Tad Williams: Shadowrise

“Then throw me out and I’ll take these people somewhere else and tell them. Because the Qar already know, so everyone else needs to know as well. Hush, Opal—don’t you start on me. Someone has to take the first step, and it might as well be me.” He turned to Chaven. “But don’t think I will protect your secrets, either, Doctor. I’ll let you tell the story if you prefer, but if not I’ll tell them what you told me.”

Chaven’s look of amusement faltered. “ My story… ?”

“About the mirror. Because that’s what got me into this latest trouble, isn’t it, with Big Folk guards swarming all over our town? And it was another mirror that brought my boy down here the first time—that same mirror that Captain Vansen’s fairy friend carried, the one he gave to Prince Barrick. So if we’re going to talk about Stormstone’s roads then we’re going to talk about mirrors. I’ll go first. Everybody listen.”

For the second time that day, he began the story. “A century or more ago, during the time of the second Kellick, there was a very wise Funderling named Stormstone…”

By the time Chert had finished, Brother Nickel had fallen into a sullen silence and Ferras Vansen was listening with his jaw hanging slack. “Incredible!” said Vansen. “So you’re saying we could even use these hidden paths to cross under the water?”

“More likely the cursed fairies will use them to invade Southmarch,” Cinnabar told him. “And we Funderlings will have to meet them first.”

“Yes, but a road goes two directions,” Vansen pointed out. “Perhaps in dire need we could escape the castle that way—is that truly possible?”

“Yes, of course.” Chert was tired now and hungry. “I have done it myself. I took the half-fairy called Gil on one of the old, secret roads, right under Brenn’s Bay and to the very foot of the dark lady’s throne.”

“So this whole rock is honeycombed with secret ways—passages I did not know about even when I was captain of the royal guard!” Vansen shook his head. “This castle is even more a-crawl with secrets than I guessed. And this very boy was sent here across the Shadowline with a magical mirror as some kind of spy for the Qar, no doubt—but right under all our noses?”

“He’s no spy!” Opal said. “He’s just a child.”

Vansen stared hard at Flint. “Whatever he is, I still can make no sense of it all. What is happening? It is like a spiderweb, where every strand touches another.”

“And all are sticky and dangerous,” said Chaven.

Ferras Vansen turned and gave him a sharp look. “Ah, yes. Do not fear I have forgotten you, sir. Chert talked about you and mirrors—now it is your turn. Tell us everything you know. We can no longer afford to keep secrets from each other.”

The physician groaned softly and patted his much-shrunken paunch. “My story is a long and distressing one—distressing to me, anyway. I had hoped we could find something to eat before I began, just to strengthen myself.”

“I’ll confess that I’m hungry too,” said Cinnabar, “but I think you will talk better and more to the point, Ulosian, if you know you will not get fed until you finish. It seems there are many stories still to be told before this evening ends—so, Chaven, you first, then supper.”

Chaven sighed. “I feared you’d say that.”

“I have a plan, bird.” Barrick Eddon unwound another strand of prickly creeper from his arm, hook by barbed, painful hook. “A very clever plan. You find me a path that doesn’t take me through every single thornbush in Fairyland… and I won’t flatten your nasty little skull with a rock.”

Skurn hopped down to a lower branch, but prudently remained out of Barrick’s reach. He fluffed his blotched feathers. “It all do look different from up in sky, don’t it?” The raven’s tone was sullen. Neither of them had eaten since the middle of the day before. “Us can’t always tell.”

“Well, fly lower.” Barrick stood up and rubbed at the line of small, bleeding holes, then pulled his ragged shirtsleeve back down.

“ ‘Fly lower,’ says he,” Skurn grumbled. “Like he were the master and Skurn the servant, ’stead of equable partners as us’n be by agreement .” He flapped his wings. “By agreement!”

Barrick groaned. “Then why does my… partner keep leading me through all the pointiest bits of territory? It’s taken us a day to go a few hundred paces. At this pace, by the time we bring the…” It suddenly occurred to Barrick that perhaps a dark forest, filled with who knew how many or what kind of listening ears, might not the best place to talk about Lady Porcupine’s mirror, the object he was sworn to carry all the way to the throne of the Qar. “At this pace, by the time we find them even the immortals will have died.”

Skurn seemed to soften a bit. “Can’t see the ground from high because trees be too thick, ’special them hartstangle trees. But us daren’t fly no lower. Don’t you see? Silks be strung in the high branches and some even wave above the treetops, just to catch fine fellows like us.”

“Silks?” Barrick began to trudge forward again, using the ancient, corroded spearhead he had found beside the road out of Greatdeeps to clear his way when the undergrowth became too dense. This was not the thickest forest he’d seen since he’d been behind the Shadowline but it was full of stubborn, grasping creepers that made each step hard as wading through mud. Combined with the unchanging twilight of these lands it was enough to make even the boldest heart despair.

“Aye. This be Silky Wood, hereabouts,” the raven croaked. “Where them silkins live.”

“Silkins? What are those?” They didn’t sound particularly threatening, which would be a nice change after dealing with Jack Chain and his monstrous servants. “Are they fairies?”

“If you mean be they High Folk, nay.” Skurn fluttered ahead to another branch and waited for Barrick to make his monotonous, slow way after. “They speak not, nor do they go to market.”

“Go to market ?”

“Not like proper fairy folk, no.” The bird lifted its head. “Hist,” he said sharply. “That sounds like somewhat small and stupid a-dyin’. Suppertime!” The raven sprang from the branch and flapped away through the trees, leaving Barrick alone and bewildered.

He cleared himself a place where the thorny branches seemed thinnest and sat down. His bad arm had been throbbing for hours so he was not entirely unhappy with the chance to rest, but for all the annoyance the bird caused him, Skurn was at least something to talk to in this place of endless shadows and gray skies and forbidding trees hung with black moss. With the bird gone, the silence seemed to close in like a fog.

He put his arms around his knees and squeezed hard to keep from shivering.

Barrick supposed that more than half a tennight had passed since Gyir and Vansen had fallen and he had escaped the demigod Jikuyin’s twisted underground kingdom. It was always hard to guess at time’s passage in the endless Shadowline twilight, but he knew he had slept more than half a dozen times—those long, heavy, but somehow enervating sleeps that were almost all he ever had here. Kerneia had come and gone in the outside world while they had been held underground—Barrick knew that because it had been the monstrous Jikuyin’s intention to celebrate the earth lord’s day by sacrificing Barrick and the others. Since he knew that he and the others had left Southmarch in Ondekamene to fight the fairy armies, that meant he had not seen his home in over a quarter of a year. What could have happened in so much time? Had the fairies reached it? Was his sister Briony under siege?