Songs of the Moon and Stars

Young Flint doesn't seem very taken with the turnip porridge, even though it is sweetened with honey. Well, Chert thinks, perhaps it's a mistake to expect one of the big folk to be feel the same way about root vegetables as we do. Since Opal has gone off to the vent of warm subterranean air behind Old Quarry Square to air the clothes she has washed, he takes pity on the lad and removes the bowl.

"You don't need to finish," he says. "We're going out, you and I."

The boy looks at him, neither interested nor disinterested. "Where?"

"The castle — the inner keep."

Something moves across the child's face but he only rises easily from the low stool and trots out the door before Chert has gathered up his own things. Although he has only come down Wedge Road for the first time the night before, the boy turns unhesitatingly to the left. Chert is impressed with his memory. "You'd be right if we were going up, lad, but we're not. We're taking Funderling roads." The boy looks at him questioningly. "Going through the tunnels. It's faster for the way we're going. Besides, last night I wanted to show you a bit of what was aboveground — now you get to see a bit more of what's down here."

They stroll down to the bottom of Wedge Road then along Beetle Way to Ore Street, which is wide and busy, full of carts and teams of diggers and cutters on their way to various tasks, peddlers bringing produce down from the markets in the castle above, honers and polishers crying their trades, and tribes of children on their way to guild schools. The day-lanterns are lit everywhere, and in a few places raw autumn sunlight streams down through holes in the great roof, turning the streets golden.

Chert sees many folk he knows, and most call out greetings. A few salute young Flint as well, even by name, although others look at the boy with suspicion or barely-masked dislike. At first Chert is astonished that anyone knows the boy's new name, but then realizes Opal has been talking with the other women. News travels fast in the close confines of Funderling Town.

"Most times we'd turn here," he says, gesturing at the place near the Gravelers Meeting Hall where Ore Street forks into two thoroughfares, one level, one slanting downward, "but the way we're going all the tunnels aren't finished yet, so we're making a stop at the Salt Pool first."

The boy is busy looking at the chiseled facades of the houses, each one portraying a complicated web of family history (not all of the histories strictly true) and does not ask what the Salt Pool might be. They walk for a quarter of an hour down Lower Ore Street until they reach the rough, largely undecorated rock at the edge of town. Chert leads the boy past men and a few women idling by the roadside — most waiting by the entrances to the Pool in hopes of catching on for a day's work somewhere – and through a surprisingly modest door set in a wall of raw stone, into the glowing cavern.

The pool itself is a sort of lake beneath the ground; it fills the greater part of the immense natural cave. It is saltwater, an arm of the ocean that reaches all the way into the stone on which the castle stands, and is the reason that even in the dimmest recesses of their hidden town the Funderlings always know when the tides are high or low. The rim of the lake is rough, the stones sharp and spiky, and the dozens of other Funderlings who are already there move carefully. It would be the work of a few weeks at the most to make the cavern and its rocky shore as orderly as a garden, but even the most improvement-mad of Chert's people have never seriously considered it. The Salt Pool is one of the places of earliest Funderling legend — one of their oldest stories tells how the god Kernios, who the Funderlings in their own secret language call "Lord of the Hot Wet Stone", created their race right here on the Salt Pool's shores in the Days of Cooling.

Chert does not try to describe any of this to the boy. He is not certain how long the child will stay with them; it is far too early to begin teaching him any of the Mysteries.

The boy scrambles across the uneven, rocky floor like a spider; he is already waiting, watchful features turned yellow-green by the light from the pool, when Chert reaches the shore. Chert has only just taken off his pack when a tiny, crooked-legged figure appears from a jumble of large stones, wiping its beard as it swallows the last bite of something.

"Is that you, Chert? My eyes are tired today." The little man who stands before them only reaches Chert's waist. The boy stares down at this newcomer with unhidden surprise.

"It is me, indeed, Boulder." Now the boy looks at Chert, as surprised by the name as by the stranger's size. "And this is Flint. He's staying with us." He shrugs. "That was Opal's idea."

The little figure peers up at the boy and laughs. "I suppose there's a tale there. Are you in too much of a hurry to tell it to me today?"

"Afraid so, but I'll owe it to you."

"Two, then?"

"Yes, thank you." He takes a copper chip out of his pocket and gives it to the tiny man, who puts it in the pouch of his wet breeches.

"Back in three drips," says Boulder, then scampers back down the rocky beach toward the water, almost as nimble as the boy despite his bent legs and his many years.

Chert sees Flint staring after him. "That's the first thing you have to learn about our folk, boy. We're not dwarfs. We are meant to be this size. There are big folk who are small — not children like you, but just small — and those are dwarfs. And there are Funderlings who are small compared to their fellows, too, and Boulder is one of those."

"Boulder . . .?"

"His parents named him that, hoping it would make him grow. Some tweak him about it, but seldom more than once. He is a good man, but he has a sharp tongue."

"Where did he go?"

"He is diving. There's a kind of stone that grows in the salt pool, a stone that is made by a little animal, like a snail makes a shell for itself, called coral. The coral that grows in the Salt Pool makes its own light . . ."

Before he has finished explaining, Boulder is standing before them, holding a chunk of the glowing stuff in each hand, the light so bright that Chert can see the veins in the little man's fingers. "These have just kindled," he says with satisfaction. "They should last you all day, maybe even longer."

"We won't need them such a time, but my thanks." Chert takes out two pieces of hollow horn from his pack, both polished to glassy thinness, and drops a piece of coral into each, then fills them with a bit of salt water from Boulder's bucket to keep the little animals inside the stony stuff alive.

"Don't you want reflecting-bowls?" asks Boulder.

Chert shakes his head. "We won't be working, only traveling. I just want us to be able to see each other." He caps both hollow horns with bone plugs, then takes a fitted leather hood out of his bag, ties it onto Flint's head, and puts one of the glowing cups of seawater and coral into the little harness on the front of the hood above the boy's eyes. He does the same for himself, then they bid Boulder farewell and make their way back across the cavern of the Salt Pool. The boy moves in erratic circles, watching the light from his brow cast odd shadows as he goes scrambling from stone to stone.

Although the road is braced and paved, it is so far out along the network of tunnels that it has no name yet. The boy, only named himself the night before, does not seem to mind.

"Where are we?"

"Now? Under the Raven's Gate, more or less — that's the entrance into the inner keep — but passing away from it and along the line of the inner keep wall. I think the last new road we crossed, Greenstone or whatever they're calling it now, climbs up and lets out quite close to the gate."

"Then we're going past . . . past . . ." The boy thinks for a moment. "Past the bottom of the tower with the leaf on top of it."

Chert stops, surprised. The boy has not only remembered a small detail from the previous afternoon's walk, but has calculated the distances and directions, too. "How can you know that?"

Little Flint shrugs, the keen intelligence suddenly hidden behind the gray eyes again like a deer moving from a patch of sunlight into shadow.

Chert shakes his head. "You're right, though, we're passing underneath the Tower of Autumn — although not right under it. We don't go directly under the inner keep. None of the Funderling roads do. It's . . . forbidden."

The boy sucks on his lip, thinking again. "By the king?"

Chert is certainly not going to delve straight into the deep end of the Mysteries, but something in him does not want to lie to the child. "Yes, certainly, the king is part of it. They do not want us to tunnel under the heart of the castle in case the outer keep, and Funderling Town, shoud be overrun in a siege."

"But there's another reason." It is not a question, but a disconcertingly calm assertion.

Chert can only shrug. "There is seldom only one reason for anything in this world."

He leads the boy upward through a series of increasingly haphazard diggings. Their ultimate destination is inside the inner keep, and the fact that they can actually reach it from the tunnels of Funderling Town is a secret that only Chert of all his people knows — or at least he believes that is the case. His own knowledge is the result of a favor done long ago, and although it is conceivable someone might use this route as a way of going under the wall of the inner keep and attacking the castle itself, he can't imagine anyone not of Funderling blood and upbringing finding their way through the maze of half-finished tunnels and raw scrapes.

But what about the boy? he thinks suddenly. He's already shown he has a fine memory. But surely even those clever, hooded eyes could not remember every twist and turn, the dozens of switchbacks, the crossings honeycombed with dozens of false trails that would lead anyone but Chert down endless empty passages and, if they were lucky enough not to be lost in the maze forever, eventually funnel them back into the main roads of Funderling Town.

Still, can he really risk the secret route with this child, of whom he knows so little? He stares at the boy laboring along beside him in the sickly coral-light, putting one foot in front of the other without a word of complaint. Despite the child's weird origins, he can sense nothing bad in him. Besides, if he changes his mind now, he will not only have wasted much of the day, he will have to present himself at the Raven's Gate and try to talk his way past the guards and into the inner keep that way. He does not think they are likely to let him in, even if he tells them who he is going to see. And if he tells them the substance of his errand, it will be all over the castle by nightfall, causing fear and wild stories.

It is too much to consider, too complicated, and the need to make known what he has seen at the Shadowline is too great. He will have to trust his own good sense, his luck.

It is only as they turn down the last passage and into the final tunnel that he remembers that "Chert's luck" — at least within his own Blue Quartz family — is another way of saying "no luck at all."

The boy stares at the door. It is a rather surprising thing to find at the end of half a league of tunnels that are little more than hasty burrows, the kind of crude excavation that Funderling children get up to before they are old enough to be apprenticed to one of the guilds. But this door is a beautiful thing, if such can be said of a mere door, hewn of dark hardwoods that gleam in the light of the coral-stones, its hinges of heavy iron overlaid with filigree patterns in bronze. For who? Chert knows of no one else beside himself that ever uses this door, and this is only his third time in ten years.

The door has no latch and no handle, at least on this side.

Chert reaches up and pulls at a braided cord that hangs through a hole in the door. Whatever bell it rings is much too far away to hear, so Chert pulls it again just to make certain. They wait for what seems a long time — Chert is just about to tug the cord a third time — before the door swings inward.

"Ah, is it Master Blue Quartz?" The round man's eyebrows rise. "And a friend, I see."

"Sorry to trouble you, sir." Chert is suddenly uncomfortable — why did he think it would be a good idea to bring the boy with him? Surely he could simply have described him. "This boy is . . . well, he's staying with us. And he's . . . he's part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Something important." He is uncomfortable now, not because Chaven's expression is unkind, but because he had forgotten how sharp the physician's eyes are — like the boy's but with nothing hidden, a fierce, fierce cleverness that is always watching.

"Well, then we must step inside where we can talk comfortably. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had to send away the lad who works for me before I came. I do not share the secret of these tunnels lightly." Chaven smiles, but Chert wonders if what the physician is politely not saying is, Even if some others do.

He leads them down a series of empty corridors, damp and windowless because they are below the ground floor chambers, set directly into the foundations of the observatory.

"I told you the truth," Chert whispers to the boy. "About not digging under the inner keep, that is. You see, we've just crossed under its walls, but not until we were inside this man's house, as it were. Our end of the tunnel stops outside the inner keep."

The boy looks at him as though the Funderling has claimed he can juggle fish while whistling, and even Chert is not sure why he felt compelled to point out this distinction. What loyalty can the boy have to the royal family? Or to Chert himself, for that matter?

Chaven leads them up several flights of stairs until they reach a small, carpeted room. Jars and wooden chests are stacked along the walls and on shelves, as though the room is as much a pantry as a retiring room. The windows are covered with tapestries whose night-sky colors are livened by winking gems in the shapes of constellations.

The physician is more fit than he appears: of the three of them, Chert alone is winded by the climb. "Can I offer you something to eat or drink?" Chaven asks. "It might take me a moment to fetch. I've sent Toby off on an errand and I'd just as soon not tell any of the servants there's a guest here who didn't come in through any of the doors — at least any of the doors they know about. . ."

Chert waves away the offer. "I would love to drink with you in a civilized way, sir, but I think I had better get right to the seam, as it were. Is the boy all right, looking around?"

Flint is moving slowly around the room, observing but not handling the various articles standing against the wall, mostly lidded vessels of glass and polished brass.

"I think so," Chaven says, "but perhaps I should withold my judgement until you tell me what exactly brings you here — and him with you."

Chert describes what he saw the day before in the hills north of the castle. The physician listens, asking few questions, and when the little man has finished he does not speak for a long time. Flint has finished examining the room and now sits on the floor, looking up at the tapestries and their twining patterns of stars.

"I am not surprised," Chaven says at last. "I had . . . heard things. Seen things. But it is still fearful news."

"What does it mean?"

The physician shakes his head. "I can't say. But the Shadowline has not moved in centuries, and now it is moving again. I have to think that it will keep moving unless something stops it, and what would that be?" He rises, rubbing his hands together.

"Keep moving . . .?"

"Until it has swept across Southmarch — perhaps all of Eion. Until the land is plunged back into shadow and Old Night." The physician frowns at his hands, then turns back to Flint. His voice is matter-of-fact, but his eyes belie it. "I suppose I had better have a look at the boy."

Moina and Rose and her other ladies, despite all their kind words and questions, cannot stop Briony's weeping. She is angry with herself, but it is as though she has fallen down a deep hole: she is beyond the reach of any of them.

Barrick pounds at the chamber door, demanding that she speak to him. He sounds angry and frightened, but although it feels as if she is casting off a part of her own body, she lets Rose send him away. He is a man — what does he know of how she feels? No one will sell him to the highest bidder like a market-pig.

Eighty thousand dolphins discounted for my sake, she thinks bitterly. A great deal of gold — most of a king's ransom, in fact. I should be proud to command such a high price. She throws a pillow against the wall and knocks over an oil lamp. The ladies squeal as they rush to stamp out the flames, but Briony does not care if the entire castle burns to the ground.

"What goes on here?" Treacherous Rose has opened the door, but it is not Barrick who has come in, only Briony's great-aunt, the dowager duchess Merolanna, sniffing. Her eyes widen as she sees Moina smothering the last of the flames and she turns on Briony. "What are you doing, child, trying to kill us all?"

Briony wants to say yes, she is, but another fit of weeping overcomes her. As the other ladies try to fan the smoke out the open door, Merolanna comes to the bed and carefully sits her substantial but carefully groomed self down on it, puts her arms around the princess.

"I have heard," she says, patting Briony's back. "Do not be so afraid — your brother may refuse. And even if he doesn't, it isn't the worst thing in the world. When I first came here to wed your father's uncle, years and years and years ago, I was as frightened as you are."

"Ludis is a m-monster!" Briony struggles to stop sobbing. "A murderer! The bandit who kidnapped our father! I would rather marry . . . marry anyone — even old Puzzle — before allowing someone like that . . ." It is no use. She is weeping again.

"Now, child," Merolanna says, but clearly can think of nothing else to say.

Merolanna has gone, and Briony's ladies-in-waiting keep their distance, as though their mistress has some illness which may spread — and indeed she does, Briony thinks, because unhappiness is ambitious.

A messenger is at the door, the third in an hour. She has returned no message to her older brother, and could think of nothing sufficiently cutting to send back to Gailon, Duke of Summerfield.

"It's from Sister Utta, my lady," Moina says. "She sends to ask why you have not come to her today, and if you are well."

"She must be the only one in the castle who doesn't know," says Rose, almost laughing that anyone can be so remote from the day's events. A look at Briony's tearstained face and she quickly sobers. "We'll tell her you can't come . . ."

Briony sits up. She has forgotten her tutor entirely, but suddenly wants nothing more than to see the Vuttish woman's calm face, hear her measured voice. "I will go to her."

"But, Princess . . ."

"I will go!" As she struggles into a wrap, the ladies-in-waiting hurry to pull on their own shoes and cloaks. "I am going by myself," Briony tells them sourly. "I have guards. Don't you think that's enough to keep me from running away?"

Rose and Moina stare at her in hurt surprise, but Briony is already striding out the door.

Utta is one of the Sisters of Zoria, priestesses of the goddess of learning. Zoria once was the most powerful of goddesses, mistress of a thousand temples and an equal of even her divine father Perin, but now her followers have been reduced to advising the Trigon on petty domestic policy and teaching highborn girl-children how to read, write, and — although it is not deemed strictly necessary in most noble families — to think.

Utta herself is almost as old as Merolanna, but where Briony's great-aunt is a royal barge, elaborately painted and decorated, the Vuttish woman is spare as a fast sailing-ship, tall and thin, with gray hair cropped almost to her scalp. She is sewing when Briony arrives, and her pale blue eyes open wide when the girl immediately bursts into tears, but although her questions are sympathetic and she listens carefully to the answers, the priestess of Zoria is not the type to put her arms around even her most important pupil.

When Briony has finished the story, Utta nods her head slowly. "As you say, our lot is hard. In this life we women are handed from one man to another, and can only hope that the one we come to at last is a kind steward of our liberties."

"But no man owns you." Briony has recovered herself a little. There is something about Utta, the unassuming strength of an old tree on a windy mountainside, that always calms her. "You do what you want, without a husband or a master."

Sister Utta smiles sadly. "I do not think you would wish to give up all I have given up to become so, Princess. And how can you say I have no master? Should your father — or now your brother — decide to send me away or even kill me, I would be trudging down Market Road within an hour, or hanging from one of the mileposts."

"It's not fair! And I won't do it."

Utta nods again, as if she is truly considering what Briony says. "When it comes to it, no woman can be turned against her own soul unless she wills it. But perhaps it is too early for you to be worrying. You do not know yet what your brother will say."

"Oh, I do," says Briony bitterly. "The council — in fact, almost all the nobles — have been complaining for months about the price of Father's ransom, and they have also been telling Kendrick that I should be married off to some rich southern princeling to help pay for it. Then when he resists them, they whisper behind their hands that he is not old enough yet to rule the March Kingdoms. Here is a chance for him to stop their moaning in an instant. I'd do it, if I were him."

"But you are not Kendrick, and you have not yet heard his decision." Now she does an unusual thing, leans out and for a moment takes Briony's hand. "However, I will not say your worries are baseless. What I hear of Ludis Drakava is not encouraging."

"I won't do it! I won't. It is all so unfair — the clothes they want me to wear, the things they want me to say and do . . . and now this! I hate being a woman. It's a curse." Briony looks up suddenly. "I could become a priestess, like you! If I became a Sister of Zoria, my virginity would be sacred, wouldn't it?"

"And permanent." Utta's smile is sad. "I am not certain you could join the sisterhood against your brother's wishes, anyway. But is it not too early to be thinking of such things?"

Briony has a sudden recollection of the envoy Dawet dan-Faar, of eyes proud and leopard-fierce. He does not seem the type to stand around for weeks waiting for a defeated enemy to agree to the terms of surrender. "I don't think I have much time – until tomorrow, perhaps. Oh, Sister, what will I do?"

"Talk to your brother, the prince regent. Tell him how you feel — I believe he is a good man, like your father. If there seems no other way . . . well, perhaps there is advice I might give you then, even assistance." For a moment, Utta's long, strong face looks troubled. "But not yet." She sits up straight. "We have an hour left before the evening meal, Princess. Shall we spend it usefully? Learning may perhaps keep your mind off your sorrows, at least for a little while."

"I suppose." Briony has cried so much she feels limp, boneless. The room is quite dark, with only one candle lit. Most of the light in the spare apartment comes from the window: a bright oblong climbs steadily higher on the wall as the sun drops toward its evening harbor. For some reason, even in this deepest and most miserable of holes, she still feels as though the shadowy wings beat above her, that there is some threat as yet undiscovered.

"Teach me something," she says heavily. "What else do I have left?"

Finished examining the boy, Chaven reaches into his pockets and produces a disc of glass pent in a brass handle. Flint takes it from him and looks through it, first staring up at the flickering lamp, then moving it close to the wall so he can examine the grain of stone in the spaces between the tapestries.

Maybe he'll make a Funderling yet, thinks Chert.

The boy turns to him, smiling, one eye goggling hugely behind the glass. Chert laughs despite himself. At the moment, Flint seems to be no more than he appears, a child of six or seven summers.

Chaven thinks so, too. "I find nothing unusual about him," the physician says quietly as they watch the boy playing with the enlarging-glass. "No extra fingers, toes, or mysterious marks. His breath is sweet — for a child who seems to have eaten spiced turnips today, that is — and his eyes are clear. Everything about him seems ordinary. This all proves nothing, but unless some other mysterious trait shows itself, I must for the moment assume he is what your wife guessed him to be — some mortal child who wandered beyond the Shadowline and, instead of wandering back again as some do, met the riders you saw and was carried out instead." Chaven frowned. "You say he has little memory of who he is. Those who happen across often return with their wits clouded."

"It seems that way," Chert admits. He should be relieved, especially since the child will be sharing their house for at least the present, but he cannot rid himself of a nagging feeling that there is something more to be discovered. "But why, if the Shadowline is moving, would the . . . the Quiet People oh-so-kindly carry a mortal child across the line? It seems more likely they would slit his throat like a rabbit and leave him in the foggy forest somewhere."

Chaven shrugs. "I have no answer, my friend. Even when they were slaughtering mortals at Coldgray Moor, the Twilight People did things that no one could understand. In the last months of the war, one company of soldiers from Fael moving camp by midnight stumbled onto a fairy-feast, but instead of slaughtering them — they were far outnumbered — the Qar only fed them and led them into drunken revels. Some of the soldiers even claimed they mated with fairy-women that night."

"The . . . Qar?"

"Their old name." Chaven waves his hand. "I have spent much of my life studying them, and still know little more than when I began. They can be unexpectedly kind to mortals, even generous, but do not doubt that if the Shadowline sweeps across us, it will bring with it a dark, dark evil."

Chert shudders. "I have spent too much time on its borders to doubt that for a moment." He watches the boy for a moment. "Will you tell the prince regent and his family that the line has moved?"

"I expect I will have to. But first I must think on all this, so that I can go to them with some proposal. Otherwise, decisions will be made in fear and ignorance, and those seldom lead to happy result." Chaven rises from his stool and pats his bunched robe until it hangs straight again. "Now I must get back to my work, not least of which will be thinking about the news you've brought me."

As Chert leads Flint to the door, the boy turns back. "Where is the owl?" he asks Chaven.

The physician freezes for a moment, then smiles. "What do you mean, lad? There is no owl here, nor ever has been one, as far as I know."

"There was," Flint says stubbornly. "A white one."

Chaven shakes his head kindly as he holds the door, but Chert thinks he looks a little discomposed.

After checking to make sure none of his servants are in sight, the physician lets Chert and the boy out through the observatory-tower's front door. For reasons he does not quite know himself, Chert has decided to go back aboveground, out through the Raven's Gate. The guard will have changed at mid-day and there should be no reason for those on duty now to doubt that their predecessors questioned Chert closely before letting him and his young charge into the inner keep.

"What did you mean about the owl?" Chert asks as they make their way down the steps.

"What owl?"

"You asked that man where the owl was, the owl that had been in his room."

Flint shrugs. His legs are longer than Chert's, and he does not need to look down at the steps, so he is watching the afternoon sky. "I don't know." He frowns, staring at something above him. The morning's clouds have passed. Chert can see nothing but a sliver of moon white as a seashell, hanging in the blue sky. "He had stars on his walls."

Chert recalls the tapestries covered with jeweled constellations. "He did, yes."

"The Leaf, the Singers, the White Root — I know a song about them." He thinks, his frown deepening. "I can't remember it."

"The Leaf . . .?" Chert is puzzled. "The White Root? What are you talking about?"

"The stars — don't you know their names?" Flint has reached the cobblestones at the base of the steps and is walking faster, so that Chert, still letting himself carefully down the tall steps, can barely make out what he says. "There's the Honeycomb and the Waterfall . . . but I can't remember the rest." He stops and turns. His face beneath the shock of almost white hair is full of sad confusion, so that he looks like a little old man. "I can't remember."

Chert catches up to him, out of breath and troubled. "I've never heard those names before. The Honeycomb? Where did you learn that, boy?"

Flint is walking again. "I used to know a song about the stars. I know one about the moon, too." He hums, a snatch of melody that Chert can barely make out, but whose mournful sweetness makes the hairs lift on the back of his neck. "I can't remember the words," Flint says. "But they tell about how the moon came down to find the arrows he had shot at the stars . . ."

"But the moon's a woman — isn't that what all you big folk believe?" A moment of sour amusement at his own words — the boy is his own height, even a little shorter — does not puncture his confusion. "Mesiya, the moon-goddess?"

Flint laughs with a child's pure enjoyment at the foolishness of adults. "No, he's the sun's little brother. Everyone knows that."

He skips ahead, enjoying the excitement of a street full of people and interesting sights, so that Chert has to hurry to catch up with him again, certain that something has just happened — something important. But he cannot for the life of him imagine what it might be.