The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (8 page)

At one point, t
hey had to stop and wait while a line of carts buzzed by carrying its load. They felt the breeze of it whizzing past, then Emrys showed them the one of the many ventilation shafts. “Keeping the oxygen flowing down here through twenty miles of tunnels can be tricky.”

“Twenty miles of tunnels!”
Dani said.

“
Ah, we’ve had a lot of time to dig them out, considering this mine was started away back when, in medieval days. You
have
heard the story of how the Everton Mine first came to be, haven’t you, young lady?”

Before Dani could respond, Emrys launched into the tal
e, obviously a favorite of his. “Long ago, in medieval times, a humble farm boy called Reginald was sent off by his father to serve as page to a great warrior lord, who had promised to train the lad as a knight.

“Well, it happened that the baron and his men were called
up to join the king in some battle. So they came here to Wales from England, and Reginald had no choice but to follow his master to the war.

“But one evening, the baron sent him out to gather kindling for their campfire, and that was when Reginald discovered it—
a large, mysterious egg. This big.” Emrys held up his hands over a foot apart, then trudged on, leading the way down the dark tunnel. “It was just sitting there, wedged between some rocks in the hillside.

“He’d ne
ver seen anything like it. The shell was gold and glittered in the sunset. He knew that if he showed it to his master, the baron would think it was a dragon egg and have it destroyed. But the boy wasn’t so sure. So, he picked it up and carried it around the woods, trying to find where it had come from.

“He brought it all the way up to the top of the mountain, where he found the huge nest it had rolled out of.” Emrys glanced over his shoulder. “It was a gryphons’ nest, and t
he egg turned out to belong to a mother gryphon, and you know who was inside that, waiting to be born?”

“Red!” Dani cried.

“That’s right: Crafanc-y-Gwrool.”

“Claw the Courageous,” Isabelle said with a smile.

“It seems that while the mother gryphon was off catching food, the egg had rolled right out of the nest and down the mountain,” Emrys said. “Our dear Crafanc would have been lost forever if it weren’t for Reginald’s kindness.” He shrugged. “Perhaps, being just a boy, he did not realize the priceless value of the treasure he had found. So he simply gave it back.

“
I can assure you, if any of the knights or warriors would have found it, they’d have kept it, or given it as a present to the king in exchange for royal favors. The poor mother gryphon would have never seen her cub once he hatched.

“Well, she was so grateful that
Reginald had returned her prize—and so pleased to find a human who had proved he could be trusted—that she led the boy to a cave hidden in the mountain. There he saw the vein of gold sparkling in the rocks.

“Y
oung Reginald gave his master some excuse and rushed right home to the family farm to tell his father what had happened. Fortunately, his father believed him and made the journeyed back to the mountain with him to see it for himself. Once he had confirmed his son’s tale with his own eyes, he sold the family farm and used the proceeds to buy this land instead. I understand he got it cheap.

“
No one could fathom why a sane man would trade a nice, fertile farm for a wild mountain, but the Everton family got to work chipping the gold out of the cave walls with their own hands, and that’s how it all began.” Emrys held up his lantern and beckoned them on. “This way, now. Come along, and watch your step down here by the water.”

With his tale completed, he led them down to the tunnel’s end at
the edge of an underground waterway, where they all got into a boat.

The dwarves and the boys took up the oars
. The dwarves steered the way through the maze of flooded caverns and old, quarried tunnels, while the boys added muscle to the rowing.

They p
assed a number of little waterfalls pouring in from several directions above. At length, they came to an underground chamber where the water was a bright, unearthly blue, very cold and very deep. Emrys directed them to row out into the middle of the vaulted space to show them its interesting acoustics. “We call this the Echo Chamber. Try it.
Halloo!
” he called up into the hollow space above them.

His shout bounced around and came back to him thr
ee times over, clear as a bell.

They had a grand time yelling
out words and silly phrases just to hear the echo, then they finally rowed on, still laughing. The deep, resonant sound of male voices singing came from ahead, with a steady, clanking rhythm.

They went to see what it was, rowing onward. Gliding past
another waterfall that spilled from a hole far above them, they paused at the mouth of another tunnel where the dwarves were hard at work.

The children marveled to see the dwarf miners
perched on scaffolding or hanging halfway down the wall with knotted ropes around their waists.

“That look
s dangerous,” Dani said as they rowed past.

“
That reminds me,” Archie spoke up. “We heard about an accident at the Harris Coalmine not far from here. Have you heard what happened? A collapse? An explosion?”

“Neither,” Emrys answered with a frown.

Archie furrowed his brow. “What then? Problem with machinery?”

Emrys shook his head, knitting his bushy eyebrows together with a skeptical frown.
“Believe it or not, the rumor is, it was some sort of animal attack.”

“What?”
Archie and Dani exclaimed in unison.

“An animal attack in the mine?” Isabelle echoed.

“What sort of animals live down here?” Jake asked rather anxiously.
Great.
Yet one more reason not to like dark, deep caves and underground places.

“
Don’t worry, nothing lives down here except for us and maybe a few bats,” Emrys said.

“Y
ou’re not saying bats attacked them?” Archie asked with a dubious arch of his eyebrow.

“
No, no, I’m not saying that. It couldn’t have been bats! After all…” Emrys hesitated. “Bats don’t usually eat people.”

“Eat people!” Dani exclaimed.

Ufudd leaned closer. “Aye, according to the pixies, all they found of those men was a few wee bones!”

Emrys snorted. “As if you can take the word of a pixie. Troublemakers!”

Ufudd ignored him, holding up his pinky finger. “All they found was a finger bone of one. Part of a toe of another…”

The children stared at him in horror.

“What Ufudd is trying to say is that nobody really knows,” Emrys said in a longsuffering tone. “The Company is being very hush-hush about it.”

“Well, t
he bones looked like they had been gnawed! According to the pixies,” Ufudd said.

Dani finally found her voice. “
You…have pixies around here?”

“
Oh, Wales is crawling with ’em, poppet,” Ufudd assured her.

“
Wait,” Jake said, striving for clarity. “So, those coffins we saw at the funeral earlier today—they were empty?”

“
Except for the few bones they found in the dirt,” Emrys answered with a sigh. “Poor fellows. That’s no way to go.”

“Eaten,
” Archie echoed, pondering it.

“
But by what? It wasn’t bats!” Jake exclaimed.

“Wolf, bear,” Ufudd suggested
.

“
Impossible!” Emrys blustered at the senior dwarf, leading the kids to realize that this had been an ongoing topic of debate in recent days. No doubt, as overseer of the mine, Emrys was responsible for his workers’ safety. He had to be concerned. “I don’t know what happened to those coalmen, but bears and wolves have both been extinct in Wales for centuries.”

“Not
the tame ones! Years ago when I was a boy,” Ufudd told the children, “a traveling circus came through and one of the trained bears escaped—”

“
Oh, don’t start with that again, you daft old thing,” Emrys muttered.

But t
he littler dwarf ignored him, earnestly addressing the kids. “Maybe it found its way down into the mine and has been living there ever since.”

“
That was fifty years ago! Bears don’t live that long!”

“
Maybe it had cubs!”

“
What, by itself?”

Ufudd
just ignored him. “Bears
like
mountains. This is the sort of place where bears can thrive.” He nodded sincerely at the children.

Emrys dropped his chin nearly to his chest.
“Don’t listen to him, please. I swear he’s going senile.” He lifted his head, heaving a sigh. “A pack of feral dogs, maybe. But if you ask me, it was just an explosion blew those poor men to smithereens and the Company doesn’t want to admit it. Either that or someone deliberately killed them.”

“
What, like a murderer?” Jake asked.

“
Well, it’s a dashed lot more likely than a bear! Look around you. Anything can happen if someone isn’t careful. Lots of nooks and crannies where an enemy could strike under cover of darkness. Maybe somebody wanted those men dead.”

“
But there has to be a bear,” Ufudd insisted, “because the pixies were spying on the coalmen, who are all beside themselves with fright at this point—”

“
I should think so,” said Archie.

“A
nd the pixies said they overheard the humans saying that now a few of the pit ponies have gone missing, too.”

“Pit ponies?” Isabelle
asked.

“Over in the coalmine, dear
ie, they use small ponies underground to pull the coal carts. They’ve got a whole underground stable at the Harris Mine, from what I’m told. And I’m very sure a bear would like to eat a pony if it got the chance.”

“Ew,” said Dani.

“All I know is that someone ought to get to the bottom of it!” Ufudd declared.

“On that much we agree,”
Emrys said. “Now can we please change the subject, Master Ufudd? You’re scaring the children.”

“Oh! Dear me.”
Ufudd hesitated, realizing that perhaps Emrys was right. “Well, no worries, children. If there
is
a bear, he won’t be getting into our mine! Not with doors like that.” The old dwarf pointed to a massive metal door at the top of a stone pathway that sloped up from the other side of the water. “Not even a goblin can slip past our security! Nasty little thieves.”

“Goblins
, too?” Dani cried.

“
Oh, don’t worry, my dear, they’re just little tree goblins. More of a local pest problem than anything,” Emrys hastened to assure her.

“
Talk about gold fever! They’re obsessed with it,” Ufudd chimed in.

Emrys nodded
. “They’ve set up a whole colony in the trees beyond that door just so they can be near the gold.”

“What’s a goblin goin
g to do with gold coins? Go on a shopping spree?” Archie asked in a quizzical tone.