Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

“Ag-Labba! Ag-Labba, rouse your filthy soul, you worthless Karrach! Fill the mugs, fire the stew pot, you’ve a crew here starving and lusty!”

“Sewers of Urdd, it’s a dark and stinking place!”

“Bleed it, man, bleed it! Roll out a new keg, we’ve had no drink in a dog’s tracking time, you suckers!”

“Bring ogre’s breath, you sons of Urdd! Roll out the ogre’s breath!” There was coarse laughter and much stamping, and a loud guffaw that ended in a belch.

Zephy felt Thorn laugh at their crudeness, then felt the cold fear they both shared with the others as seven Children slipped out the entrance behind them, to lead the Kubalese horses away quietly. Zephy sensed the care the Children took as they loosened the horse’s saddles, cooled them, watered them, and took them to graze and rest on the hills—it might be a long night for these mounts.

Then Zephy felt Elodia touch her in the darkness, felt the alarm of the others suddenly. Something was in the tunnel with them. It was the darkness they had sensed so often; but it was close now, not held back. Very close and real, and one of the Children was slipping away. The dark was there, concentrated in that one, they could feel it now as if, in unusual effort, the dark Child could not keep his evil diffused. Who was he? Which one of them? Zephy could feel Toca’s fear. She slipped out behind Thorn after the dark one. She could feel Meatha and Elodia beside her. Toca took her hand. She could feel Clytey and the others following.

They could hear the soldiers in the brewing room, grumbling because two guards were missing. “Where the fracking Urdd . . . ?”

“Dallying with the sleeping girls, I’ll guess! Ag-Labba! Rouse your filthy self. Poke him, Herg-Mord. Roll him out of that bunk!”

“Get up you fracking sot. Serve us up some supper. Pull yourself out of there!”

Behind the shouting Zephy and Thorn could feel the urgency of the Child who hurried through the dark passage, could feel the warning forming on his lips. Thorn was ahead, running, Zephy on his heels. They could hear the mugs clink, then Yanno shout—and Thorn had him, his fist in the young man’s mouth, his arm around his throat; it was Yanno! He spun back, his eyes terrified, the feel of darkness like a stench on him, to stare at Thorn in terror, then to grab at Thorn’s knife and twist it out of the scabbard.

Thorn hit him so he went limp.

They crouched there, listening, expecting the Kubalese to burst out of the brewing room. But the men were still cursing the missing guards, toasting each other loudly, laughing and swearing by turns. They had heard nothing.

They dragged Yanno into a side tunnel to question him, and Zephy could feel Thorn’s fury as he propped him against the wall. “Where is he?” He hissed, his fingers twisting into the man’s shoulder so Yanno cringed in pain. “Where is Anchorstar? What have you done with him?”

But Yanno, limp now with fear and pain, seemed to have gone as empty as a shell. No evil reeked from him now. Only fear. He would not answer Thorn. He seemed to have drawn into a place where Thorn could not reach him. He had given up, yet at the same time he clung to something that would not let him speak. Zephy felt that he would die soon, that they could not prevent it, that he would carry Anchorstar’s secret with him.

Then at last Meatha went into his mind in a way the others had not. She seemed suddenly able to strip away layers of emptiness and lay bare, at long last, the final dark kernel of Yanno—to lay bare the knowledge they had sought.

And they, going at once back to the entrance of the tunnel and through the cleft to the outside, found the second cleft, tucked behind the first like a wrinkle in the earth. And Thorn pushed in to find the second door.

This one seemed locked or bolted from within. Finally it gave slightly as if the bolt was weakening. Or as if the door was not bolted, but held. They pushed harder, ramming the door in unison until at last it gave and swung in. Two boys stood before them, the reek of evil strong about them. Yanno’s counterparts. Yanno’s dark partners, Children lost in their minds and turned inward around a kernel of evil that now ruled them.

And behind them on the slab lay Anchorstar.

Hardly a heartbeat had he. Zephy and Meatha knelt beside him, and Elodia brought water. Thorn, with Yanno dangling from his grasp, faced the two dark Children coldly. “Yanno. Ejon. Dowilg,” Thorn said in a flat voice, divining their names. The stench of their evil filled the cave. The three stared back at Thorn with empty, hate-ridden eyes. The other Children faced them in a circle, a small cold army. Zephy shuddered, and turned back to Anchorstar.

Meatha’s arms were around him, Meatha’s tears on his face. Then Tra. Hoppa was there, she had brought herbs and brew. But they could not wake him.

“He only sleeps,” Tra. Hoppa said. “He only sleeps, he’s not dead. You must wake him. You must make a strength between you that you have never made before, all of you. You must not let Anchorstar die!” Her voice rang cold and compelling in the cave: a command they could not have resisted. The Children, having trussed and secured the dark ones, gathered now, and commanded life, demanded life of Anchorstar as they had not done even for one another. They strained, they sweated with their effort as a man sweats moving boulders.

But they could not wake him. There was no stir, no sign of color or of change in his almost-imperceptible breathing—until at last, the prisoners were taken away and the darkness left the cave. The evil left with them, left the Children free to demand life of Anchorstar without the fetters that Yanno and the two others had put on them.

At long last, after many hours more, Anchorstar moved his hand. Then later his pale, weathered cheek seemed to have a little color. They knelt then, all of them, never moving, willing him to live. When it was clear that he would live, some of the children went to clear the brewing room of the drugged Kubalese soldiers, and Tra. Hoppa made a broth of rabbit, with the herbs. In the small hours of the morning Anchorstar was able, with his head supported, to accept a few drops of this. His eyes were open but dead-seeming. It tore at Zephy to see the blankness with which he regarded them.

They kept the stone beside him as they watched in shifts through the day and the next day and night. The deep, patient prodding was taken up by one group then the next, never ceasing.

And when he woke truly at last, and looked around him, the others who had gone to rest woke at once, were called out of sleep, and came to him. Meatha was there kneeling beside him, crying. Toca, all the Children hurried out of sleep to gather before him. With their silent urging, with the stone and with love pulling at him, Anchorstar looked around him at last with true recognition. With surprise. And then with great good humor.

It was several days more before he was strong enough to travel. Fresh rabbits boiled into soup strengthened him, and all the Children took turns caring for him. When Zephy sat with him one night, he told her how he had been captured, and she thought him very patient, for surely he had told many of the others. He had waited in the dark beyond the housegardens as they had planned, on the night of Fire Scourge. And he had been surprised as he crouched there in a low depression to hear a dozen Kubalese troops suddenly thundering down on him. They had not seen him, but were following the plan of attack. And he, having no way to escape running horses, for his own horses were farther up the mountain, had crouched lower, hoping he would not be discovered.

But one Kubalese horse had shied, startling others, and one of the soldiers dismounted to investigate. Anchorstar did not dare move, but remained frozen, hoping still he might be missed, his knife ready in case he was not.