Shadowplay

it had seemed, but of something that lurked in the depths below them. "Do I trespass by asking?"

"Trespass?" Chaven shook his head. "After saving my life and… taking me into your home, kind friend, you ask that? No, let me… catch my wind again… and 1 will tell you." After a few moments of labored breath he began. "You know 1 come from Ulos in the south. Did you know my fam¬ily, the Makari, were rich?"

"I know only what you've told me." Chert tried to look patient, but he could not help thinking of Opal waiting at home, saddled with the painful burden of a child who had become a stranger. Already much of this morn¬ing had slipped away like sand ru

"They were-and may still be, for all I know. I broke with them years ago when they began to take gold from Parnad, the old autarch of Xis."

Chert knew little about any of the autarchs, living or dead, but he tried to look as though he routinely discussed such things with other worldly folk. "Ah," he said. "Yes, of course."

"I grew up in Falopetris, in a house overlooking the Hesperian Ocean, atop a great stone cliff riddled with tu

Chert, who knew that the honeycombed fastness of Midlan's Mount was not merely the chief dwelling, but the actual birthplace of his race, that the Salt Pool had seen the very creation of the Funderling people, felt a mo¬ment of irritation to have it compared to the paltry tu

Now it was Chaven who looked a little impatient. "I'm certain. In any case, when I was small my brothers and I played in the caves-not deeply, because even my brothers knew that was too dangerous, but in the outer caverns on the cliff below our house that looked out over the sea. Pre¬tended we were Vuttish sea-ravers and such, or that we ma

"It was on such a day that my older brothers grew angry with me for something I ca

the entrance. My brothers and my sister Zamira went back up ahead of me. but took the ladder with them.

"At first I thought they would return any moment-I had scarcely live or six years, and could not imagine that anything else could happen. And in fact they probably would have come back once they had frightened me a little, but the younger of my brothers, Niram, fell from the trail higher up onto some rocks and broke his leg so badly that the bone jutted from the skin. He never walked again without a limp, even after it healed. In any case, they managed to lift him back to the trail and carry him home, but in their terror, and the subsequent hurry to bring a surgeon from the town, no one thought about me.

"I will not bore you with my every dreadful moment," Chaven said, as if fearing the other man's impatience, although that had faded now as Chert considered the horror of a child in such a situation, thought of Flint just days ago, alone in the depths, going through things he and Opal could never know. Chert shuddered.

"Enough to say that I heard screaming and shouting from the hillside overhead," Chaven continued, "and thought they were trying to frighten me-and that it was succeeding. Then there was silence for so long that I at last stopped believing it was a trick. I became certain they had forgotten me in truth, or that they had fallen to their deaths, or been attacked by cata¬mounts or bears. I cried and cried, as any child would, but at last the bar¬rel was empty-I had no tears left.

"I do not remember much of what happened next. I must have found the hole at the back of the cave and wandered in, although I do not re¬member doing so. I dimly recall lights, or a dream of lights, and voices, but all that I can know for certain is that when my father and the servants came for me, bearing torches because it was hours after nightfall, they found me curled in a smaller, deeper cave whose entrance we had never found in all the times we had played there. My father subsequently had that i

It was hard to imagine feeling stone over your head as oppressive instead of sheltering-how much less secure to stand in some wide open space

Willi no refuge, no place to hide from enemies or angry gods! lint Chert did his best to understand."Would you like to go back, then?"

"No." Chaven stood,still trembling,but with a resolution on his face that looked a little like anger. "No, 1 ca

As he paused to drop a fresh piece of coral stone into the saltwater of the lantern Chert could not help thinking of his last two journeys through these tu

"And the stone, Flint's stone, was the thing that killed a prince…" Chert said half-aloud as he hurried to catch up to physician. Even after all the other things that had happened to him in the last days, he still found it hard to believe-found Chaven's entire story nearly impossible to grasp. He, Chert Blue Quartz, had carried that stone in his own hand!

Chaven, walking grimly ahead, did not seem to have heard him.

"If I had put that what-was-it-called stone in my own mouth," Chert said, louder this time, "would I have turned into a demon, too? Or did I have to say some magical words?"

"What?" Chaven seemed lost in a kind of dream, one that did not eas¬ily let go. "The kulikos stone? No, not unless you knew the spell that gave it life and power, and that would have needed more than words."

"More than words?"

"Such old wisdom, that men call magic, does not work like a door lock that any man can open if he has the key. Those among your people who work crystals and gems, do they simply grab a stone and strike it and it falls into shape, or is there more to the skill than that?"

"More, of course. Years of training, and still often a stone shatters."

"So it would be even if you held the kulikos in your hand right now and

1 told you the ancient words. You could say them a hundred times in.a hun-dred ways and it would remain nothing but a lump of cold stone in your fingers. The old arts require training, learning, sacrifice-and even so, the cost is often greater than the reward…" He trailed off. When lie spoke again his voice shook. "Sometimes the cost is terrible."