Memorias: Deep in the Arnaks

by Serabian, Charles

  “Too bad.” Valor whispered to him. “You could do a lot with that in a place like this.”

  Armun jerked around. Valor was smiling at him. “Did you want it?” He asked.

  “No… they’d expect it of me. They check the two of us more often than others.”

  “What do you mean?” Armun said.

  “I’ve tried to escape before,” said Valor, “many times. I know this place better than most anyone.” With that, the young boy returned to the darkness. “You’re better off though. That weapon could cause you more harm than help. Pull that thing in here, and everyone will jump you at once to get it.”

  “Well…” Armun said. “Thanks. I suppose.”

  Armun’s body suddenly felt heavier, the boldness of the day’s adventure finally wearing on him, unsure of how he felt about the mission. Wherever Sir Jerryl Trought was, finding him would be next to impossible. He was alive, and that was all he could be sure of. The greater question was how long could he last? Even if he went on a magical rampage, the tunnels of the Arnaks were so vast.

  He realized then that his greatest opponent might not be the ferals, the monsters, or whoever led them. His greatest opponent might be the Arnaks themselves.

  Armun lay down on the stone slab behind him. As a dream took him in, he could hear Valor singing in his cell.

  Who here believes in hope

  An animal’s dream on a rope

  If anyone here is a slave of the mind,

  home is a slippery slope.

  Chapter 14

  Morning arrived with the dreadful sound of the wolf men, barking and hollering. Armun stood up immediately, shaking off dirt and the dryness in his throat with what little saliva his mouth could make.

  “Line up, dogs! Line up! Bark for your masters!”

  A quick footed feral with a missing ear jogged by, rattling his spear, sparks shooting every which way. Some of the other slaves hooted and howled.

  Armun sucked his aura in quickly, hoping that the big, manic guard unlocking his cell could not sense it.

  A small bucket of water was dropped in his cage, and the door was locked again. Armun immediately grabbed it and drank until he thought his sides would split.

  After a moment, the prison doors flung open one by one in an invisible domino effect, the controller of the action unseen. The same effect took place on the multiple mounted torches as they exploded to life all the way to the back end of the prison. He had not noticed that there were so many, since the darkness had been too powerful.

  Smart enough to use harmian devices, he thought, if not smart enough to design their own.

  Armun’s eyes swiftly crossed the sights before him. He ignored the strong urge to close them, allowing the pain and color spots to infiltrate his eyes in exchange for a vision of something important, for any piece of usable information. A furry hand grabbed him, jammed his body into another body, which accompanied an even larger sea of torsos and limbs, moving upward through the darkness of the cave. The collective stench of urine and body odor was overwhelming.

  Ferals flanked both sides of the mob, pushing the slaves into the tunnel that traced its way upward. “Move!” they yelled sporadically, accompanied by other words in their own dialect. Every time they yelled, the crowd squeezed together, as if afraid that their many rows of teeth would snap their arms from their sockets.

  The guards pushed harder and harder, until his rib cage felt pressed to the point of bursting.

  Finally, they came to the mouth of the prison level, and the crowd relented. He exhaled hard, his stomach growling. He often lamented that no magic could reproduce fresh bread, or expertly cooked hogs.

  His stomach growled again.

  Bodies were shoveled into a single file line, forced together yet again, climbing the steep ascent. Randomly, a feral would jump into the fray, using their torch to guide them. The front and back ends of the crowd were unseeable.

  Armun stepped up the high, crude steps, fighting the urge to blow the walls apart with all of his magical might.

  Up and up they went, until suddenly, another wave of darkness, same as the day before, attacked him. It was as if everyone he knew and cared about had all died at the same time, along with a bubbling, uncontrollable urge to burst into tears.

  Curiosity filled him. There were only a handful of spells that could produce such an effect, and he had felt them all to some degree. But which one, and where it came from, was a mystery.

  He fought it off as it tried to overtake his body, allowing his aura to peek out a bit. He felt some of the weight slip away from his neck and shoulders, exhaling relief.

  Without a decent meal, however, even the simple climb had begun to wear on his body. His rations had sustained him well enough through the crowd. The rocky crags stabbed his hands. He was barely able to see despite the many torches that sprang up above him. The ascent began to spiral upwards, and the climb widened until fifteen bodies could stand side by side.

  When the ground began to level out, a whisper crossed his ears on the light air. Armun craned his neck up to the ceiling from whence it came.

  Following the whisper was the sound of wet flesh opening, and something like a strong tree snapping at its base. A foul fluid splashed onto the ground in front of Armun, causing him to look up.

  Two ghostly white eyes, enticingly luminous, descended upon him.

  A young man, broken free from the deformed crowd, shambled in front of Armun, his back to Armuns’ front. The young man stepped into the fluid, looked down, then turned around completely to look at Armun in horror.

  A tentacle whipped downwards, lashing across the young man’s chest, nicking Armun’s collarbone with a wet slop. A feral guard smoothly lunged into action, leaping seven feet above the ground, stabbing at the white eyes. Armun could not see a full body, but the eyes darted away, dodging three stabs before it disappeared.

  The guard dropped to the ground and pressed him onward. “Keep moving,” it said, shoving his left shoulder. Armun took a few shaky steps before regaining his composure, impressed with the guard’s quickness. It was rare that he was surprised, but the Arnaks appeared to be full of them. Curiosity and horror continued to build inside of him in equal measures.

  Armun looked at the edges of the cavern walls and noted the weak brackets and wooden frames that didn’t appear to be holding anything in place. He looked at their base of each one, cracked and dry from age and neglect. Wood ants had clearly eaten away the lower parts, and it was obvious that no repair attempt was meant to ever be made. Some had been reinforced with more metal brackets, but the craftsmanship was shoddy at best.

  The path became more level again, and the despondency from before crept inside of his body, and his whole body again became heavy. He pushed out his aura another inch.

  He looked into the numb, dulled faces of the others.

  Armun had dealt with slavery before. He had seen the hopelessness in their eyes, the ragged, tired faces that screamed for help. Even those who had been most broken down and resigned to fate still seemed to have that spark; the desire for freedom. That desire was a burning thing, an illumination that kept them going. What kept these slaves going, Armun couldn’t understand. They might as well have all been dead.

  He realized then that the only answer not negated was the noman’s spells. He remembered as a youth how he had rallied against their use, and the eventual ban of such spells from battlefields big and small. But this was a place beyond that knowledge, and he doubted anyone in charge was the type to be in accord with treaties.

  Armun counted off the illegal noman’s spells to himself, too powerful to be trusted, outlawed all over Harmenor.

  Not here, Armun thought.

  It explained how thousands of slaves could be carted around with what appeared to be a one to ten ratio of guard to slave, though he was unsure of what exact spell was in place. He noticed that some fared better than others, and seemed as normal as could be expected. He dared not use his aura to inve
stigate.

  Armun had fallen so deeply into memories of the past that he had failed to notice the pathway becoming lighter. A hand gripped his shoulder, pulling him off balance slightly. It was Valor, his brother behind him, attempting to move together, and in between the others. “Stay with us. There’s no real organization here. There was once.”

  Armun nodded. “I told you not to look at the horrors, didn’t I?” Said Valor in a whisper.

  “Yes, well...” Armun stuttered with a loss for words. “It was certainly looking at me. Where are we going?”

  “The quarry.” Said Valor. “We’ve been working to clear out Mount Garzhak and Tek’tah, the two big ones. Right now, we’re in Garzhak.”

  As they walked further, Armun felt a sudden pang of guilt. How could this have happened, he thought over and over. There were clearly thousands living wherever they were. Even with the Raging Sands between the Arnaks and the rest of Harmenor, someone surely would have noticed so many missing? Everything his eyes captured reeked of conspiracy; a plot thicker than the Arnaks themselves.

  In a short time the pathway opened up into three different directions, and the group was shuttled towards the right.

  The tunnel did lead to a quarry; a large area that Armun guessed was at least a mile wide in diameter. In the ceiling of the mountain was a large hole, a small bit of clouded sunlight streamed downwards to nourish any who walked under it. None did, however.

  The cave itself was littered with carts and tools of all shapes and sizes. Armun eyed at least a thousand slaves, arms raising and lowering like seaweed, scattered over the quarry, climbing the walls or chipping at the larger chunks on the ground. A maze of cart tracks led to dumping stations, where slaves struggled to push the heavy things over to them. Armun examined these stations closely, noting that the ore was dumped into several holes, all leading to some black, dark place. Guards patrolled the area in pairs, pointing at each other.

  Armun saw that some ferals wore pins or sashes across their bodies, but couldn’t tell what the colors and insignias denoted.

  One by one, the newly arrived slaves were lined up and given their assignments.

  “They’ll put us together if we stand next to each other,” said Valor. “Stay

  close.”

  Valors words were quickly proven true. An enforced appeared to them, handing the three of them picks, and set them about their task. The foreman enforcer then turned to the other slaves, pushing and shoving them into place.

  Armun took notice. “The guards don’t seem to bother you two,” Armun said.

  Valor spoke, barely audible. “Don’t talk to us too much. Just follow our lead and hopefully you won’t get flogged. It’s their favorite hobby.” With that advice said, Armun’s eyes immediately caught those of a guard staring directly into his, and he quickly broke the connection, snatching his pick and turning towards the brothers.

  All day Armun learned the ins and the outs of quarry life, taking careful mental notes as he went. The routine was simple: pick, keep the good, out with the bad, dump and return.

  Armun split his first rock, eyeing the strange, black veins within. He looked to Valor for an explanation.

  Valor whispered the word “ober.” Armun took that to be the name of the pulsing veins.

  The first time Armun saw the ober, he felt its strangeness. He cracked into a large rock in front of him several times before the black veins became visible. “You’ve got good technique, but don’t use your arms,” said Valor. “You’ll throw out your shoulder that way. Or your back. Just bring it around with your whole body.”

  Armun nodded.

  Armun scanned the room frequently, while following the boy’s lead. It took him an hour to get the hang of it, but there was an art to working the mines. The boys seemed to be aiming their picks in the crevices of the rocks, which seemed to force them apart much easier.

  Armun nodded, and thanked Harma that he had been placed in a cell across from the only two people who seemed to hold their minds intact. He then set about to watch, and listen.

  The guard’s offered plenty of free lashings. There seemed to be an unwritten, ten second rule for any slave that stopped mining for longer, even for a drink of water. Even then, there was a guard right behind that slave, waiting for him to take too long to put the cup down.

  Valor continued to whisper the different names of the guards to him. Armun looked for visual cues to guide him, watching what the other slaves did, ensuring he drew little attention to himself.

  Guardsman. The ones with the cloaks, and not much else.

  Enforcer. These were the big ones. Most held both spear and whip, and sometimes another blade on their thighs.

  White puller. Armun could feel their auras, weak and underdeveloped, begging for growth, but strong enough to cause harm.

  Armun turned his gaze to the mountain walls. Ober veins protruded like the lifelines of a man too old to be alive, pumping in desperation. Without giving it away, he ran his fingers over the insides of the next rock he cracked. The substance felt soft to the touch, but had no give when pressed upon by Armun’s finger.

  Whatever the ober could do, it was apparently worth the cost of everything.

  Armun then turned his attention to the ferals themselves. Everything about them contradicted his knowledge of their race. All beast men preferred the forests, and hated caves. Along this same vein of thought, he had believed their vision in the dark would be hampered. But it had been decades since the ferals had separated themselves from the world, and he did not know what tricks they had conjured to aid them.

  Armun could tell that the ferals harbored a deep hatred of humans, but knew that the enslavement of this many people went beyond simple racism.

  Remembering that sense and logic could not be found in a place that did not value it, he turned back to his new work.

  All day. For hours.

  Chipping and cracking away at rock after rock, inspecting vein after vein. Their water buckets were refilled often, however, dropped by their feet in large buckets. More buckets carried food slop, and small pieces of bread, already soaked in it. It energized him, despite it being the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted, more than semma fish eggs, and even more than dung beetles. He fought back a gag with every swallow.

  Valor whispered, “It is healthy, believe it or not. Usually it doesn’t taste this bad. Guess they forgot the good stuff.”

  By the day’s end, his energy was all but chiseled away, like the rocks he had been pounding against. Just when Armun was beginning to feel sore, and with the spell that was, somewhere, being mysteriously cast weighing down his every movement, a horn sounded from one of the towers above. The light descending from the cave was significantly lessened since the beginning of the day.

  “Now we eat real food,” Valor said, as the horn’s note stretched out long beyond what Armun would have cared to hear.

  The guards herded the slaves like sheep towards the mouth of the cave. Armun stuck behind Valor and Orrin. They trudged downwards, but in a different direction, opposite from where they came.

  Again, all pushed together, worming in a direction he was unsure of, Armun successfully kept the two boys in his sightline. When they reached a three way split, the group was forced left.

  The familiar, spiked towers laced the walls like a children’s war set, with little toy soldiers walking the line. Large tables were placed in oddly perfect rows. Valor and Orrin stopped at the first one, and Armun quickly took his seat, noting the uncomfortable glances of every slave that passed his way.

  They sat and were fed, given bowls and spoons, and some kid of slop, which did not look much different from what he had already been eating. “What is it?” Armun asked.

  Valor sighed. “It’s kept us alive for years, and in good strength, so there must be something in it. Though I’m sure if it took any real effort to make, they wouldn’t make it.”

  Someone dropped to the floor behind Armun, scraping his back with hard, d
igging hands.

  Armun turned, and saw the man’s face. A name came to him instantly, even as the guards were already dragging him away.

  The slave muttered and quivered. “No - that’s - he’s - “

  A guard slapped him upside the head with an open palm, knocking him out cold.

  “Shut up.”

  Lieutenant Mason, Armun thought. It was him. It was the lieutenant. His lieutenant, from years past. Bald head, dark eyes, light brows, and high cheekbones, with a long jaw and crooked nose.

  Or at least, it looked like him. Doubt crept in, harassing and abusing whatever certainty he had left.

  He wanted to scream. Every hair on his body stood straight.

  He had sent Mason to the southwest years ago, on an expedition to document the lives of the human peoples that made the Gorabund Desert their homes. The lieutenant and his men had never returned.

  How many more of mine are down here... Armun felt his face redden, getting hot. He struggled to keep his aura close against his skin. One wave of his hand, and the room would be incinerated. Age was beginning to create more thoughts of shortcuts.

  But in doing so, he might kill Sir Trought. Armun looked around, thinking that right now, Sir Trought could be sitting just feet from him.

  He looked around the room. He had been given a rough outline of what he looked like.

  I should conjure lightning... make these ferals afraid of their own power.

  Armun stuffed the urge away, knowing his time would come whether his mission was successful or not. “That happens often.” Valor said. Armun tried to stuff his food down, nodding complacently.

  Valor worked another spoonful into his mouth, and asked, “Why are you here?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Why are you here?” Valor repeated.

  Armun paused as the hot feeling in his face transferred to his gut. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I don’t...”

  “Mhm.” Valor murmured. Orrin sat, staring intently at Armun, who had, until that moment, never known the stare of a mute man to be so powerful.