Dark Magic (11 page)

Gamal agreed, nodding his head. Brand raised his eyebrows, this was news to him.

“I was wondering if perchance any of your people had a spare heatsuit... Or two, as the case may be.”

She looked at him harshly. “We are not accustomed to tourists here.”

“Of course not.”

Brand became irritated with the mechnician’s manner and opened his mouth to speak. Telyn put a warning hand on his arm. He looked at her, and she shook her head. Brand wiped sweat from his brow and kept his silence, letting their guide do his job.

“But this is a lord of the River Folk, and he wishes to learn of our people and our ways. What could be more critical to such an education than learning of the Earthlight, the very core of our achievements?”

“Well,” said the mechnician, puffing up a bit with pride. Brand thought that she had probably heard precious few compliments in her life. “I suppose we might have some to spare. On the basis of a loan, of course.”

“Of course,” said Gamal, smiling.

They followed her back to a stone hut that served as a rest station for the workers. There was a conduit of cooled water available in the hut. Brand and Telyn drank their fill while the mechnician threw them glances that were somewhat disdainful. Clearly, she was not of the opinion that the heat was oppressive.

The largest suit fit Telyn, but with far too much space in the shoulders, of course. For Brand, however, there was nothing that worked well. They finally had to wrap his exposed midsection in three fat belts of protective leather. This, on top of the heavy pack of supplies, became quite a burden. Brand suspected that if things went badly down there, he would have to dump his bags and draw the axe quickly for strength.

When they had managed to equip themselves and were back out into the face of the vents, Brand spoke to Gamal. “You didn’t tell her our real mission.”

“Naturally not,” said Gamal. He stopped and frowned, “are you saying I lied?”

“I didn’t mean that—”

“Very well then. There it is. Admire it so that my words might be turned to truth!”

Brand stopped and gazed at the Earthlight, smiling. Telyn came up beside him and touched his face with a black-gloved hand. The glove burned his cheek, but he didn’t shy away.

“Gamal,” he said, but the other was stumping away in annoyance. Brand hurried to catch up. “I just meant that I’m surprised. Why does no one want to help Modi?”

Gamal slowed and they trudged together up to a great fissure. It was too wide to jump over safely, being at least seven feet wide. The bottom was obscured by swirling gasses that rippled in the vision due to tremendous heat. They followed the fissure along to the right, toward the southern end of the Great Vents.

“Like I said, Hallr has decided to forget his son. Modi’s mission was never approved by his father. Quite the opposite. You see, for centuries we have not gone on deep missions into the Everdark. There are things there... Things that are best left sleeping.”

“So Modi was forbidden to go down there? He disobeyed his father?” asked Telyn.

Gamal nodded. “There was a policy. It was not law. We have no new laws, as the Kindred—”

“Have no King, yes I got that part,” said Brand irritably. Perhaps it was the heat, but he had begun to find the Kindred to be irksome.

Gamal frowned at him. “We repeat that phrase often, ‘tis true. But it is very important to us. We had Kings once, and those were very different times. You see, when the Kindred have a King, that makes us into a very different people. Instead of doing the same thing every day, we do what the King wants. If we are lucky enough to have a good King, then we do good things. But if the King is not the most excellent....”

“You mean you will not build new buildings without a King?”

Gamal shrugged. “We might, but even that would be frowned upon. We would certainly not hollow out a new mountain, or declare war on an old enemy.”

Brand looked at him, nodding. If the Kindred had no King, they kept to their old ways, dormant in a sense. Nothing new was done. So, by Modi’s decision to travel deeply into the Everdark, he was breaking with tradition. This was why no one was helping them. Modi had done something new without authority.

“How would the Kindred gain a new King, were that ever to happen?” he asked.

Gamal slid his eyes to look at him for a moment, then he looked away. He thought before answering. “All the clanmasters would have to agree that such a bold move were necessary. All the clanmasters would have to agree on who the new King would be as well. Such an agreement, shared among the most conservative of all our folk, is difficult to imagine. The need must be so dire that nothing else will suffice.”

“Something like a war? Like if some enemy breached the Gates of Snowdon?”

Gamal nodded, not liking the thought. “Something like that, yes.”

“So your people only have a King in times of crisis?” asked Telyn. “How long has it been since the last one?”

“Five centuries and eight decades.”

  Brand whistled. A very long time indeed.

“And when you do select a King, how long does his rule last?”

“Until he dies, of course.”

While they had been chatting they had been making good time across the crusty surface. The cracks were many now, but narrower. In truth, they hopped now from one island of stone to another, separated like huge tiles by foot-wide fissures. They had almost reached the mechanism that controlled the Great Vents.

A massive machine of brass gears reached hundreds of feet up the stone cliffs before them. Great pipes led to the spot where the gears were based. At the bottom of them squatted an alien contrivance. Gamal told them it was a boiler and the heat from it drove great pistons that turned the gears. It seemed very vast and complex to the River Folk. The heat, they understood, came from the magma itself. Steam was used to create pressure in great tanks, which in turn powered the gears to open and close the Great Vents. Brand was impressed with this engineering marvel. As long as there was a supply of water to the spot, the machine never needed fuel. The heat of the Earth itself had been harnessed to operate the vents and to provide the cavern with heat and light as well.

The Kindred were the greatest engineers in the world.

Chapter Eleven

A Wurm Disturbed

The kobolds continued the siege. There had been flare-ups, certainly. Occasionally, the Kindred had made forays down the tunnel, firing crossbow bolts into the black unknown at any eye they saw or thought they saw. The kobolds, for their part, pulled back, tossing darts and hiding in side-tunnels. Their tactics were simple but effective, lure the miners into traps and come out of the side-tunnels from behind.

Modi and his team were very aware of their enemy, however. They were veterans of the Everdark, and had already seen two of their members die on this trip. They sent forward a squad of four with crossbows, but then kept back the majority a dozen paces behind, without lanterns. When the hiding kobolds sprang out from side-tunnels to backstab the four crossbowmen with stone daggers, Modi and his team fell upon them from behind in turn.

A vicious fight had ensued. One of the brave crossbowmen had taken seven stab wounds and bled out. There were a dozen kobolds left on the tunnel floor, which was slick with mixed bloods.

After the battle, Modi called his team back to build up barricades of rock, more than half-blocking the tunnel. There they waited, and the siege continued.

Sieges tend to work upon the minds of men and of Kindred alike. Many grow complacent, taking the situation as a new condition of life. They adjust to it, and philosophically wait it out. Others are not so lucky. For some, a siege is the height of frustration. They know they can’t end the tension, but they want to and each passing day makes the situation swell in their minds. They grow restive and desperate.

Modi was one of the latter types. He understood a siege, the tactics and the appropriate response. In fact, it was by his order they had halted and allowed it to begin. But he had seen no sign of aid arriving. Each day ate at him, and he suspected he had made a mistake. He suspected his mission was dissolving into a colossal failure. The same failure this father had so glumly predicted when Modi had first brought the idea to him.

Where in the nine hells was Gamal? He had sent the fool up into the chimneys a week ago. Had he died up there? Had he found a wife and started a new family farm?

Modi could have led another advance. Perhaps, if they killed another dozen of the kobolds they would lose heart. But he might well lose another miner, and there were precious few of them left. The Kindred were much better fighters, but there were always more of the enemy. For the same reason, he didn’t want to send another man up to the surface. If Gamal had failed, what chance did the second man have? Besides, sending another man up meant one less down here to protect their hoard of rubies.

And so, Modi needed another outlet for his energies.

The great plug, as black as iron, made lumpy and burnt centuries ago, squatted at his feet. It was a puzzle, a mystery, and it was at hand. Did another exit exist right beneath their feet? Often, when traveling in caves, one had to go down to reach a point at which an upward opening could be found. They were far enough from the magma chambers here, they shouldn’t find a roasting pit down below. Almost certainly, whatever had been sealed was long since dead. There were few beasts that could live isolated for centuries in a hole.

Modi pulled his pick from his belt. A few eyes slid to watch him. The miners, who had been talking in low voices, quieted.

Modi drew a great breath.

“We must do something,” he told his company, “we can’t just sit here forever. We will run low on supplies soon, and be forced to abandon all the loot we’ve gotten.”

The company shifted uncomfortably at the thought. They had all, of course, had the same thought run through their minds. At some point, they would have to decide to leave their rubies or die here. This was a hard thought for any Kindred to entertain, as once a gem has fallen into one of their dusty pouches, it was a very difficult thing indeed to remove it.

“We have one last option, and it is better than doing nothing. We can dig through this plug. Beyond it may be nothing. But perhaps, we will find another route upward. And, with great luck, there might be something worth taking home with us.”

So saying, and before any there could call a halt to his hand, Modi raised the pick and struck downward with all the force of his heavy arms. The tunnel rang with the sound of the strike. Black chips of stone sprayed everyone.

He struck again, and again.

* * *

The offspring of dragons take a great deal of time to hatch. They must lie dormant for many centuries undisturbed before they will quicken with life and erupt from their leathery eggs. Because they need so very long to incubate, their parents sometimes place them in a permanently warm spot, such as near a lava flow. This strategy has its obvious dangers. Locations such as volcanoes provide permanent geothermal heat, but are often unstable. There are likely to be earthquakes or eruptions of lava in such spots. Another strategy often taken by the mother is to hibernate with the eggs, thus guarding them and warming them with her natural body heat through the many long years. If any behavior can be called common when dragons are concerned, this would be one. Most female dragons opt for this strategy to ensure their young eventually hatch. Fewer eggs are produced, but the young are much more likely to hatch and survive to maturity with the mother there to protect them.

These habits, not well understood by other beings, have spawned many of the legendary stories of encountering dragons sleeping in lairs. Why are dragons so often found sleeping deep within the earth? To guard their eggs, naturally. Why have great treasures been found with such sleeping dragons? Because of all the other adventurers who discovered the dragon centuries earlier, and died there, leaving behind their wealth. Why do stories of dragon raids commonly end with the dragon leaving, or vanishing deep within the earth? Because they have lain down with their eggs, and have slept so long they have become only hazy legends to the short-lived folk who wisely fear them.

And so it was with Sigrid, the deep blue dragon who slumbered far beneath the peak of Snowdon and far beneath the caverns that the Kindred had hollowed from that mountain. Sigrid slept in that zone of the underworld known to the Kindred as the Everdark. She slept in a place that was very deep, but not so deep as to become hot and unbearable. The rock here was solid and cool to the touch.

This region of the Everdark was a mile-thick layer of rock, rivers and sunless cavern vistas which was primarily inhabited by creatures without eyes and often without minds as well. The lowest creatures and growths here derived sustenance from the internal heat of world rather than the external heat of the sun. Pools of solvents and oils filled vast chambers, sometimes forming seas of black liquid. It was a harsh world, and the larger more complex creatures of Everdark were alien and vicious. Among them, only a dragon could slumber without fear.

But one hour among millions was different. During that one hour, something disturbed Sigrid’s slumber.

At first, only the great scaled ears twitched, each as big as a knight’s shield. The movement would hardly have been noticeable to a witness, had there been one.

Slowly, minutes later, a single great eye cracked open. She waited, breathing perhaps once a minute. She sensed nothing and let her great eye close again.

Tap-tap-tap.

Both eyes snapped open.

There it was. The sound.  She knew what it was, in a single moment. She knew that infernal tapping. Possibly, she had been hearing it for hours, or even days. It had invaded her slow, endless dreams. It had disturbed her.

She checked her three eggs. Each was oblong and ridged with a rough leathery exterior. They were close to hatching, she could tell. She had hoped that the disturbance had been her quickening young, ripping their way from their eggs, but the time had not yet come.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

She knew what the tapping meant. The Kindred were coming back.

* * *

The trip down the chimneys was worse than Brand had imagined it would be. His skin was scorched and red in a dozen spots before the first hour had ended. He hoped this was the worst hour as they were heading away from the Earthlight itself, that vast chamber of magma that bubbled a thousand feet below the Great Vents themselves.

Gamal, to their great horror, did not lead them down some neat flight of steps. Nor was there a ladder, nor even a rope to guide them. Instead, they followed a slanted shaft that seemed to lead down into Hell itself. Their hands dragged down the crumbling sides of the shaft, which went downward at sharp angles that twisted without warning, occasionally opening upon unknown black voids of darkness. Brand was immediately impressed by Gamal, as he must have traveled
up
this very shaft, which the River Folk found almost impossible to traverse even when sliding down it.

They had a light length of chain connecting their bodies. Each had clipped this chain to their mechnician’s belt, where loops of metal were attached for just this purpose. If one of them slipped badly or fell into a side tunnel, the others were supposed to clutch at the walls and hold the weight of the third. Chain was used, instead of rope, as rope was too easily burned through. This last bit of information Gamal had delivered unemotionally, but it left Brand with his eyes wide at the implications.

They made rapid progress at first, but soon reached their first difficulty. The shaft ended. But it did not end gracefully, dropping them onto a dusty floor. Instead, it ended in a huge cavern that swallowed all the pitiful light their miner’s lanterns could toss down into it.

“What’s down there?” asked Telyn, gazing over Gamal’s shoulder as he worked with pitons and ropes.

“Something bad,” he said simply.

“How do you know?”

“I left a rope here days ago,” he said. He lifted a short stub of rope to show them. The end of it was frayed and most of it was missing. “Something ate it.”

Brand noted that Telyn was having no difficulty with the unknown depths yawning beneath them. He recalled how she had always been the best climber of his friends. The mere sight of the chasm made Brand’s feet and hands tingle, as if they wanted to grab onto anything they could.

When Gamal had the rope out and let it fall, Telyn unsnapped herself from the chain that connected them all together. She swung out upon the rope and hung, dangling in space. Brand’s heart leapt into his mouth to see his love so endangered. He reached out and grabbed her arm. She looked up at him in surprise.

“I’m okay Brand,” she said, turning her pretty, if soot-streaked face up to him. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go slowly. Just don’t let anything eat the rope again.”

Brand let her go. Internally, he called himself six kinds of a fool for bringing her on this trip. How many times now had she faced death on this journey? This had to be the third, and that wasn’t even counting sliding down the chute they had just come to the end of.

“Just hold on to the rope, milord,” said Gamal, “I can tell she knows how to handle herself on a line.”

Brand wrapped his gloved fists in the rope and braced his feet.

Swinging a bit and shining that odd light of hers, Telyn went hand over hand down perhaps twenty feet before halting.

“Oh,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I found what ate the rope. They are working on the stray end right now.”

She shone her light downward and they saw that she was about half-way to the bottom of the chamber. The floor of it was full of beetles. Normally, that would not have been worthy of note, but these beetles were as large as sheep. Their black iridescent shells reflected back gleaming shafts of light. They were indeed chewing on the bottom of the rope, which had coiled up on the chamber floor.

“Come back up,” said Brand, sweating again. “I’ll slide down on the rope and put the axe to them.”

Telyn swayed slightly, such was the ferocity with which the beetles tore at the rope. Brand breathed hard, thinking about Telyn falling amongst them.

“I’ll take care of them,” she said confidently. She drew out her bow then, which she had looped over her back. She wrapped her legs up in the rope and hung there, her body tipping out horizontally to the ground. It made Brand’s heart pound seeing her so precariously perched. He tried to remember the many times he’d seen her do acrobatic tricks such as this without difficulty in the past.

Her bow snapped and a beetle flipped over, legs flipping and quivering. An arrow sprouted from its back.

Then another suffered the same fate, and a third, fourth and fifth.

Brand released a breath he had been holding. She was doing well.

“I think she’s going to be fine, Brand,” said Gamal, “I can see now why you brought her. Besides the obvious, of course.”

Brand frowned and was about to ask him just what ‘the obvious’ was, when a strange sound intruded on his thoughts. It was a buzzing sound. He looked down and shouted, reaching for the rope.

The beetles were flying. They had transparent wings the color of smoke under their black shells. They were all over the rope now, eating it.

“Telyn!” Brand shouted, but she was too busy to call back to him. She dropped her bow, and it clattered to the floor of the cavern. She had out her knife, and it gleamed in her hand as she slashed at the nearest of the insects that fluttered closer.