The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 45 - Witch Silver Depths

WITCH-SILVER DEPTHS

*

Harric followed Brolli past smithies full of huge-armed Kwendi smiths, and armories that stunk to the moons of boiling tar. These places they dared not enter lest the smoke reveal their unseen bodies, "like a specter, perfectly detailed," Fink said. They passed courtyards full of Kwendi children racing among the trellises, orchards full of fruit smells and the squawk of birds, and halls full of Kwendi working leather or painting or weaving on looms.

When they passed a kitchen where they smoked what smelled like salmon, Harric's stomach growled again.

"Hush it, kid, you'll give us away."

"I'm starving."

"You're starving? Kid. Look what this has done to my luscious baby fat."

Fink clambered down from Harric's back, and Harric turned to see the imp almost as scrawny and ribby as he'd been when first they met.

Harric gaped. "You've shrunk!"

Fink nodded, wings sagging. In his clawed hands he cradled a tiny round belly the size of a melon—all that was left of his tremendous surplus of souls. "Takes a lot to keep you in the Unseen, kid. Hate to cut this pleasant tour short, but we need to turn back."

Harric glanced after Brolli to be sure the ambassador was still in sight, then looked back the way they'd come. "Do you think you could remember the way back?"

Fink went very still. "Are you saying you don't know how to get back to the map room?"

"Um, well, it's been a complicated path." His felt his cheeks flush hot. "Sure, I think I know, but...I just figure if we stay with Brolli, then we don't have to risk getting lost; he has to get back before long."

Fink's gaze hardened. "If I get low enough," he said, very slowly. "I'll need to feed off you. You understand?"

Harric's stomach chilled, but he nodded. If he thought he could find his way back through the maze of corridors and courtyards and halls, he would turn back right then. But there was a chance he could get lost and not find the way to the map room before Brolli opened the Gate. More importantly, he wanted to see more—needed to see as much as he could of the Kwendi preparations.

"I understand," Harric said. He motioned for Fink to climb aboard again, and as soon as the imp was set, Harric followed Brolli as he went deeper into what Harric imagined must be a largely unpopulated city.

#

Brolli picked up his pace, and his path took them truly underground. When Harric guessed they must be several floors below the surface, they entered a set of tall, thick doors made of the blackest night. Harric stared at them, barely able to see them in the Unseen.

"Witch-silver," Fink hissed. "No presence in the Unseen."

Harric ran a hand along the face of a door. It felt cool and hard and heavy, like solid metal. Like the doors to a treasure vault. His heartbeat quickened, and a wry smile lifted one side of his mouth. "This is it, Fink."

The corridor beyond was just as black in the Unseen, lit only by the essence glow of the wooden trellis. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all of witch-silver. It was like the passage had been carved from a mountain of the stuff, or as if some magic had turned the stone to the mystical metal. If it weren't for the trellis, it would be like looking into the void they'd traversed in Brolli's Gate.

Harric's gut tightened at the memory, so he kept his eyes on the trellis as he passed through the door. Once inside, he noticed a trace of glowing essence from dust on the walls and floors, and that helped him to keep his feet and bearings.

From then on, doors they encountered were closed and guarded by pairs of guards in special black uniforms and toad hats. These guards did not display the elaborate grimaces that others had for Brolli, and Harric guessed that they were independent of Brolli's direct command. Slipping through these doors was difficult, as the guards closed them after Brolli, so Harric had to stay close on his heels. At the first of these encounters, when the guard started to close the door, Harric had to lunge through, causing him to run into the back of Brolli. Fortunately, Brolli said nothing, assuming perhaps that the guard bumped him.

Their descent ended at the top of a wide ramp at the top of a vast hall of spoke-limb trellises and floors teeming with Kwendi and echoing with voices and racket. The floors and walls here were also of witch-silver, and so totally lightless in the spirit world, but the tables and shelves that crowded the floors were made of wood—as were the lattices of the trellises. And though the tables and shelves were covered with stacks of witch-silver objects like bowls, the wooden furniture cast its strands in the air. Combined with the Kwendi spirit strands, these gave the place enough volume and dimension to stave off memories of the Gate void. Above everything hung four huge globes of black witch-silver, which Harric guessed must glow like lamps in the Seen.

As Brolli paused at the top of the ramp, Harric pressed himself against the wall beside Brolli for a view of the hall.

Fink's talons squeezed tighter at the straps of his pack. "The women," Fink said. "It's the Chimpey women."

Harric looked closer at the bustling Kwendi. Fink was right. Brolli was the only male in the place. Like Kwendi males, the women wore a mixture of furred vests and long vests of their fine, light material, and they wore their hair in masses of long braids. The differences, however, were striking. The timbre of their voices was brighter and clearer, and their faces, without the harshness of the male teeth and whiskers, had a definite softness that was magnified by their large golden eyes. Their braids, too, tended to be finer and longer and arranged in piles or elaborate weaves rather than a simple gathering behind the head. Most surprising, however, was the fact that Kwendi females were as flat-chested as their male counterparts.

Fink tapped Harric's shoulder frantically and pointed into the hall. "What in the white moon is that?"

Something huge and dark moved in front of the glowing wooden pillar of a spoke-limb trellis. Whatever it was had no more essence or spirit to it than the witch-silver, so it all but vanished when it moved past the glowing pillar and over the witch-silver floor. Harric froze, eyes searching the area where it disappeared. It appeared again when it stopped before a wall of shelves, where the essence glow of the wood cast it in perfect silhouette. Shaped vaguely like a Kwendi, it stood twice as high as a man, yet its body was without claw or hair or notable musculature beyond the mere mass and the thickness of its limbs.

"It's a tryst servant," Fink barely breathed the words. "Like Mudwhistle."

"Made of witch-silver?"

"Looks like it," Fink whispered, "but bendy witch-silver. No idea how they do that."

Two smaller forms leapt from the creature onto the shelves. Whether they leapt out of the creature, or had simply been clinging to it, Harric couldn't tell, but they were made of the same essence-less metal. These were shaped like smaller, spidery Kwendi, and easily climbed to the top shelves, where they fetched globes of witch-silver. One of the smaller creatures noticed Brolli and leapt from the shelf into a trellis to swing rung across the hall and up the ramp until it hung by both arms in front of Brolli.

Harric froze and watched as Brolli conversed with it in Kwendi. The creature whirled about and swung back into the depths of the hall.

"These ones can't see us, either," Harric whispered.

Fink's grip on Harric's pack straps was now so tight it began to hurt. The imp's voice was an urgent his in Harric's ear. "This place is a freak show, kid. We have to get out of here."

"We have to wait until Brolli leads us out, Fink. And just look around..." His heartbeat quickened as he scanned the stacks of witch-silver piled about the place. "Look at all this witch-silver, Fink, and the tryst servants. Don't you see? This is where they make their secret magic. This is where you earn out your probation. And we've already got our first secret."

Fink's frightened breaths puffed at Harric's ear. "What secret?"

Harric smiled. "That Kwendi magicians are female."