Tad Williams - Shadowheart

The bald Funderling gave him a doubting look. “As you say, Captain. I’m just asking if they speak properly or not.”

Vansen thought about Gyir’s voice, something he had never heard with his ears, but which he would never forget. “They have many ways of talking. I do not think they will have any trouble making their wishes known ...”

“Oh, shite and slurry!” said Jasper loudly.

Vansen was taken aback—for a moment he thought that the little man was calling him a liar. Then he saw what Jasper had seen—half a dozen Funderling women, led by Cinnabar’s wife and Chert’s wife Opal, making their determined way across the chapel.

“Hold now.” Jasper was on his feet, as though he would bodily keep the women from the table. “What are you doing here? The Qar are coming!”

“Sit down, Wardthane Jasper.” Vermilion Cinnabar was a handsome Funderling woman, dressed in a beautifully embroidered blue-green travel robe. “We have just as much right to be here as you and your warders.”

“I beg your pardon, Magistrix,” said the wealthy Funderling Malachite Copper, who had quickly made himself invaluable to the struggle. “Of course your advice is welcome, but only a few days ago these Qar were trying to kill us ...”

“That is neither here nor there, is it?” The magister’s wife directed her companions to seats on either side of her. Unlike Vermilion Cinnabar and Opal Blue Quartz, the other women looked a bit awed to be in such a place at such a time—but then again, Vansen thought, so did the men.

One of the other women leaned forward. “Is there much danger?” she whispered to Opal, who was sitting close enough for Vansen to hear.

“No,” Opal told her, then shot Vansen a look that clearly said, “And please don’t disagree.”

She and the magister’s wife are leading their troops by example, he realized. Like any good commanders they are worried too, but they cannot show that to their forces. “We should be well,” he told the Funderling woman. “We are all under a treaty of peace here and the Qar, whatever else they are, seem to me honorable creatures.” He felt a touch of shame at the understatement—Gyir the Storm Lantern had been more than “honorable.” He had unhesitatingly given his life to carry out his promise to his mistress Yasammez—the sorceress or demigoddess they all awaited today.

Chert and Cinnabar and the physician Chaven came in with several others, including a party of Funderling monks led by Brother Nickel. The monk even nodded courteously toward Vansen as he and his party seated themselves at the long table.

“What’s gotten into him?” Vansen said, half-aloud.

Malachite laughed. “Don’t you know? Cinnabar had a talk with him. Reminded him that the Guild’s highwardens have to approve a new Prior of the temple—and, when it comes to it someday, the new abbot of the temple as well. If Nickel wants to carry the abbot’s holy mattock he’s going to have to dig when the Guild says dig.”

“Ah.” Vansen wasn’t surprised. Even Nickel, with the sacred souls of all the Funderlings supposedly in his protection, saw things differently when ambition called the dance.

“Hello, my darling,” said Chert as he bent to kiss his wife. “I hope you don’t mind—I’m going to be sitting with Cinnabar. It’s his idea.” Chert did his best to look surprised that he had been singled out for this honor, but Vansen knew the little man not only had good sense, he was in the middle of so many of the mysteries here that he was virtually indispensable. “And how very nice to see you, Magistrix!” he said to Vermilion Cinnabar. “You’re looking well.”

“Magistrix, is it?” she said with an amused smile. “I’m not soapstone, Chert, so don’t try to carve me. Your wife has told me all about your adventures. I think my husband wants you around just to take his mind off our boring life at home.”

Chert laughed. “Oh, wouldn’t we all love to be bored these days, Magi… Vermilion.” He gave Opal another squeeze and wandered back to Cinnabar and the others.

“My Chert is a good man,” Opal said fiercely and suddenly, as if someone might have been about to suggest otherwise. “Everything he’s done has been for others.”

Before Vansen could tell her how much he agreed, a stir ran through the chapel—a sense of wonder and alarm that Vansen felt before he either heard or saw anything, a primal thrill of warning that ran up his spine. He turned and for a moment only saw Aesi’uah in the doorway—a powerful, captivating figure, no doubt, but someone he looked on almost with fondness. Then the others came silently in behind her.

It was not the full, staggering panoply of Qar types, but even this small embassy had enough variety to make those who had never seen them—perhaps three-quarters of those assembled—blanch and blink and mutter to themselves. Most frightening was the immense creature known as Hammerfoot, a war leader of the Deep Ettins, taller and heavier than even the largest cave bears. His jutting brow overshadowed his face so completely that nothing could be seen of his eyes except two gleaming coals far back in the darkness. He was wrapped in furs and armor made of stone plates held together by massive leather straps, and his two-fingered hands were each as wide as one of the Funderling shields. The giant found his way to the far side of the table and then sat down on the floor, almost knocking the table over when he nudged it with his great chest.

He was the largest of the Qar who came to the table, but not the strangest. Vansen had seen all these shapes before, and others, but he was still far from used to it. Here came the one named Greenjay, who looked like a cross between an exotic bird and a costumed Zosimia fool. Some of the other Qar looked almost human, their origin betrayed only by the shapes of their skulls or their coloring—Vansen knew no ordinary man or woman whose skin was touched with hues of lavender or mossy green. Others like the Elementals were manlike only in seeming to have a head and four limbs: Vansen had seen them in their fiery, naked forms in the Qar camp, and still saw those shapes in his dreams, but the two present today had been more discreet, wrapping themselves in robes that betrayed nothing of what smoldered beneath.

Bent or straight, small or tall, the Qar filed in to fill the other side of the table, as varied as the bestiaries so carefully painted in the margins of old books. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was the quality of watchfulness: as they took their seats they did not speak to each other, but only looked across at the gathered Funderlings and their guests.

And then, at long last, Yasammez herself came into the chamber, tall and silent, wearing her angular black armor and strange cloak like a cloud of dark fog. She looked neither to one side nor the other as she walked slowly to her place at the far side of the table, although she was the lode-stone to all eyes. She seated herself in the center of her people.

After a silence Yasammez spoke, her voice as slow and baleful as a funeral bell. “This battle is already lost. You must know that before we begin.”

One voice rose above the flurry of disapproving murmurs—Cinnabar Quicksilver. “With all respect, Lady Yasammez, what does that mean? If there is no chance of victory, why are we here instead of at home making peace with the gods?”

“I cannot speak for you, delver,” she told him. “But this is how I make peace with the gods.”

Ferras Vansen could only stare as the room exploded into confusion. He had worked so hard to bring both sides together and now the Qar leader’s arrogance was going to smash the alliance to pieces before it even started.