CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The lower levels of the Armory made less use of well-groomed natural caves and passages. Carefully mined tunnels with doglegs led past clusters of rooms; narrow black lines of murder slits marked both the ceiling and walls; empty recesses marked where great doors or small portcullises had been before their wood had crumbled to dust.
Shortly after their path leveled off, they came upon a wide octagonal room with dark tunnels running into every wall, as if the much marred center was sending them out like the rays of a black star.
“What is this place?” murmured Aleasha absently.
“Stores marshalling chamber,” Druadaen answered.
She stared at him. “I know what each of those words mean, but I don’t understand how this room would serve that need.”
“I know, I know!” the young woman almost squealed.
“Yefri,” the mother remonstrated gently, “do not interrupt our gues—visitor.”
Noting the implicit distinction the mother had just made between him being a “visitor” rather than a “guest,” he turned toward Yefri. “Actually, I’d like very much if you’d tell me.”
“Yes? Well, then… yes! It’s like a mine. There used to be rails on the floor. And, and there were little wagons with wheels that fit over them. And so, when the soldiers had to quickly move something from one place to another, they would put it in the wagons and roll them to where it was needed.” She looked eagerly in his face, her eyes level with his, her ears quivering with the sheer joy of telling yet another story to the strangers. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Druadaen nodded. “I certainly think that’s how this room was used,” he said with a smile. “At least, that’s what I’ve seen in the forts with which I am familiar.”
“And where would those forts be, visitor?” asked a very deep and utterly impassive voice from one of the tunnels.
“In a land not known on this side of the Shun.” Which was technically true.
An abomination—no; a Changeling—as large and broad as the one he’d fought the day he’d emerged from the darkness. The man was perfectly formed—formidably muscled and well over seven feet in height—except for a second, smaller head attached at the juncture of its neck and shoulder. “Your answer is not an answer,” the normal, and quite handsome head, declared. “It is an evasion.”
“Well, then, have you ever heard of Dunarra? Or Corrovane? Or perhaps Connæar?”
The Changeling—for it was unclear whether he would be characterized as Touched or Untouched—frowned. “I do not know these names.”
“Well, if you know the Godbarrows, you’ll know the names I tell you now,” Aleasha flared impatiently. “Hudushap, Komkik, Peffem, Srimshyr—”
The big Changeling had been nodding somberly until the last town name; he flung up his hand, palm out to stop her. “You will come with me.” He turned and bowed toward the mother. “Thank you, Lamla. And you, Yefri. I shall escort them from here.”
They both bowed back and said, almost in unison, “Yes, Steward.” Both turned smiles on the two visitors and disappeared back into the tunnel from which they had all emerged.
The big Changeling waited for almost a full minute after their footsteps faded into silence. Probably familiar with Yefri’s acute hearing, Druadaen guessed as the small head alternatively lolled, blinked, yawned into what seemed like a spasm, and fell quiet. “I am Steward,” the normal head announced. “Who are you, how do you know to ask for Ancrushav in this place, and what is your business here?”
Druadaen watched the smaller, wizened head as Aleasha provided Steward with the required information; it rose up when it heard a voice other than that of the normal head, eyes half-lidded as if it were meditating like a Basakayn spiritualist.
“So, you have delivered your message,” Steward said after Aleasha had finished. “You may depart in safety. We shall mark you with the scent of Change-friends. Even the ungovernable who roam the Armory’s peripheries will not pursue or harm you.”
“Neeshu made it plain that we were to speak to Ancrushav directly.”
“What can you tell him that you have not already told me?”
“That isn’t really the question, is it?” she bristled. “Perhaps it is because he would wish to ask questions that you can’t anticipate.”
Steward’s considerable brow lowered. “Do you suggest I am simple?”
“I suggest that even a trusted Child might not know every thought of its… er, parent.”
“We do not call him that.”
“Steward,” Druadaen put in, sensing that the tension between the two was rising rather than easing, “I might be the cause of Neeshu’s insistence that we see him. She knew I was not from this side of the Shun. Perhaps she foresaw that would be meaningful to Ancrushav precisely because I come from afar. Even he himself could hardly know what questions he might wish to ask of me until he meets me.”
Steward looked suspiciously from one visitor to the other. “It may be as you say. Follow me. Do not fall behind. There are workspawn in this area. They are extremely small but extremely dangerous. They will not accost you so long as you remain within a few feet of me. If you stray further, I cannot answer for what might happen. Let us go.”
They followed the tunnel to its apparent end… where, at a sign from Steward, a trapdoor opened and a ramp was lowered. What appeared to be the ceiling was apparently a light molding on the back of a wooden walkway. Even as they ascended, the ramp was already being raised back into place. They stood in darkness for a few moments before more yellow-amber lamps began to glow, revealing an extremely well-preserved chamber with many connecting rooms and corridors running off in several directions.
As they made their way to the smallest of the openings, they passed a wide arch that opened into a brightly lit great hall. Half a dozen Untouched were holding bowls near a much larger and hideously deformed Changeling that, despite its perverse amalgam of tentacles and animal limbs and sense organs, was also Untouched. As he watched, two of the attendants with filled bowls withdrew and two new ones—apparently human women—approached to take their place. Druadaen trailed to a stop, trying to make sense of what was obviously some kind of ritual.
“Do not fall behind,” Steward warned, just as two cockroach-sized creatures sped out toward them, eye-stalks sweeping from side to side.
Druadaen glanced at the small, intent guardians of whatever was transpiring within. They were an eye-gouging mix of reptile and insect. “I do not understand what is happening in the great hall.”
“It is not necessary that you do.”
“Still,” Druadaen said calmly, “I would greatly appreciate anything you might tell us about it. I did not think that ab—Changelings observed any religious rites.”
“We do not.” Steward sounded both annoyed and exasperated. “But some insist on gilding mundane activities with divine significance.” He sighed; the smaller head wheezed as he did. “What you see therein is the collection rite for creating philters of affinity.”
Aleasha glanced over Druadaen’s shoulder. “It looks more like they are draining the big one’s wounds.”
Steward nodded. “The weeping from those sores is the source of the philters.”
Druadaen watched as two of the Untouched genuflected before bringing forward broad catch basins of copper to collect what dripped from the large Changeling. By focusing on the details of the gatherers’ robes and muttered rites, he managed to ignore feeling queasy.
Aleasha did not seem similarly affected. “It is related to the way we wyldwyrds make our philters. Many of a body’s humours are rich in that which shapes the nature of that species… but I have never seen it gathered from wounds.”
Steward frowned. “Those are not wounds; they are permanent eruptions that cannot heal.” In answer to their curious looks, he explained, “It is common when there are many—and conflicting—differences in a Changeling. A Weeper’s body is always at war with itself.” He nodded at the lesions on the Untouched’s broad, half-scaled back. “Those are the constant battlegrounds between its many natures. Come away. We are expected.”
Druadaen had to watch his step to avoid crushing the small guardians underfoot. “And what are these?”
“Those are the workspawn of which I warned you.”
Aleasha raised an eyebrow. “And what work do they perform?”
“Anything that their Spawner requires.”
“Spawner?”
Steward entered the corridor toward which they’d been heading. “Spawners are akin to Weepers: their changes are many and profound. But their bodies resolve the conflicts between their unharmonious parts by spawning small creatures that conform to one or another of their natures more than the others.”
“And they… they understand the instructions of their Spawner?”
As they walked, the corridor’s lights glowed to life before them; those behind faded in their wake. “As I understand it—and I don’t, really—the Spawner’s desires are always known to its spawn. It is akin to the way you make your desires known to the birds that are awaiting your return outside. But it does not require thought; the action of spawn is like a reflex of the Spawner, but at a distance from its body.” Steward’s voice became a grumble. “And as with the Weepers, the Spawners are called the Holy Accursed of Ancrushav. And he tolerates it, although he hates such terms.”
“Why?” asked Druadaen.
“As Yefri may have already implied, Ancrushav takes a dim view of equating physical phenomena with the will or the acts of gods.”
“I like him already,” Aleasha muttered.
“We shall see.”
A light glowed at the end of a long corridor without any doors or chambers communicating with it. Steward’s pace did not slow as he warned them, “When you meet Ancrushav, be forthright. If you do not understand what you see, ask.”
“What do you mean?” Aleasha almost whispered. “Are his changes very great?”
Steward looked at her. “Ancrushav is not a Changeling.”
Druadaen frowned. “What is he then?”
“There are many names for his kind. But we use the term that is said to come from The Maw itself. He is a serratus.”
“And what is a serratus?” And what is The Maw?
“Again, you shall see. Very soon. You may ask a final question of me.”
Aleasha just stared at the well-lit opening ahead.
Druadaen glanced at their guide. “I have not been able to discern if Steward is your title or your name.”
“It is both. I am Steward.”
“Only that?”
The big Changeling shrugged. “Only that. I need no name other than that which announces what I am and what I do.”
Aleasha glanced at him from the other side. “I suspect you are more than a guide for visitors, though.”
“You are correct.”
“Well, what else do you do?”
“Whatever else Ancrushav requires. In this case, it will be to remember everything that is said in your meeting with him.” At those words, the shriveled head seemed to waken, eyes searching the way a blind man’s do when his name is called.
“That must be very difficult,” Druadaen observed.
“Difficult? I cannot prevent it, even if I wished to.”
“You never find it a… a great weight upon your mind, having to remember every conversation you hear?”
Steward seemed to reflect for a moment. “No. But sometimes, it is a great weight upon my heart that I cannot forget some of them.” He had stopped just beyond the threshold of the lit chamber.
Peering in, Druadaen found it reminiscent of a garrison’s ready room. There were hooks on the wall, rough chairs facing inward from the walls, and the smell of oils used upon blade and leather, respectively.
“He is waiting,” Steward said. “You are to enter first.”