Death in the Outer Halls "Goblins, especially the solitary larger sort, were still found in remote parts of Eion even after the second war with the fairies. A goblin was killed here in Kertewall in the March Kingdoms during King Ustin's reign, and its body was kept and shown to visitors, who all agreed it was no natural creature." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" "I MUST CONFESS that I do not understand any of this, Chaven." Ferras Vansen shook his head. "Gods, demigods, monsters, miracles… and now mirrors! I thought witchcraft was a thing of poisons and steaming cauldrons."
The physician's smile looked a little forced. "We are not discussing witchcraft here, Captain, but science," he said. "The difference is one of learned men observing rules and sharing them with other learned men so that a body of knowledge is built up. That is why I need your help. Please tell me one more time."
"I have told you all I can remember, sir. I fell into the darkness in Greatdeeps. I fell for a long time. Then, it was as though I slept and dreamed. I can remember only snatches of that dreaming and I have told them to you. Then I walked out of darkness-and yes, I remember that part very firmly. I fell into the shadows, but I walked out on my feet. I found myself in the center of Funderling Town-although I did not realize it at first, of course, since I had never been there."
"But you were standing on the mirror, am I correct? The great mirror that reflects the statue of the god the Funderlings call the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone-Kernios, as we Trigonates name him?"
Vansen was getting tired and couldn't understand why Chaven kept asking so many questions about the way he had returned to Midlan's Mount. Hadn't he explained it all that first day?
"I was standing on the mirror, yes. I didn't know the Funderlings had a different name for him, but it's clearly an image of Kernios. Now that I think of it, that's what that one-eyed monster Jikuyin planned in the first place-he wanted to open a door to the house of Kernios, whatever that might have meant. But I didn't think about it long because I quickly found I had other things to consider." He smiled a little. "A horde of Funderlings carrying all manner of sharp objects, for one thing. And if I remember correctly, you were the one leading them, Chaven, so there is nothing more I can tell you that you don't know already."
"It all makes a kind of sense," the physician said slowly, as if he had not heard the last bit at all. In fact, he had seemed to stop listening after Vansen mentioned the house of Kernios. "Perhaps there was another mirror within the darkness in the Greatdeeps mines where you fell," he mused. "Or something that acted the same way-we cannot even guess at all the knowledge the Qar still have, or that the gods once shared with them." Chaven began pacing back and forth across the refectory, one of the few places in the temple of the Metamorphic Brotherhood other than the sacred chapel itself that was big enough for the two men to stand upright and move freely. "And at the other end, a sacred place in Funderling Town-dedicated to the god under a different name, but dedicated nonetheless. As though a single house had a door that opened in Eion and another that gave onto sunny Xand!"
"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."
Chert looked at him gratefully, struggling for words. Vansen did not linger long enough to let it become an embarrassment. Jasper's warders were waiting to meet him, men he would lead into danger and perhaps, for some of them, even to death. At this moment, the fact that they were half Ferras Vansen's size meant absolutely nothing.
It was as strange as anything in Greatdeeps, Vansen thought-no, stranger. To think that sights like these had been beneath his feet all the years he had been in Southmarch! The Cascade Stair was huge, a vertical tunnel in the shape of a great downward spiral, as though the stone had hardened around a whirlpool that had subsequently drained away. The bobbing coral-lights of the men winding down it in front of him looked like little stars bouncing in a thundercloud.
We have our own Shadowline right here, he thought. But instead of two different lands side-by-side, it is two lands with one beneath the other, our Southmarch above and all this below.
"Watch your step, Cap'n," growled Jasper. "Not so bad if you lose your footing here, but a little farther down you'd be falling for a long time. Better get used to looking where you're walking."
"Right." Vansen paused for a moment, propping the weapon Cinnabar had found him against the wall, a "warding ax" as the magister had named it, a one-handed battle ax with a knobby hammer on the poll, the opposite side from the blade. He reached up to straighten the piece of coral bound to his forehead in its little lantern, then picked up the ax again. The sickly, greenish yellow light was not very revealing-Funderlings saw much better in these dark places than he did. He wished he had a good old-fashioned flaming torch, but when he had mentioned it the Funderling wardthane had looked at him with disgust.
"Oh, they'd smell and hear that coming from a long way away, wouldn't they? Not to mention how fast it would eat up the air in some of the tight spots. No, Cap'n, you just leave the thinking to old Sledge."
But the Funderlings have fires, don't they? They have fires for cooking and for warmth-I've seen them! And what about their forges? Of course, from what Chaven had told him, they also had very elaborate systems to draw the smoke up out of Funderling Town, with lazily spinning fans like water-wheels that pulled the foul air upward and then puffed it out into the air over the stony hill on which Southmarch had been built.
Chimneys up where we live, was his bemused thought. Roads that travel under the bay to the mainland, and others that tunnel down far beneath the water, if Chert Blue Quartz told me the truth. These Funderlings own more of this rock than we do!
Near the bottom of the Cascade Stair, with the stone walls looming so far above them now that their little lights could not reach the top, Vansen and the others trooped through into a large open space full of pale stone columns that were wider at the top and bottom than at their middles. After walking for some time, they paused at last in front of a wall pierced by several stone tunnel mouths.
"They call this place Five Arches," Jasper whispered.
Brother Antimony prayed for a little while in a language Vansen didn't understand, words full of harsh kah and zzz sounds, as the dozen warders dipped their heads reverently.
"Beyond this," the acolyte said to Vansen when he had finished, "lies the Outer Halls. We go now from That Which was Built to That Which Grew."
This made no sense to Ferras Vansen, but he was getting used to that. "Are we far from the place… what was it called… where your monks are?"
"The Boreholes? We are not far now," Antimony told him.
"Close enough that we should keep our mouths shut," said Jasper, and reached out a long hairy arm to smack one of his warders sharply on the back of the head, silencing him midmurmur. "All of us," Jasper added sharply.
The young man who had been disciplined shot the wardthane a sulky look. For all Sledge Jasper's ferocity, Vansen was worried that the rest of the warders might not be up to the task if there proved anything to it.
"Just around this bend," Antimony whispered. "Let me go first and find someone who can talk to us. We should not disturb them more than we have to-they are on their Elder Walks, after all. That is what we call this time of retreat and prayer."
"You'll not go alone-you, Pig Iron," Jasper said to the warder he had chastised earlier. "Go with him. Keep him out of trouble and bring him back safe."
The one named Pig Iron looked pleased to have been given a suitably manly task: he puffed himself up inside his heavy cloak and lowered his short Funderling halberd, which was more like a spike-headed spear than like a proper halberd. Pig Iron had no helmet, no armor; but for the weapon, he might have been another monk.
How can we hope to fight anyone? Vansen wondered. Our army is knee-high and dressed in wool.
The pair trotted down the winding passage and were quickly gone from sight. Vansen, whose back was sore because he had been forced in so many places to walk almost doubled over, had what seemed scarcely more than a few breaths to rest before the two came clattering back.
"Dead!" Antimony's eyes were so big they looked like they might never fully close again. "All of them, in their cells!"
"How?" demanded Jasper before Vansen had a chance to speak.
"Couldn't tell," said Pig Iron excitedly, "But one of them was Little Pewter. I know him-he's no more than thirteen years old!"
"But what killed them?" Sledge Jasper demanded. "Was there blood?"
Ferras Vansen was a stranger and Jasper was their familiar leader: Vansen could understand why they might want to stick to that which was familiar, but confusion now might cost lives later. "Let me ask the questions, Wardthane," he said, softly but firmly. "Brother Antimony, what did you see? Just what you saw, not what you think might have happened. And let's keep it quiet."
Antimony took a deep breath. "The cells are side by side, only a few paces apart, and open to the outside. They are all still in the cells, slumped over like they died sitting up. Four of them-no, five. There were five, and the other cells were empty." He paused for a moment-Vansen could see him calming himself, collecting his thoughts. "The other cells, as far as we went, were empty. Perhaps a dozen. We turned back then."
"Was there any sign of what killed them? Were they cold?"
Antimony looked surprised. "No blood, but they were all dead. Their eyes were open, some of them! We did not touch them. We did not know who might still be out there, watching us…"
Vansen scowled. "It sounds very strange. If they all died like that, in their cells, they were not fighting back. They must have been surprised. But no blood? Very strange." To get a better grip on his warding ax he wiped his hands on his breeches. Chert's wife Opal had spent two days combining articles of Funderling clothing to make him a proper pair. "Let's go. Pig Iron, you lead for now, but when we get there I will go first." He turned to the others, who looked more than a little worried- all except for Sledge Jasper, who was grinning in a bloodthirsty sort of way. "We will go silently from now on. If you need to speak, truly need to, then for the gods' sake, speak softly. If these are the Twilight folk, they are quieter, cleverer, and crueler than you can guess, and they can hear a whisper from a hundred paces." Even as he said it he felt a momentary pang of shame. Had not Gyir been his friend, of a sort? But he had lost too many of his men at Kolkan's Field and elsewhere to think of the rest of the Qar as anything but deadly enemies. "Do you understand me? Good. Jasper, you come behind me. Show your fellows how a man walks into danger."
Ferras Vansen wanted no part of losing untrained men (or at least men who were not soldiers) while trapped behind them, unable to help, so he was determined to lead the way as soon as he could. But there was a risk to that as well: if he got caught in a tight enough spot, they might not be able to help him even if they wanted to.
Like Murroy used to say, he thought, if you can't be a soldier, hurry up and die so you can be a shield for someone else. If Vansen got wedged in a tight spot it might give the others a chance to retreat and take word back to Funderling Town.
Still, it would have been nice to have a proper soldier's shield. Especially in the tight places, especially with all this darkness around them. Their quiet footsteps were beginning to sound like drumbeats to him. Surely the Qar had heard them coming long ago.
Vansen and his little troop stepped out of the narrow defile at last, into the open space of what Antimony had called the Boreholes, an underground chamber like a mountain valley, its sides scored with vertical creases that sloped upward into the darkness beyond the coral light. The great folds of stone between the creases were perforated with holes, some natural, some clearly chiseled out or at least enlarged by intelligent hands. Vansen could not see much in the thin, greenish light, but what he could see reminded him of the rockier heights of Settland where the old Trigonate mystics had hidden themselves away from the lures of daily life. But surely even the oniri would have found living in these heavy, lightless depths too hard to bear. Vansen had never thought you could miss the sky like a starving man missed food, but it was true. Oh, gods in heaven, he thought, please let me live long enough to see the light of day again!
Antimony pointed to the nearest fold of stone and its honeycomb of holes. For the first time, Vansen regretted the coral lamps. If they faced something that lived down here without light, or some of the many Twilight folk who thrived in darkness, their own lamps, however dim, would make them into nothing but slow-moving targets.
Vansen stepped out in the lead now, skirting dark places in the floor that, as far as he knew, might be holes that would drop him into the center of the earth. As he drew nearer he saw that the closest cell was occupied, its inhabitant fallen halfway out, arms splayed and twisted. In the sickly light of the coral, the victim looked to be little more than a youth. Vansen moved forward and touched the Funderling acolyte's skin. It was warm, but he was otherwise limp as a rag, his eyes halfway open. He pressed his ear against the Funderling's chest, but could hear nothing. Dead, then, but for how long?
As Antimony had said, motionless forms filled several of the sparsely furnished cells on the bottom row, one of the bodies so small it made even Vansen's hardened heart ache in his breast. As Jasper and the other Funderlings crouched over Little Pewter, murmuring angrily, Vansen moved around the edge of the outcropping, wondering how many more cells might contain bodies, and how they had all died with no mark on them. Each dead man was in his own cell, which seemed to suggest that the catastrophe had struck them all at the same time, or else with extreme silence and swiftness.
The first cell in the next stony slope was empty, and Vansen was about to pass on to the next when his lamp showed him something he had not seen in the other cells-a hole at the back of the small space, leading deeper into the rock. He leaned closer. The floor of the cell, which in all the others he had seen so far had been kept scrupulously clean, was a mess of broken stone and dust. The hole in the back wall looked like something that had been done swiftly with a mallet and chisel. But why…?
Vansen suddenly realized what he was seeing. He climbed out of the cell as quietly as he could manage and returned to where the others were waiting, most looking fearful now that their anger was spent.
"I think I've found the place they came through," he whispered. "Come this way."
Jasper was the first to follow him, with Antimony not too far behind, but the others hung back. Vansen felt a pang of renewed worry. These untrained Funderlings were not soldiers-they were nowhere near being reliable. He would have to remember that.
Sledge Jasper turned and glared at his warders, his face a grotesque mask in the light of their lamps. His men scrambled to their feet, but their reluctance still showed.
"It is a hole, dug through from the other side," said Antimony as he stared at the opening in the back of the empty cell.
"And not with Funderling tools, either," growled Jasper quietly. "Or Funderling knowledge. This is foul-looking work. See, the edges are ragged."
"The tunnels Chert spoke of-the Stormstone tunnels," Vansen said to Antimony. "Are we close to one?"
"I don't know. Let me think." Antimony stood up from examining the hole. "Yes, I think so, although we would never go through the Boreholes to reach it-there is a connecting passage much closer to the temple. But yes, it passes along behind this formation here."
"Then this may well have been done by the Qar," Vansen said. "Their invasion may already have begun. We must go through to the far side and see what is there," he told the warders. "We cannot report back to Cinnabar and the others without learning the truth. Follow me. Stay close together. And remember-silence!"
The low tunnel beyond the cell was an uneven path over scree and larger loose stones, sometimes through spaces so small Vansen was forced onto his knees and into the very real worry that he might become stuck. Once his coral lamp faltered, dimmed, and died, leaving him for some moments in near-total darkness until one of the Funderlings behind him passed forward a spare piece. At last the passage widened and he was able to climb to his feet; a few hundred stumbling paces later he stepped through another crude hole in the stone and, on the other side, could stand upright again.
As the Funderlings moved up beside him into the much wider space, the light of their combined lamps reached out and illuminated a passage half a dozen paces wide, a monument to careful workmanship and masterful craft whose ceiling, floor, and walls (except for the hole through which they had just come and the pile of debris beside it) were all finished with smoothly sanded stone.
"A Stormstone road," said Antimony with something like reverence. "I have never seen this one, so far even from the temple."
"The Guild is going to have to start keeping a better watch on them, as of this moment," said Vansen. "Someone has definitely broken through from here into the Boreholes. We must get back to Cinnabar and the others with this news."
He turned and led them back into the new tunnel, which seemed even more of a brutal, animalistic shambles now that he had seen good Funderling work. They had only gone back a little ways when a glimmer of light caught his attention. For an instant he thought that one of the other Funderlings had somehow got in front of him, but the part of the tunnel in which he stood was scarcely broader than his shoulders.
An instant later, the thing coming the opposite direction stood upright, blocking out the light behind it, and Vansen took a staggering step backward. It was manlike, but only just, bigger than he was and covered with leathery, scaly skin. Its eyes were sunk so deep under a shelflike brow so that they barely reflected the light of Vansen's lantern. He had only an instant to see that there was something in its brute face that was a little like the apelike servitors of Greatdeeps, then one of the massive fists, big as a sexton's shovel, swung toward his head. Vansen only just managed to get his ax up, but the sheer strength of the thing smashed the flat of his own weapon against his head so that he fell back, stunned, collapsing partway onto the Funderlings behind him as they shouted in terror and confusion.
"Aa-iyah Krjaazel!" someone screeched. "It can't be!"
"Deep ettin!" shouted Antimony. "Run, Captain, it's an ettin!"
But there was nowhere to run. The thing in front of him grunted, a deep sound Vansen could feel in his chest. He lifted his ax once more but as he did so a long, hollow stick appeared from behind the monstrous creature's shoulder, swaying like a serpent. A puff of smoke or dust came from the opening and suddenly Vansen could not breathe. He dropped his weapon and grasped his throat, trying to find the hands that strangled him, but there was nothing, only a growing red emptiness in his lungs. As he slid helplessly to the ground, Ferras Vansen felt his thoughts flicker out like a candle dropped down a well.