“An’ what of this rumor I’ve heard,” he asked, as gently as one could ask such a thing, “concernin’ your da’ an’ this Widow on the First Deep that was killed? Did you – or your sister – ever meet her?”

  Sellymanjes looked quickly away from him, and her wide mouth tightened to a thin line. “A woman of the First Deep?” She collected herself swiftly after that first incredulous reaction and added, “No. Never. And ‘twas all lies and rumor, to get money out of my father. Her family are tunnel-rats.”

  He was doin’ her, all right, reflected John, returning to the hall where the Steward and the Wise Ones awaited him. But why come after him two years later, if the affair was over? Why come after his daughter?

  Krastochilliam’s account added little to what Sevacandrozani had told him already. The dim night-lights that had burned in his chamber had been doused, when he was jerked from his slumber by the splintering of the door-bolt. He had heard the rustle of something passing close to him, following the circle of protective sigils Zarbochedronn had drawn around the bed. “Ere I slept, I saw them,” he whispered, his huge orange eyes shifting with dread. “Like a chain of dim light, right around the bed. They were gone, snuffed out, as the lamps had been. I could smell it, hear the drip of water—”

  “Water?”

  “It came through the gardens,” explained Brabishanjo. “Water falls there perpetually, and trickles across the paths. Puddles and dribbles of water were all around the Lady Anathagantes’s body, and that of the porter.”

  John opened his mouth to ask, again, an obvious question, but again his eyes went to the faces of the Wise Ones – flat-nosed, thick, pop-eyed in their long swirls of beard and hair – and he said only, “Oh, aye? And the servants heard nothing? Nor you ladies?”

  The two daughters shook their heads. John was conscious, again, of the glances that the Wise Ones traded behind his back. Of the sweet, treble whisper in their own tongues that they exchanged as Zarbochedronn took him by the elbow and led him down the corridor to Krastochilliam’s chamber, Captain Brabishanjo following behind.

  *

  The bedchamber itself told him little that he hadn’t learned at the house of the widow Vashwedtha. The bed stood in the midst of the room; the rugs had all been rolled back, so that sigils of protection could be drawn around it on the wooden floor. This floor – like the rest of the house – was raised a little above the underlying stone for warmth, and John felt the comforting whisper of heated air rising through the oak planks from the hypocaust beneath.

  “Can I get into the hypocaust, then?” he asked, a little surprised that gnomes would be uncomfortable in the damp cold beneath the earth.

  “I see no need for thee to do so,” returned the Blue-Haired One. “Its only entrance is outside the house, and the thing undoubtedly entered the chamber through the door.” He nodded toward the broken door-bolt, white oak, and as thick as John’s thumb. “As thou canst see,” he went on, pointing to the glass-smooth boards, “water dribbled all across the spell-circle here, so that the signs themselves, which no gnome nor human should have been able to cross, were eaten away. ‘Twas as if this thing leached power from them. And from me,” he added quietly, and crossed to one of the lamps, a wick set in a sort of oil that had been drawn from the rocks, rather than the candles one found in the dwellings of humankind. He stood for a moment, staring at the flame.

  It snuffed to nothing. A thin line of white smoke curled into the soft-glimmering gloom of the lamplit chamber.

  Zarbochedronn stared at the wick for (John counted) the count of seventy, before a pinprick of flame sparked to life at its tip. The old gnome relaxed a little, seemingly comforted by this proof that his powers were slowly returning.

  “What’s this sound like to you, then?” John lowered his voice, and cast a quick glance toward the door, outside of which the Captain stood guard. “Anythin’ familiar about it?” And I’d better not be askin’ the wrong person about this…

  “I think—” The Wise One’s azure brows knit as he sifted through the memory of all the names, all the spells, all the lore that the mageborn must study, to harness and channel their powers. “There are things about it…”

  John touched his lips for silence, opened the door for a moment and examined the vestibule side of it. Unmarked, as if pressure had been applied with steady power rather than a sharp blow. The small vestibule contained little more than a chair and a shelf of books, and the rugs had been turned back here as well. Sigils of protection showed in the corners, where they hadn’t been wiped away.

  “Was there water in here, too?”

  “Aye, a little,” replied Captain Brabishanjo. “Servants wiped down the floors this morning, while word was sent to my lord king.”

  “Tracks, or just dribbles?”

  The guard’s yellow eyes narrowed with thought, and he said, “Drips only. Smeared, like as if a garment had been dragged over them.”

  John thanked him, and closed the door again, and made a note of this, as he had of Sellymanjes’s tale, and of what he’d found in that half-stripped nursery in the First Deep.

  As he put the notes away, Zarbochedronn spoke, his voice doubtful: “’Twas not the lore of my master, Dragonsbane, nor that which I have pursued. Yet something someone said to me, years ago now… I will ask among the Wise—”

  “I’d really rather you didn’t do that.” John laid a hand on the puffed and padded shoulder, as the gnome would have passed him to the door. “I look at it this way,” he explained. “The Lady Anathagantes, an’ her father’s – friend, or former friend – an’ whoever else happened to get in this thing’s way, were killed by somethin’ summoned up by a mage.” He expected the Head of the Council of the Wise One’s to snap a denial, but Zarbochedronn said nothing, though his sapphire eyes burned with some unspoken thought.

  “Now, either one of the Wise Ones had a down on these ladies – an’ it sounds like, Krastochilliam besides, because the thing’s come back here twice – or somebody else who hated ‘em hired one of your lot to do their dirty work for ‘em. In either case, late as it is – an’ it must be long after midnight – I’m goin’ to be spendin’ the night here in the Deep. If any one of ‘em out there—” He nodded in the direction of the hall where the Wise Ones sat with the Steward and his daughters, “—even starts to think I’m askin’ questions like this… it’s my life. An’ maybe yours, if it still takes you seventy seconds to light a candle… Always assumin’,” he added quietly, “that you ain’t lyin’ about all this, an’ it’s really you.”

  Zarbochedronn’s thick moustaches lifted a little with his wry smile. “It isn’t me,” he said.

  “That’s a load off me mind,” said John, expressionless, which made the gnome’s smile widen.

  *

  As Zarbochedronn had said, the only way into the hypocaust was from outside. John crawled on his elbows past the furnace and the wood-stores, to the place where slivers of lamplight, shining through the floor-boards above him, marked where the bedroom rugs had been taken up. There was water down there, which had dripped through the floor the previous night, and it held no smell of demons. Only a cold, sour pong, almost metallic, like very deep water which has not stirred in a thousand years.

  He soaked a corner of his shawl in it – with mental apologies to the Lady Periozames, whose property it was – and crawled forth again dirty and covered with soot, to follow Zarbochedronn and the Captain once more into the stone garden, to see the place where the porter had been found. And indeed, John observed, there were a dozen streams trickling down among the pools and craters, through which the night attacker could have walked.

  But none smelled like the water he’d found beneath the house.

  Taking the Wise One a little aside, he offered him the wet silk to sniff, and asked quietly, “Whatever it is, it comes up from deep water. I’m guessin’ it doesn’t materialize fully ‘til it’s near its prey. Leastwise, the rugs in the corridor, an’ in that parlor that opens into the garden, weren’t wet, nor the rugs anywhere in Vashweda’s house, except in the room where she was killed. The blood-stains on the floor of that room were thin – watered – where they’d soaked through the rugs. It couldn’t’ve come up from that pool in the garden, could it?” He nodded toward the black well, beside which the Lady Anathagantes had been found. “It looks gie bottomless.”

  “Nay. A mark of some kind – a circle of summoning, and of protection – must needs have been writ there, to call forth a wight from deep water.” He frowned again, berry-blue eyes gazing into distance, as if his mind chased a thought. Then he lost it, and shook his head. “E’en were the marks scrubbed out, trace of the magic would remain, and Anathagantes would have felt them, when she passed by the place.”

  “Felt them?”

  The old gnome nodded. “Aye, Dragonsbane, the Lady Anathagantes was a pupil of the Lady Taseldwyn. Had she… had this not befallen—” His heavy brow creased with a weary grief. “—I think she would have grown to a mage of considerable skill. Myself, I think ‘tis why Taseldwyn feared that this creature was of the Hellspawn. Anathagantes had power enough, even with but six months’ tutelage, to turn aside such a thing as a fetch or a grue. She may even have feared ‘twas as you said – that the Lady was killed by one of the Wise.”

  He sighed heavily. “As you have drawn me to fear that you are right. Yet I cannot believe one of the Wise would have stooped to take payment—”

  From everything he had learned of gnomes, John could believe it – easily. It surprised him, in fact, to hear one of that treasure-hoarding people lament the almost-universal trait of gnomish thirst for wealth. But he said, “Payment isn’t the only reason someone’d go against their teachin’ – their deepest instincts, even. There’s blackmail, an’ jealousy, an’ the conviction that your actions are right.”

  He glanced back in the direction of the house, where the lamps were being put out. Witchlight flickered around its doors, glittering in the crystals that sprinkled those huge columns of fluted limestone, as if the sulfur-hued rock had been sprinkled with salt.

  “An’ though I can’t see what connection Anathagantes would’ve had with this Vashwedtha bird – other’n the rumors about her father – Would any of the Wise have seen her as a threat? Or seen her father, or the widow? Or,” he went on, as the gnome mage shook his head, “would any of the Wise have seen Taseldwyn as a threat?”

  “Ridiculous!”

  Knowing the gnome-witch’s kindly nature, John completely agreed, but persisted. “You know it’s nonsense, and I know it – but is there jealousy within the Wise? Some hatred there that’d make her, an’ her pupil, targets?”

  “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “You rule a couple of villages in the middle of nowhere for awhile, if you want to hear absurd things,” remarked John wryly. “I take it any one of the Wise would be able to summon… something…”

  “The Lady Taseldwyn was the only one who made a great study of wights,” replied Zarbochedronn slowly. “There are other creatures in the dark places of the world – shuggoths, and skelks, and the great cave-rats that swim in the underwater pools – and these can be called forth by means of spells.” Again, he shook his head, and the distant witch-light sparkled in the gold ornaments of his beard. “Yet ‘tis clear the creature can pass through spells of protection, and as you said, left no water save when near its prey. There are several among the Wise…”

  He, too, looked back toward the house. Then he clapped John firmly on the arm, and said, “Fear not. Of this I shall not speak; not to them, not to any. You sleep here tonight, Dragonsbane?”

  “They’ve put me up in that guest-house on the other side of the garden.” John gestured in the direction of the little structure, barely to be seen among the pillars and the glistening hedges of helicite. “An’ I hope they’ve left me somethin’ to eat there, since I didn’t get any dinner nor lunch either… You wouldn’t happen to know who’ll get old Krasto’s property, an’ his shares in the North Mines an’ all that, if anythin’ should happen to him, would you?”

  “I know not,” said the gnome. “By custom, unless a gnome will it otherwise by written testament, property is divided, with half going to wife or husband outright, and the other half divided amongst the family. Yet many there are, who dispose of their goods differently, when widowed, or re-married, or to reward those not of their blood who have done them service.”

  “Y’wouldn’t know if Krasto’s made this kind of disposition to Nezbardina, would you?”

  The blue eyes glinted. “I know not. Yet t’would not surprise me, did he leave her the whole of his goods. The first husband of Nezbardina the Beautiful did so, though by that time – the way she wastes riches – ‘twas little enough left of his goods, they say. Her beauty is as a spell, laid on all who look upon her.”

  “Where is she, then?” inquired John. “An’ more to the point, where was she last night?”

  “She is in Deeping. She fled there when the Lady Anathagantes was killed, and dwells in the house of her brother there. In the morning she shall be sent for.

  And with any luck, reflected John, as he climbed the steep windings of the path that led to the little guest-house, Jen’ll be here tomorrow…

  An’ I’ll be gie curious to see what Nezbardina the Beautiful’s got to say for herself.

  The night, he guessed, was far advanced. In the great black skies above Nast Wall, the waxing moon would be sinking. Most of the lamps in the garden had gone out, and only a thread of gold shone ahead of him, where the guest-house stood on the far side of the pool. Looking back, he could see the witch-light around the Steward’s house, bobbing away in the direction of the great artery-tunnel that led to the Third Deep. Beyond that, in the utter, terrifying blackness of the great cavern, tiny spots of firefly light crawled around the cluster of cottages where the Steward’s servants lived.

  The silence was absolute, and frightening. When a cat slipped by, round gold eyes flashing in the reflected gleam, John nearly jumped, though the next instant he wondered, What do they eat down here?

  Fish in the pools?

  Well, the gnomes bring down food from the surface, an’ where there’s food, there’s bound to be rats an’ mice…

  Movement to his left, and his instincts told him this wasn’t a cat. Had he not been gazing for a long time into darkness, John didn’t think he’d have seen anything at all. A flicker of reflected light from the guest-house door caught threads of pale gold, and a moment later he saw her. Tiny, like all the gnomes, but beautiful; a fragile feminine shape wrapped in wraith-like gray, hair like tumbled electrum. Delicate features and a mouth like a rosebud. Only her hands, clutching the whispering gray garment around the slender shoulders, betrayed kinship with the gnomes by their size, but even these were exquisitely shaped, long and white as lacemakers’ spindles.

  Without the slightest doubt who he was looking at, John moved closer, keeping behind the crystal hedge of the helicites. But his despite all his care, his foot must have crunched the gravel, for she turned dark eyes upon him. Stepping swiftly from her path she climbed towards him, holding out her hand, and her dark eyes were sweet as unremembered dreams.

  Knowing there was nothing for it, John stepped into the open: “Lookin’ for someone, luv?”

  She hesitated, a slight pucker tugging butterfly-wing brows. Then she advanced, and stretched out her hand.

  The sudden flash of lantern-light from the direction of the house made the crystal straws of the hedge sparkle like frost. Swift as a startled deer she turned and fled. “Here!” called out John, and sprang after her. He caught sight of that apricot cloud of curls far up among the rocks, and scrambled in her wake, boots slipping in the thousand trickles of springs that threaded among the knobby clusters of cave-coral. She was light, and must have known the ground well, for he saw no mark of her feet. But the only possible path up the sharp slope of the cavern side ended in a black little rift nearly hidden among the twisting folds of an alabaster curtain.

  A breath of cold brought him the whisper of metallic sourness, as of deep water that has never stirred.

  The topaz gleam shone far down behind him among the columns of the Steward’s garden; he thought he made out the stooped form of Zarbochedronn. Scrambling, sliding, skidding again in those thousand streams, John was dripping wet and slightly bloody-handed from scrapes and falls when he finally reached the place again.

  “What was’t?” asked the Wise One. “Seest thou aught?”

  John opened his mouth to reply – surely there couldn’t have been two gnome ladies that beautiful – then closed it. Though he was inclined to trust Zarbochedronn, he remembered the old gnome’s disdain for the luckless widow Vashwedtha, and the sour glint in his eyes when he’d spoken of the Beautiful One.

  And having, as he’d said, spent years governing the small community of Winterlands villages, he knew the deadly effects of rumor and gossip.

  So he said only, “I thought there was somethin’ up there, but found no trace of anythin’. Where’s that little tunnel up there go, then?”

  “Tunnel?” The old gnome shook his head. “I know of no tunnel. But in that direction lieth the North Mine – the ancient diggings, long disused. Perchance thou didst see one of the mine’s ventilation shafts?”

  “Perhance,” said John thoughtfully. And then, with a glance at the witchlight that still glowed halfway along the way that led to the Third Deep, “You came back lookin’ for me, m’lord?”

  “Aye.” Zarbochedronn set down his lantern. At the reminder that the old gnome was still obviously unable to summon witchlight – and must be as exhausted as John was himself – John guided him to a seat carved of the cream-yellow limestone at the side of the path, and sat beside him.

 

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