Vansen stared as though he had lost his mind. “What do you mean by that?”
“What?” Nickel stood up, trembling. “What are you saying? Why would they care about us or our blessed temple?”
“It has little or nothing to do with the temple,” Chert said with a scowl.
“What has it to do with Funderling Town, though?” Cinnabar asked. “Once they are over the castle walls why would they single us out?” He stopped and his eyes went wide. “Oh! By the Elders, you are not speaking of an attack from upground at all… !”
“Now you understand me, Magister.” Chert turned to Vansen. “There is much you still do not know about us and our city, Captain. But perhaps it is time to tell you…”
“You have no right to speak of such things!” Nickel said, almost shrieking. “Not in front of these… Big Folk! Not in front of strangers!”
Cinnabar raised his hands. “Calm yourself, Brother. But, Chert, he may be right—this is no ordinary matter and the Guild alone should decide…”
Chert banged his fist on the table, startling almost everyone. “Don’t any of you understand?” Chert was truly angry now—at the Big Folk’s intrigues that had dragged Funderling Town into someone else’s wars, at Nickel and the others for their craven unwillingness to see the truth. He was even mad at Opal, he realized, for bringing home Flint, the strange quiet boy who had started all this nonsense in Chert’s life. “Don’t you see? Nothing is ordinary anymore! Nickel, we cannot hide secrets like Stormstone’s roads anymore. We cannot pretend that things are as they used to be. I have met the fairies myself—nearly as closely as Captain Vansen. I spoke to their Lady Yasammez, and she’ll frighten the spit right out of your mouth. Nothing ordinary about her! My boy there brought the very magic mirror here across the Shadowline in the first place that Vansen said Prince Barrick might be taking back to the great city of the Qar. Is that ordinary? Is any of this ordinary?”
He stopped, panting. Everyone at the table was staring at him, most with amazement, Opal with concern, Chaven with a kind of enjoyment.
“I think Captain Vansen is still waiting for an answer to his question,” Chaven said. “And so am I. Why do you think Funderling Town is in danger? How could the Qar come here without breaching the walls of Southmarch? ”
“Chert Blue Quartz,” Brother Nickel said in a hoarse, angry voice, “you have no right. We offered you sanctuary here.”
“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.”
3. Silky Wood
“Another story, related by the Soterian scholar Kyros, is that an old goblin told him ‘the gods followed us here’ from some original homeland beyond the tracks of the sea.”
“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.”