Now, Bily sat up in his bed, and tried to remember what had happened after he had stumbled through the tunnel. It had been very long and cold and it had hurt to breathe. He had thought he would never be warm again. Then, when he had come out the other end of it, not only was it dark, but there was a thick wet mist that filled the air, so that he had barely been able to see Seshla, right in front of him. His mind had been in a kind of numb stupor, so that he had been unable to take in what she was saying.
Suddenly the she Monk had lifted her head to give a long piercing call and then they had been surrounded by a jostle of she Monks who gaped in astonished wonder at him, and in even greater wonder at the Monster lying unconscious in the travois.
‘Is it the Changebringer?’ one of them had asked Seshla.
‘Is he dead?’ another asked.
‘The Changebringer sleeps,’ Seshla told them. ‘The Great One bit him.’
The other she Monks had nodded sagely and Seshla bid them lift the Monster from the travois and carry him to Ishla. They had obeyed, bearing him along a path that vanished into the mist.
Then Seshla had looked at Bily closely. ‘Perhaps it would be best for you to lie down and rest in my hut. It is close by.’
‘I want to go with the Monster,’ Bily had told her.
Seshla had laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You were very good with the ice maze, Bily. More sure-footed than many of the Monks that attempt it. But you are cold and tired now. You need to rest.’
‘I want to make sure the Monster is safe,’ Bily had insisted stubbornly. He blushed, but Seshla had merely nodded, and set off.
Bily had stumbled after her along the path and over what he thought had been a little bridge. His legs had felt strange, his hands hurt and his hearing had been muffled by the time they reached a white domed hut and went inside.
The Monster had been lying on a low, soft, circular bed, and gathered around him were many she Monks.
From their sizes, Zluty assumed they were all older than Seshla, though none were as big as the he Monks of Stonehouse, save the silver she Monk who seemed to be in charge.
All of them turned to look curiously at Bily when he entered, but only for a moment. Their attention was on the Monster.
They held devices to his head, and suddenly he awoke with a growling yowl.
Lifting his head, he had bared his fangs and hissed at the she Monks, his tail lashing, but Bily had seen that he was too weak to do them any harm.
Bily rushed forward with the dim idea of protecting the Monster, and then he was close, looking into its narrow golden eyes.
‘Oh, Monster, I am so glad you are awake!’ he had whispered.
‘Bily,’ the Monster sighed in his soft velvety voice, seeming all at once to grow calm. Then his eyes closed and his head lolled back.
‘What is wrong with him?’ Bily had demanded fiercely. His eyes had found Seshla’s. ‘You told me the Nightbeast would not hurt him! You said he would wake!’
‘And so he did and so he will again,’ said the silver she Monk in a rough but gentle voice, patting him reassuringly. ‘For now he needs to rest, and there is enough of the Nightbeast’s venom in him to ensure it. But there is more wrong with this Listener than weariness, I think.’ She looked at Seshla. ‘I assume it is the Broken Prince foreseen by the wise ones?’
Seshla nodded. ‘It is the Changebringer. The Great One tracked him. But he was ill when we found him. Bily has been tending him. He is a friend to the Changebringer and a healer, too.’
The other she Monks looked at Bily doubtfully, but the big silver Monk said, ‘Of course he is. Do not take any notice of this silly gaggle of youngling healers. They cannot imagine a he is a healer because we do not have any among us. What is your name, little healer?’
‘I am Bily,’ he had told her, mesmerised.
‘And I am Ishla, but now I think you must go and rest because I can smell that you are near to sickness with exhaustion.’ She turned to Seshla. ‘Rider, what do you mean by pushing this little creature so hard?’ she thundered.
The other healers shrank back, but Seshla only grinned.
‘Keep your fluff on, Oldling,’ she answered. ‘I offered Bily my own bed, but he insisted on seeing his patient. Now, perhaps he will come with me and lie down.’
‘Oldling!’ Ishla snapped, but her eyes were full of laughter. Then the she Monk studied Bily rather as the Nightbeast had done, seeming to look beyond his face and into his mind. Her eyes grew serious, but Bily thought they were very kind eyes for all her shouting.
At last, she patted his head again and said, ‘Go with that uncouth rider, now, little healer. Sleep. Come see me tomorrow when you are properly awake.’
Bily frowned at the little lantern hanging overhead, shedding its soft golden light. It was a round lantern such as the diggers used, and all at once he was certain the diggers that had broken the stone storm machine had come here when they fled North.
He got up. He wanted to go back to the Monster, but he did not know if he could remember the way to the healer’s hut. He wondered where Seshla was. He dimly remembered the she Monk ushering him from the healer’s hut and along damp and slippery paths through the thick mist, before bidding him crawl through a tunnel into her round, windowless white hut. He remembered falling onto a circular bed, and then nothing but warm, dark oblivion. Until the ice maze dream.
He had the vague memory that Seshla had said she would go and see that the Great One had arrived safely. He had offered to go with her but she insisted he rest because on the morrow he might be summoned by the wise ones and he would need all of his wits about him for that.
Bily thought uneasily of those final words, wondering if there had not been a hint of threat in them. He made up his mind to go outside to see what he could see. He felt very rested, which meant he had slept for a long time, so surely the mist had gone. He was terribly hungry, too, since he had eaten almost nothing since the Nightbeast had taken them, just the ball of dough stuff Seshla had given him.
He crawled out into the open and found it exactly as dark and misty as it had been the night before. But some time must have passed, for he could no longer hear the booming scream of the ice blizzard. He looked up, but could not see the night sky, which meant it was overcast, or maybe the mist had got very thick. Certainly, he felt damp. He could see beads of water on the ends of his fur, he realised, because there was a little line of lanterns strung between Seshla’s hut and another hut, and then another string that ran to the one beyond. The mist stopped him from seeing further.
‘What are you?’ asked a voice.
Bily looked down to see a small Monk looking at him curiously. A youngling, though it was almost the same size as he was. To his astonishment, the he Monk had another very tiny Monk sitting on his shoulder.
‘I am Bily,’ Bily said. ‘What is your name?’
‘I am Vesh,’ the he Monk said. ‘This is Zest. He does not talk, but you can hear a little bit of his thinking. Are you the rider of the Broken Prince?’
‘I am his friend,’ Bily said, knowing he meant the Monster, but puzzled as to what a Prince might be. ‘Will you take me to the hut of Ishla, for I need to speak with her?’
Vesh nodded and led him off, saying over his shoulder, ‘So you think your friend is really the Changebringer whose coming to the Hidden Place was foretold by the wise ones?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bily said, thinking that Seshla and the Nightbeast had brought the Monster here without asking if it wanted to come, which did not really count as it ‘coming to the Hidden Place’.
‘Bily,’ Seshla said, appearing out of the mist as if his thoughts had conjured her up. ‘I was just about to fetch you. Where are these rascals leading you?’
‘He asked us to bring him to Ishla,’ Vesh said virtuously.
‘Yes, well, that will have to wait,’ the she Monk said. ‘One of the wise ones wants to see you, Bily. As I guessed, they are very curious about you and your brother.’
r /> ‘I want to see the Monster,’ Bily said.
‘Of course you do, little healer, and so you shall. But he has been taken to the Temple, despite Ishla protesting that he needs more rest.’
Bily wondered what a Temple was. Then he remembered with a chill that the Monster had spoken of a Temple in the Velvet City as being the place where the Makers machines were kept. He had to force himself to mind his manners and thank Vesh for his help. The tiny Monk chittered at him over the youngling’s departing shoulder, baring sharp little teeth.
Seshla led Bily along the misty path and over the bridge he thought he remembered from the previous night. But then there was another path and another bridge and more huts, and all of them looked alike, festooned with strings of tiny lanterns.
As they were passing over one bridge, a gust of wind blew and he looked down and saw a little milky-coloured stream running beneath it. Then they came to the edge of a wide pool of water where the mist hung low and very thick. As they came around it, he was astonished to see several Monks sitting up to their necks in the water, some with tiny little Monks like Zest sitting on their shoulders or grooming the fur on their heads.
Bily was so startled that he stopped and stared. ‘What are they doing?’ he found himself whispering, though he hardly knew why.
‘They are wise ones,’ Seshla replied, which was not really an answer.
‘How can they bear the cold?’ Bily asked.
‘That water is how we bear the cold here,’ Seshla said. ‘It is hot, and it streams through the Hidden Place and makes the mist.’
‘How do you make the water hot?’ Bily asked.
‘We do not make it hot, Bily,’ Seshla said, laughing. ‘It comes that way from the ground. There are many pools fed by hot streams that rise from deep in the earth. Some are much hotter than this one and some are quite cool. The Great One prefers the Long Pool because it is only warm. That is where she is now, recovering from her icy swim, for even she finds the Edgeless Sea cold. The wise ones like the heat because it eases the aches in their old bones. They spend most of their time in the water during the Winter. On the coldest nights, most of us take to the waters.’
Bily shuddered, then he looked around. ‘Where is the Temple?’
Seshla led him further round the pool to where wide pale stone steps ran up into the mist. When he squinted, he could just see that they led to an immense platform where round pillars flanked an open doorway.
Belatedly, he noticed Ishla sitting to one side of the bottom step, eating something. She beckoned them over and bade them sit, patting the step beside her.
‘Your friend is being examined by the wise ones,’ the big healer told Bily, and offered him some food from a little basket in her lap. There were tiny golden berries piled in a little glistening heap onto small pancakes, and he took one and bit into it. To his surprise, the berries and the pancake were salty, not sweet, but he found them very good once he had got over his surprise.
‘Are all the wise ones healers?’ Bily asked, taking another of the pancakes when Ishla urged it.
‘The wise ones are not healers, though some of them were once. They are not trying to heal the Listener. They are examining his metal. They want to understand how it was broken in the first place so that he was able to leave the Velvet City.’
‘I think it got broken after the Monster left the Velvet City,’ Bily said. ‘It . . . he only went off to think about something that troubled him, and then the arosh came and drove him East, across the white desert and onto the plain where my brother and I lived. There he was bitten by a blackclaw, and he almost died. I thought he was sick only because of the poison, but the diggers in the camp near the mountains told us the Monster’s metal is sickening because of being so far away from the Velvet City, and for so long. We were trying to bring the Monster back when Seshla and the Nightbeast captured us.’
‘An interesting story, little healer,’ Ishla said, glancing at Seshla. ‘But it does not explain why the Listener does not want to return to the Velvet City. This is what interests the wise ones. They want to know how and why his metal broke, so that he can resist its compulsion, even though it hurts him.’
‘But he is not the only one to resist it,’ Bily said. ‘The first diggers resisted their Makers metal when they were upset about the red bird flocks being killed.’
He was not surprised when Ishla nodded. ‘We know they broke the Makers machine, not knowing it would also break the binding of their metal to the Makers. But how were they able to break it? That is another thing the wise ones wonder about.’
‘There is also the Cloud Monster,’ Bily said.
‘What is that?’ Ishla asked.
So Bily told of the Cloud Monster, and its endless heroic resistance of the Makers pole that had been planted in the high mountains. He got so caught up in his tale that only when he finished did he notice that both Seshla and the healer Monk were staring at him in amazement.
‘And you said you were not brave,’ Seshla said at last. ‘The Great One was right about you.’
Bily wondered what she meant, but the old healer seemed suddenly distracted. She gave him the basket of pancakes and bade him eat the rest. ‘That is a very interesting theory of yours about why these creatures have been able to resist the Makers metal in them,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Why did the wise ones send the Nightbeast after the Monster?’ Bily asked. ‘What did they foresee about him?’
‘Many of us have dreamed of the Broken Prince who comes North with the means to challenge the Makers and free us from the tyranny of their Plan. We would offer help and advice, if the Changebringer will act, so that our severed clan might be healed,’ said a new voice.
Bily turned to see that several of the Monks in the pool had drawn closer, but it was the nearest that had fastened her gaze on him. She was so old that her fur was white, but her eyes burned darkly.
They want the Makers to stop taking the he Monks, Bily thought. But how was the Monster to help them do that?
He realised with a shock that the old Monk had heard his thought, for her next words were spoken inside his mind. ‘If the Broken Prince will submit to our skills and machines, we will try to change his metal so that it will not bind to the Makers machines when he returns to the Velvet City.’
Bily realised the Monk was offering to ensure the Monster’s metal stayed broken. ‘If you do that, he need not return!’ he cried.
The old Monk shook her head in the bobbing way Seshla had done. ‘He must return to the Velvet City for his metal to be restored, but if it can be changed, he will be able to do as he chooses there, and not what the Makers command.’
Bily did not like the thought that the Monster would have to go back to the Velvet City, but at least he could go with them to the Vale of Bellflowers once his metal had been soothed. Then his excitement dimmed, for clearly the Monks wanted something in return. They wanted the Monster to stop their he Monks from being taken. How could he possibly manage that?
The wise one continued, now speaking aloud. ‘What must be done to change the metal of the Broken Prince will be difficult and dangerous for him, and there will be pain. There is danger in it for us, too, for if we are not careful, tampering with his metal will reveal our disobedience to the Makers.’
‘But even if you mend his metal so the Makers can’t make him do anything, how can the Monster stop them taking your younglings? He is only one Listener, and not even very important.’
‘Not important!’ cried Ishla. ‘The she Listener who gave birth to him is the daughter of the leader of the Velvet City, and he had been chosen to rise higher still – to serve as Prime Listener of the Makers Temple. It is the Prime Listener alone who hears the Makers messages from beyond the sky crack, and who then offers a telling of them to the other Listeners. The Prime is old and the Broken Prince was to replace him.’
Bily was astounded. ‘It . . . he said he was not important.’
‘Perhaps he wished not to be i
mportant,’ Seshla said gently. ‘What I wonder is: Why he did not want to become the Prime, if it would put him so high among his people? Perhaps it is a sign that his metal was beginning to break, even before he left.’
But Bily cried, ‘If he was so important, why didn’t the Listeners come after him?’
‘Maybe they did. But the stone storm would have scoured all traces of his passing. When he did not return, his people probably thought he fell into a rift and was devoured by slishi. Or perhaps they did not follow because they knew his binding to the Makers metal would bring him back,’ Seshla said.
‘No. Remember that the Listeners do not know that they have metal which is bound to the Makers Machines,’ said the wise one. ‘They serve the Makers out of love, believing themselves beloved.’
‘What will they do to the Monster when he returns?’ Bily asked fearfully.
‘I imagine his people will rejoice to have him back,’ said the wise one. ‘And as long as the Makers do not believe the Broken Prince disobeyed them, but was simply injured, he will be safe from their wrath.’
‘Won’t his people be angry with the Makers when he tells them about the metal binding?’ Bily asked.
‘I suspect the Makers binding would ordinarily ensure that he was unable to speak of it,’ Ishla said.
Bily looked at the healer, realising what she was saying. ‘But if his metal is changed by the wise ones, he could speak of it,’ he said. Then another thought occurred to him. ‘Only, he could not tell his people the truth then, lest the Makers punish all of them.’
Ishla and the wise one nodded as one.
Bily thought for a bit and then he said, ‘If you can make it so the Monster’s metal will not bind to the machines in the Velvet City, how is he supposed to oppose the Makers plan if he can’t tell his people the truth?’
‘He would have great power as Prime Listener,’ said the wise one. ‘And if his metal is not bound, he can say whatever he likes and claim it as a message from the Makers. He can change the world and no one would doubt him, for the Listeners are highest of all those sent through the sky crack, even if they are not as free as they believe.’