my life and… taking me into your home, kind friend, you ask that? No, let me… catch my wind again… and 1 will tell you." After a few moments of labored breath he began. "You know 1 come from Ulos in the south. Did you know my fam¬ily, the Makari, were rich?"
"I know only what you've told me." Chert tried to look patient, but he could not help thinking of Opal waiting at home, saddled with the painful burden of a child who had become a stranger. Already much of this morn¬ing had slipped away like sand running from a seam but Chert still did not know the purpose of their errand, let alone actually getting to it.
"They were-and may still be, for all I know. I broke with them years ago when they began to take gold from Parnad, the old autarch of Xis."
Chert knew little about any of the autarchs, living or dead, but he tried to look as though he routinely discussed such things with other worldly folk. "Ah," he said. "Yes, of course."
"I grew up in Falopetris, in a house overlooking the Hesperian Ocean, atop a great stone cliff riddled with tunnels just like these."
Chert, who knew that the honeycombed fastness of Midlan's Mount was not merely the chief dwelling, but the actual birthplace of his race, that the Salt Pool had seen the very creation of the Funderling people, felt a mo¬ment of irritation to have it compared to the paltry tunnels of Falopetris, but checked himself-the physician had not meant it that way. Chert was anxious to be moving on and he realized it was making him unkind. "I have heard of those cliffs," he said. "Very good limestone, some excellent tufa for bricks. In fact, good stone all around there…"
Now it was Chaven who looked a little impatient. "I'm certain. In any case, when I was small my brothers and I played in the caves-not deeply, because even my brothers knew that was too dangerous, but in the outer caverns on the cliff below our house that looked out over the sea. Pre¬tended we were Vuttish sea-ravers and such, or that we manned a fortress against Xixian invaders." He scowled, gave a short unhappy bark of a laugh. "A good joke, that, I see now.
"It was on such a day that my older brothers grew angry with me for something I cannot even remember now and left me in the cave. We came down to it by a steep trail, you see, and at the end there was a rope ladder we had stolen from the keeper's shed that we had to clamber down to reach
the entrance. My brothers and my sister Zamira went back up ahead of me. but took the ladder with them.
"At first I thought they would return any moment-I had scarcely live or six years, and could not imagine that anything else could happen. And in fact they probably would have come back once they had frightened me a little, but the younger of my brothers, Niram, fell from the trail higher up onto some rocks and broke his leg so badly that the bone jutted from the skin. He never walked again without a limp, even after it healed. In any case, they managed to lift him back to the trail and carry him home, but in their terror, and the subsequent hurry to bring a surgeon from the town, no one thought about me.
"I will not bore you with my every dreadful moment," Chaven said, as if fearing the other man's impatience, although that had faded now as Chert considered the horror of a child in such a situation, thought of Flint just days ago, alone in the depths, going through things he and Opal could never know. Chert shuddered.
"Enough to say that I heard screaming and shouting from the hillside overhead," Chaven continued, "and thought they were trying to frighten me-and that it was succeeding. Then there was silence for so long that I at last stopped believing it was a trick. I became certain they had forgotten me in truth, or that they had fallen to their deaths, or been attacked by cata¬mounts or bears. I cried and cried, as any child would, but at last the bar¬rel was empty-I had no tears left.
"I do not remember much of what happened next. I must have found the hole at the back of the cave and wandered in, although I do not re¬member doing so. I dimly recall lights, or a dream of lights, and voices, but all that I can know for certain is that when my father and the servants came for me, bearing torches because it was hours after nightfall, they found me curled in a smaller, deeper cave whose entrance we had never found in all the times we had played there. My father subsequently had that inner cav¬ern blocked and the ladder to the caves taken away. We never went there again-Niram could not have climbed down to them in any case." Chaven ran his hands over his balding scalp. "I have had a horror of dark, narrow places ever since. It took all I had those three days past simply to come down into Funderling Town seeking you, although I knew I would die if I did not find help."
It was hard to imagine feeling stone over your head as oppressive instead of sheltering-how much less secure to stand in some wide open space
Willi no refuge, no place to hide from enemies or angry gods! lint Chert did his best to understand."Would you like to go back, then?"
"No." Chaven stood,still trembling,but with a resolution on his face that looked a little like anger. "No, 1 cannot leave my house to the plundering of the Tollys without even knowing what they do there. I cannot. My things… valuable…" The physician dropped into a mumble Chert could not understand as he pushed himself off from the wall and began walking again, heading bravely into the long stretches of shadow between stone-lights, shadows which Chert knew must seem darkness complete and hope¬less to a man from aboveground.
As he paused to drop a fresh piece of coral stone into the saltwater of the lantern Chert could not help thinking of his last two journeys through these tunnels, passing this way with Flint when they took the strange piece of stone to Chaven, then the other direction with Gil on their march to the fairy-held city on the other side of the bay. How could his life, such an or¬dinary thing only a year before, full of orderly days and restful nights, have been turned inside out so quickly, like Opal readying shirts to dry on a hot rock?
"And the stone, Flint's stone, was the thing that killed a prince…" Chert said half-aloud as he hurried to catch up to physician. Even after all the other things that had happened to him in the last days, he still found it hard to believe-found Chaven's entire story nearly impossible to grasp. He, Chert Blue Quartz, had carried that stone in his own hand!
Chaven, walking grimly ahead, did not seem to have heard him.
"If I had put that what-was-it-called stone in my own mouth," Chert said, louder this time, "would I have turned into a demon, too? Or did I have to say some magical words?"
"What?" Chaven seemed lost in a kind of dream, one that did not eas¬ily let go. "The kulikos stone? No, not unless you knew the spell that gave it life and power, and that would have needed more than words."
"More than words?"
"Such old wisdom, that men call magic, does not work like a door lock that any man can open if he has the key. Those among your people who work crystals and gems, do they simply grab a stone and strike it and it falls into shape, or is there more to the skill than that?"
"More, of course. Years of training, and still often a stone shatters."
"So it would be even if you held the kulikos in your hand right now and
1 told you the ancient words. You could say them a hundred times in.a hun-dred ways and it would remain nothing but a lump of cold stone in your fingers. The old arts require training, learning, sacrifice-and even so, the cost is often greater than the reward…" He trailed off. When lie spoke again his voice shook. "Sometimes the cost is terrible."
Chert put a hand on his shoulder. "We are coming near to the bottom of your house. We should go quietly now. If they have not found the lower door they might still hear us through the walls and come looking for what makes the noise."
Chaven nodded. He looked drawn and frightened, as though after telling the story of his childhood terror he had never managed to shake it off again.
Two more rough-hewn corridors and they stood in front of the door, which was as strange a sight as ever in this empty, untraveled place, its hard¬woods and bronze fittings polished so that even the dim coral light raised a gleam. Chert suddenly wanted to ask whether Chaven had actually stepped out into the passage from time to time to clean the thing, since none of his servants had known of its existence, but he had to be quiet now until they learned who or what was on the other side.
Chert stared at the featureless door. It had no handle or latch or even keyhole on this side, nothing but the bellpull-and clearly they were not going to use that.
The physician tugged at his sleeve to get his attention, then made a strange gesture that the Funderling did not immediately understand. Chaven did it again, waving his bandaged fingers with increasing impatience until Chert realized that Chaven wanted him to turn around-that there was something the bigger man did not want him to see. It was impossible not to feel angered after all they had both been through, after he and Opal had given Chaven the sanctuary of their home and nursed him back to health, but now was not the time to argue. Chert turned his back on the door.
A quiet hiss as of something heavy sliding was followed by the chink of a lifting latch; a moment later he felt Chaven s touch on his shoulder. The door was open, spilling a widening sliver of light out into their passageway. Chaven leaned close, urgency on his face-he looked like a starving man who smelled food but did not yet know what he must do to get it. Chert held his breath, listening.
At last Chaven straightened up and nodded, then slipped through the open doorway. Chert hurried down the stone corridor after him holding
the fading coral lantern. The physician paused in front of a hanging so bleached by age and dotted with mildew that the scene embroidered on it had become invisible, a thing weirdly out of place in such a damp, win-dowless, almost unvisited spot. For a moment Chaven hesitated, his burned lingers hovering in midair as though he would once again ask Chert to turn around, but then impatience got the best of him and he pulled back the hanging and ducked beneath it, making a lump under the ancient fab¬ric. A moment later the lump disappeared as if the physician had simply vanished.
Despite a superstitious chill at the back of his neck, Chert was about to investigate, but something else caught his attention. He made his way as silently as he could down the corridor and past the hanging to the base of the stairs. He muffled his lantern, dropping the passageway into near-darkness as he stood, listening.
Voices, coming from somewhere upstairs-were Chaven's servants keep¬ing the up house in his absence? Somehow Chaven did not think so.
A disembodied moan, quiet but still piercing, made Chert jump. He looked around wildly but the corridor was still empty. He hurried back to the hanging and pulled it aside to discover a hidden door, ajar. The noise came again, louder, the muffled wail of a lost soul, and Chert summoned up his courage and pushed the door open.
Chaven lay in the middle of the floor, writhing as though he had been stabbed, surrounded by rumpled lengths of cloth. Chert ran to him, turned him over, but could find no wound.
"Ruined…!" the physician groaned. Though his voice was quiet, it seemed loud as a shout to Chert. "Ruined! They have taken it…!"
"Quiet," the Funderling hissed at him. "There is someone upstairs!"
"They have it!" Chaven sat up, wild-eyed, and began to struggle in Chert's grasp like a man who had seen his only child stolen from his arms. "We must stop them!"
"Shut your mouth or you will get us killed," Chert whispered harshly clinging on to the much larger man as tightly as he could. "It might be the entire royal guard, looking for you."
"But they have stolen it… I am destroyed…!" Chaven was actually weeping. Chert could not believe what he saw, the change that had turned this man he had long known and respected into a mad child.
"Stole what? What are you saying?"
"We must listen… We must hear them." Chaven managed to throw the
funderling off, but his look had changed from sheer madness to something more sly. He crawled across the room before Chert could get his legs under himself; a moment later he had snaked out under the faded hanging and into the corridor. Chert hurried after him.
The physician had stopped at the stairwell. He touched his lips to enjoin the Funderling to silence-an unnecessary gesture to someone as fright ened as Chert was, both by the danger itself and Chaven's seeming mad¬ness. The physician was shaking, but it seemed a tremble of rage, not anything more sensible like a fear of being caught, imprisoned, and almost inevitably executed.
And me? Chert could not help thinking. If they kill Chaven, the royal physi¬cian, what will they do with a mere Funderling who is his accomplice? The only ques¬tion will be whether anyone ever learns of my death. Ah, my dear old Opal, you were right after all-/ should have learned to stay at home and tend my own fungus.
He took a deep breath to try to slow his beating heart. Perhaps it was only Chaven's own servants after all. Perhaps…
"I promise you, Lord Tolly, there is nothing else here of value at all." The reedy voice wafted down the stairwell, close enough to keep Chert stock-still, holding the last breath he took as if it must last him forever. To his horror, he saw Chaven's eyes go wide with that mindless, inexplicable rage he had shown earlier, even saw the physician make a twitching move toward the staircase itself. Chert shot out his hand and clung as if his fingers were curled on scaffolding while he dangled over a deadly drop.
The other's voice was lazy, but with a suggestion somehow that it could turn cruel as quick as an adder's strike. "Is that true, brother, or are there things here that you think might not be of value to me, but which you might quite like for yourself?"
Confused, Chert guessed that Hendon Tolly and his brother, the new Duke of Summerfield, stood in the hallway above them. He could not un¬derstand the expression of heedless fury on Chaven's face. Earth Elders, didn't he realize that the Tollys owned not just the castle now but had be¬come the unquestioned rulers of all Southmarch? That with a word these men could have Chaven and Chert skinned in Market Square in front of a whooping, applauding crowd?
"I tell you, Lord, you already have the one piece of true value. I promise that eventually I will winkle out its secrets, but at the moment there is something miss¬ing, some element I have not discovered, and it is not in this house…" The man's thin voice suddenly grew sharp, high-pitched. "Ah, keep that away from me!"
"It is only a cat," said the one he had called Lord Tolly.
"/ hate the things. They are toots of Zmeos. There, it rum away. Good. " When he spoke again his voice had regained its earlier calm. "As I said, there is nothing in this house that will solve the puzzle-I swear that to you, my lord."
"But you will solve it," the other said. "You will."
Pear was in the first one's voice again, not well hidden. "Of course, Lord. Have I not served you well and faithfully for years?"
"I suppose you have. Come, let us lock this place up and you can go hack to your necromancy."
"I think it would be more accurate to call it captromancy, my lord." The speaker had recovered his nerve a bit. Chert was beginning to think he had guessed wrong-that one of these was a Tolly, but not both. "Necromancers raise the dead. It is captromancers who use mirrors in their art."
"Perhaps a little of both, then, eh?" said his master jauntily as their voices dwindled. "Ah, what a fascinating world we are making…!"
When the two were gone and the house was silent Chert could finally breathe freely, and found he was trembling all over, as if he had narrowly avoided a fatal tumble. "Who were those two men?"
"Hendon Tolly, to give one of the dogs a name," the physician snarled. "The other is the vilest traitor who ever lived-an even filthier cur than Hendon-a man who I thought was my friend, but who has been the Tollys' lapdog all along, it seems. If I had his throat in my hands…"
"What are you talking about?"
"Talking about? He has stolen my dearest possession!" Chaven's eyes were still wide, and it occurred to Chert it was not too late for the royal physician to go dashing out into Southmarch Keep and get them both killed. He grabbed Chaven's robe again.
"What? What did he steal? Who was that?"
Chaven shook his head, tears welling in his eyes again. "No. I cannot tell you. I am shamed by my weakness." He turned to stare at Chert, des¬perate, imploring. "Tolly called him brother because the man who helped him pillage my secrets is one of the brothers of the Eastmarch Academy. Okros, Brother Okros-a man who I have trusted as if he were my own family."
Chert had never seen the physician so helpless, so defeated, so… empty.
Chaven put his head on his arms, sagged as if he would never rise again. "Oh, by all the gods, I should have known! Growing to manhood in a fam¬ily like mine, I should have known that trust is for fools and weaklings."
"Are you mad?" Teloni could not have been more astonished if her younger sister had suggested jumping off the harbor wall into the ocean. "He is a prisoner! And he is a man!"
"But look at him-he is always here and he seems so sad." Pelaya Akua-nis had seen the prisoner a half-dozen times, and always the older man sat on the stone bench as quietly as if he listened to music, but of course there was no music, only the noises of birds and the distant boom and shush of the sea. "I am going to talk to him."
"The guards won't let you," one of the other girls warned, but Pelaya ig¬nored her. She got up and smoothed her dress before walking across the garden toward the bench. Two of the guards stood, but after looking at her carefully one guard leaned back against the wall again; the other moved ex¬actly one step closer to the bearded man they were guarding, which was apparently the solution to some odd little inner mechanics of responsibil¬ity. Then the two guards resumed their whispered conversation. Pelaya wished she looked more like the dangerous type who might free a prisoner, but the guards had judged her correctly-talking to him with her friends and the man's guards around her on all sides was quite enough of an ad¬venture, however she might like to act otherwise.
As she reached him the man looked up at her, his face so empty of emo¬tion that she was positive she could have been a beetle or a leaf for all he cared. She suddenly realized she had nothing to say. Pelaya would have turned and walked away again except that she could not bear to see Teloni give her one of those amused, superior looks.
She swayed a little, trying to think of how to begin, and he only watched her. For a moment the garden seemed very silent. He was at least her fa¬ther's age, perhaps older, with long reddish-brown hair and beard, both shot with gray and a few curling wisps of pure white. Even as she examined him he was surveying her in turn, and his calm gaze unnerved her. "Who are you?" she said, blurting it out so that it sounded like a challenge. She could feel the blood rising in her cheeks and had to fight hard once more against the urge to flee.
"Ah, my good young mistress, but it is you who approached me," he said sternly. He sounded serious, and his face looked serious too, but something in the way he spoke made her think he might be mocking her. "You must
name yourself. I lave you never been told any stories, have you read no books on polite discourse? Names are important, you see. However, once given, they can never be taken back." He spoke the Hierosoline tongue with a strange accent, harsh but somehow musical.
"But 1 think I know yours," she said. "You are King Olin of South-march."
"Ah, you are only half right." He frowned, as though thinking hard about his words, then nodded slowly. "It seems that, in fairness, you must tell me half of your name."
"Pelaya!" her sister called, a strangled moan of embarrassment.
"Ah," said the prisoner. "And now I have received my due, will you, nill you."
"That wasn't fair. She told you."
"I was not aware we were involved in a contest. Hmmm-interesting." Something moved across his lips, fleeting as a shadow-a smile? "As I said, names are very important things. Very well, I will do my best to guess the other name without help from any of the bystanders. Pelaya, are you? A fair name. It means 'ocean. »
"I know." She took a step back. "You are playing for time. You cannot guess."
"Ah, but I can. Let me consider what I know already." He stroked his beard, the very picture of a philosopher from the Sacred Trigon Academy. "You are here, that is the first thing to be pondered. Not everyone is allowed into this inner garden-I myself have only recently been granted the privi¬lege. You are well dressed, in silk and a fine lace collar, so I feel rather cer¬tain you are not one of the pastry-makers gathering mint or a chambermaid on your way to air the linens. If you are either of those you are shirking your chores most unconscionably, but to me you do not have the face of a true idler."
She laughed despite herself. He was talking nonsense, she knew, amus¬ing himself and her, but also there was more to it. He was showing her how he would think about things if he truly meant to solve a problem. "So, we must assume you are one of the ladies of the castle, and in fact I see that you have brought with you a formidable retinue." He gestured to Teloni and the others, who watched her with wide eyes, as though Pelaya had clambered down into a wolf's den. "One of them addressed you by first name, which suggests a familiarity a lady might show to one of her maids or other friends, but since there is a sameness to your features-yours are a
bit finer, more delicate, but I hope you will keep that as our secret-I would guess that the two of you are related. Sisters?"
She looked at him sternly. She was not going to be so easily tricked into helping him.
"Well, then I will declare it so for the sake of my argument. Sisters. Now, I know well that my captor, the lord protector, has no declared offspring. Some might say he was the better for that-they can be difficult creatures, children-but I am not one of them. However much I pity his childless¬ness, though, I cannot make him your father, no matter how I puzzle the facts, so I must look elsewhere. Of his chief ministers, some are too dark or too pale of skin, some too old, and some too much inclined otherwise to be the fathers of handsome young women like your sister and yourself, so I must narrow my guesses to those whom I know to have children. I have been here more than half a year, so I have learned a little." He smiled. "In fact, I see now that your companions are waving for you in earnest, and I must cut to the bone of the matter before they drag you away. My best guess is that your father is this castle's steward, Count Perivos Akuanis, and that you are his younger daughter, while the dark-haired girl there is his older daughter, Teloni."
She glared at him. "You knew it all along."
"No, I must sincerely protest that I did not, although it has become clear to me as we talked. I think I may have seen you once with your father, but I have only now remembered."
"I'm not certain I believe you."
"I would not lie to a young woman named after the sea. The sea god is my family's patron, and the sea itself has become very precious to me these days. From one corner of my room in the tower, if I bend down just so, I can see it at the edge of a window. Of such things are hearts made strong enough to last." He tipped his head, almost a bow. "And, the truth is, you remind me of my own daughter, who also has a weakness for old dogs and useless strays, although I think you are a few years younger." Now his face became a little strange, as though a sudden pain had bitten at him but he was determined not to show it. "But children change so quickly-here and then gone. Everything changes." For a moment whatever pained him seemed to take his breath away. It was a long time before he spoke again. "And how many years have you, Lady Pelaya?"
"I am twelve. I will be married next year or the year after, they say, after my sister Teloni is married."
I wish you much happiness, now and later. Your friends look as though they are about to call for the lord protector to come rescue you. Perhaps you should go."
She began to turn, then stopped. "When I said you were King Olin of Southmarch, why did you say I was only half right? Isn't that who you are? Everyone knows about you."
"1 am Olin of Southniarch, but no man is king when he is another man's prisoner." Even the sad, tired smile did not make an appearance this time. "Go on, young Pelaya of the Ocean. The others are waiting. The grace of Zoria on you-it has been a pleasure to speak with you."
Leaving the courtyard garden, the other girls surrounded Pelaya as though she were a deserter being dragged back to justice. She stole one look back but the man was staring at nothing again-watching clouds, per¬haps, or the endless procession of waves in the strait: there was little else he could see from the high-walled garden.
"You should not have spoken to him," Teloni said. "He is a prisoner-a foreigner! Father will be furious."
"Yes." Pelaya felt sad, but also different-strange, as though she had learned something talking to the prisoner, something that had changed her, although she could not imagine what that might be. "Yes, I expect he will."