Shadowplay

Chert put a hand on his shoulder. "We are coming near to the bottom of your house. We should go quietly now. If they have not found the lower door they might still hear us through the walls and come looking for what makes the noise."

Chaven nodded. He looked drawn and frightened, as though after telling the story of his childhood terror he had never managed to shake it off again.

Two more rough-hewn corridors and they stood in front of the door, which was as strange a sight as ever in this empty, untraveled place, its hard¬woods and bronze fittings polished so that even the dim coral light raised a gleam. Chert suddenly wanted to ask whether Chaven had actually stepped out into the passage from time to time to clean the thing, since none of his servants had known of its existence, but he had to be quiet now until they learned who or what was on the other side.

Chert stared at the featureless door. It had no handle or latch or even keyhole on this side, nothing but the bellpull-and clearly they were not going to use that.

The physician tugged at his sleeve to get his attention, then made a strange gesture that the Funderling did not immediately understand. Chaven did it again, waving his bandaged fingers with increasing impatience until Chert realized that Chaven wanted him to turn around-that there was something the bigger man did not want him to see. It was impossible not to feel angered after all they had both been through, after he and Opal had given Chaven the sanctuary of their home and nursed him back to health, but now was not the time to argue. Chert turned his back on the door.

A quiet hiss as of something heavy sliding was followed by the chink of a lifting latch; a moment later he felt Chaven s touch on his shoulder. The door was open, spilling a widening sliver of light out into their passageway. Chaven leaned close, urgency on his face-he looked like a starving man who smelled food but did not yet know what he must do to get it. Chert held his breath, listening.

At last Chaven straightened up and nodded, then slipped through the open doorway. Chert hurried down the stone corridor after him holding

the fading coral lantern. The physician paused in front of a hanging so bleached by age and dotted with mildew that the scene embroidered on it had become invisible, a thing weirdly out of place in such a damp, win-dowless, almost unvisited spot. For a moment Chaven hesitated, his burned lingers hovering in midair as though he would once again ask Chert to turn around, but then impatience got the best of him and he pulled back the hanging and ducked beneath it, making a lump under the ancient fab¬ric. A moment later the lump disappeared as if the physician had simply vanished.

Despite a superstitious chill at the back of his neck, Chert was about to investigate, but something else caught his attention. He made his way as silently as he could down the corridor and past the hanging to the base of the stairs. He muffled his lantern, dropping the passageway into near-darkness as he stood, listening.

Voices, coming from somewhere upstairs-were Chaven's servants keep¬ing the up house in his absence? Somehow Chaven did not think so.

A disembodied moan, quiet but still piercing, made Chert jump. He looked around wildly but the corridor was still empty. He hurried back to the hanging and pulled it aside to discover a hidden door, ajar. The noise came again, louder, the muffled wail of a lost soul, and Chert summoned up his courage and pushed the door open.

Chaven lay in the middle of the floor, writhing as though he had been stabbed, surrounded by rumpled lengths of cloth. Chert ran to him, turned him over, but could find no wound.

"Ruined…!" the physician groaned. Though his voice was quiet, it seemed loud as a shout to Chert. "Ruined! They have taken it…!"

"Quiet," the Funderling hissed at him. "There is someone upstairs!"

"They have it!" Chaven sat up, wild-eyed, and began to struggle in Chert's grasp like a man who had seen his only child stolen from his arms. "We must stop them!"

"Shut your mouth or you will get us killed," Chert whispered harshly clinging on to the much larger man as tightly as he could. "It might be the entire royal guard, looking for you."

"But they have stolen it… I am destroyed…!" Chaven was actually weeping. Chert could not believe what he saw, the change that had turned this man he had long known and respected into a mad child.

"Stole what? What are you saying?"

"We must listen… We must hear them." Chaven managed to throw the

funderling off, but his look had changed from sheer madness to something more sly. He crawled across the room before Chert could get his legs under himself; a moment later he had snaked out under the faded hanging and into the corridor. Chert hurried after him.

The physician had stopped at the stairwell. He touched his lips to enjoin the Funderling to silence-an u

And me? Chert could not help thinking. If they kill Chaven, the royal physi¬cian, what will they do with a mere Funderling who is his accomplice? The only ques¬tion will be whether anyone ever learns of my death. Ah, my dear old Opal, you were right after all-/ should have learned to stay at home and tend my own fungus.

He took a deep breath to try to slow his beating heart. Perhaps it was only Chaven's own servants after all. Perhaps…

"I promise you, Lord Tolly, there is nothing else here of value at all." The reedy voice wafted down the stairwell, close enough to keep Chert stock-still, holding the last breath he took as if it must last him forever. To his horror, he saw Chaven's eyes go wide with that mindless, inexplicable rage he had shown earlier, even saw the physician make a twitching move toward the staircase itself. Chert shot out his hand and clung as if his fingers were curled on scaffolding while he dangled over a deadly drop.

The other's voice was lazy, but with a suggestion somehow that it could turn cruel as quick as an adder's strike. "Is that true, brother, or are there things here that you think might not be of value to me, but which you might quite like for yourself?"

Confused, Chert guessed that Hendon Tolly and his brother, the new Duke of Summerfield, stood in the hallway above them. He could not un¬derstand the expression of heedless fury on Chaven's face. Earth Elders, didn't he realize that the Tollys owned not just the castle now but had be¬come the unquestioned rulers of all Southmarch? That with a word these men could have Chaven and Chert ski

"I tell you, Lord, you already have the one piece of true value. I promise that eventually I will winkle out its secrets, but at the moment there is something miss¬ing, some element I have not discovered, and it is not in this house…" The man's thin voice suddenly grew sharp, high-pitched. "Ah, keep that away from me!"

"It is only a cat," said the one he had called Lord Tolly.

"/ hate the things. They are toots of Zmeos. There, it rum away. Good. " When he spoke again his voice had regained its earlier calm. "As I said, there is nothing in this house that will solve the puzzle-I swear that to you, my lord."

"But you will solve it," the other said. "You will."

Pear was in the first one's voice again, not well hidden. "Of course, Lord. Have I not served you well and faithfully for years?"

"I suppose you have. Come, let us lock this place up and you can go hack to your necromancy."

"I think it would be more accurate to call it captromancy, my lord." The speaker had recovered his nerve a bit. Chert was begi