Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

Carden stood up and looked around, chuckling. “So this is it.” The miners, standing clustered next to the cavern entrance as though afraid to strike out into the vast space, murmured amongst themselves in fear and excitement.

  The ball of light intensified, then floated up, illuminating more of the cavern. It was huge, its farthest reaches shrouded in darkness. Several dark openings in the walls indicated the existence of more caverns or tunnels. The entire cavern, at least as far as Lainie could see, appeared to be covered with lumpy deposits of the black ore. Where Carden’s light hit the ore, rather than reflecting the light the ore seemed to smother it from existence.

  “They want you,” Lainie said, emphasizing each word, trying to make Carden listen to her. “They want to make you into their weapon. When you take their power, that gives them more control over you.”

  Carden didn’t answer her. He went on looking around at the ore-covered walls of the cavern, a smile of insane delight on his face. Then he turned to the miners. “Here it is, boys. Start digging!”

  The miners, their fear seemingly forgotten, spread out along the walls and started taking their tools from their packs. Only Mooden hesitated. “I don’t know. This place gives me the cold creeps.”

  “Shut up,” Gobby said. “Or get on out of here an’ let the rest of us have your share. Should I shoot him now, Boss?”

  Carden still didn’t respond. He took his own pocketknife and chiseled off a chunk of the substance. Lainie felt a faint stab of pain from the Sh’kimech as a piece of themselves was cut away. Carden held the lump of ore he had broken off in his hand. Again he murmured a few words in the wizard language and breathed in deeply, seeming to inhale using his whole body. He let out the breath he had taken, and gray dust sifted from his hand to the ground. Inside Lainie’s head, the Sh’kimech screamed in fury and exultation. Even as he destroyed them, the more of their power he took in the more of their creature he would become.

  “Boss, what about the scientists?” one of the miners asked. “Won’t they get mad if you keep using up their ore?”

  “There are no scientists!” Lainie yelled in frustration. “Don’t you get it? Carden wants the ore for himself!”

  “You mean he’s got that much money just by hisself to pay us what he’s been paying?” another miner asked.

  “He’s a wizard, an’ wizards got more money than any of us ever even thought of!” Gobby said. “An’ a whole lot of that money’s going to be yours if you start digging right now.”

  With renewed enthusiasm, the crew, even Mooden, set to work scraping and chiseling at the black deposits on the floor and walls of the cavern. Each miner staked out his own spot and guarded it jealously. A few scuffles broke out when one man thought another had edged onto his claim or scooped up a bit of his ore. Carden walked among them, urging them to dig faster and to start packing the ore into the knapsacks and saddlebags, and stooping to pick up pieces of ore and absorb the power from them. The potent mix of the Sh’kimech’s pain and outrage at this violation and their excitement at having a willing servant boiled through Lainie’s veins and nerves. How was it possible that no one else could sense it?

  Carden took the power from another handful of ore. “You’ll make sure to pay me for that, right?” asked the miner whose pile the ore had come from.

  To Lainie’s surprise, Carden showed no sign of anger at the man’s boldness. “You’ll all get paid so much you won’t even notice a few gildings more or less,” he said.

  As Carden took in more of the Sh’kimech’s mindsoul, Lainie could sense his thoughts echoing through theirs. He was lying, she knew all at once. He planned to bind the miners to this place and work them without stopping until their lives gave out. With the power from the ore they dug up, he would go on to take control of as much of the Wildings as he could. The Sh’kimech approved of this plan. A strong servant who ruled over the lands on the surface of the world would serve their purposes well.

  “He’s lying!” Lainie called out to the miners. “He’s going to keep you down here digging until you drop while he takes over the Wildings and destroys everyone!”

  Gobby, who was digging nearby, stumped over and slapped her face hard. “Keep quiet or I’ll really give you something to yell about.” He leered at her and licked his lips.

  “Save it for the sheep, asshole.”

  “Listen, birdie, when I’m rich enough, you’ll be begging me for it, an’ then I’ll teach you a lesson about keeping that mouth of yours shut.” He went back to digging.

  Lainie made a rude gesture at his back, then unscrewed the cap of the water bottle Mooden had given her and took a sip, just enough to moisten her dust-dry mouth. Carden paced around the cavern, laughing and muttering to himself and bouncing between the different digs like a dog trying to chase three rabbits at once. Smudges of gray dust from spent ore marked his path, and a mad light shone in his eyes. With her mage senses, Lainie could feel the power pouring off of him in waves. More dark threads swam through his orange wizard light, dimming it as they grew thicker. As the light dimmed, he simply poured more power into it from his endless supply. Sooner or later, Lainie thought, someone besides her would have to notice that something was wrong with him and with the light. Sooner or later, someone would have to listen to her.

  “Boss?” one of the miners said after what might have been hours, or half a day or longer. “My bags are all full. What should I do now?”

  “Mine too,” several others added. “And mine.”

  Carden stopped pacing. He was breathing hard, and, despite the chill air of the cavern and the icy cold of the Sh’kimech power he was taking in, he was dripping with sweat. “All right, boys, you can stop and take a break now,” he said. “When you start up again, you’ll work in shifts. Half of you will take the packs down to the carts and empty them. Two of those fellows will stay with the carts to guard them – they’ll get extra pay for guard duty – and the rest will come back with the empty packs and take up the digging. The ones who were digging will take their turn to haul out the ore, and two of them will stay behind to relieve the guards. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the miners answered. “Got it.” They sat down and started taking out water bottles and packets of flatbread and jerky.

  Another man spoke up. “Boss, I gotta piss real bad.”

  “Go in the tunnel. No ore to spoil in there. Then get back in here and get back to work. The faster you work, the faster you’ll get rich!”

  HUNKERED DOWN NEAR the entrance to the cave, Silas, Banfrey, and Dobay set about working out a plan. Silas took another look in the cave, this time using a mage light since there had been no sign that Carden and his group were anywhere close by. Three openings in the back of the cave appeared to lead deeper into the mountain. Faint tracks on the rock floor of the cave showed which tunnel the mining party had taken. Banfrey was ready to go right in, but Dobay asked, “What if the tunnel branches out? Can we still follow Carden and his men down there? Seems to me we risk getting lost.”

  “A party that big, they’re bound to leave traces,” Silas said. “Men spit, drop things, catch their clothes on rock and leave threads behind… Besides, every man’s gotta piss sometime. And these fellas didn’t smell too good to start with. If nothing else, we follow the smell. The real problem is the numbers. There’s at least eighteen of them including Carden. He’s powerful and ruthless, and has everything to lose if he’s captured.”

  “You’re a wizard, too,” Banfrey pointed out.

  “If it was just Carden, I could deal with him, though it might not be easy. He’s using power from that ore to strengthen himself, and I don’t know yet how it works. I also have to assume he’s found plenty of it down in those tunnels. Then we have to figure in seventeen miners who are expecting big money from him. They’re bound to defend him.” In truth, Silas didn’t want to take Banfrey and Dobay in at all. In a magical battle in a restricted space, they’d just be in the way and in danger. But he had to admit that with all those miners in
addition to Carden, he was pretty well outnumbered.

  “If we could draw them off and take them out a few at a time, that would help even up the odds,” Banfrey said.

  “Good idea,” Silas said. “Any thoughts on how to do that?”

  Before they could think of anything, the grunting, panting, and shuffling footsteps of men working their way up a steep climb came from inside the cave. Silently, Silas pointed to Banfrey and Dobay and gestured up the left-hand slope of the gully, then indicated that he would conceal himself on the right-hand slope.

  While Dobay and Banfrey took their guns and climbed to their positions, Silas scrambled up the other side of the gully and hid himself behind a brushy fir tree. Soon, voices could be heard through the cave entrance. Silas double-checked his revolver to make sure it was loaded.

  “Damn Carden, treating us like pack mules,” a miner gasped as he stepped out of the crack in the mountainside. The others followed him, and Silas saw why they were huffing and puffing so hard. Each man was carrying two double saddlepacks and two knapsacks stuffed full with black ore. He counted the men as they emerged from the cave. Seven, eight, nine… ten. A significant portion of Carden’s group. Silas grinned. This might not be so hard, after all. The miners were all armed, but they wouldn’t be expecting an ambush, and with their arms filled with their loads of ore, they weren’t in any position to return fire.

  “Let’s just leave the stuff here. It’s too far down to the carts,” one of them said.

  “But Carden wants us to bring back the empty bags,” said another.

  An argument broke out among the miners. Silas took aim and fired, and hit one of them in the leg. Immediately after that, two shots from the other slope took down two more miners. A shout of alarm went up from the seven remaining men, but before they could put down their burdens and draw, Silas, Dobay, and Banfrey shot three more of them.

  The first man Silas had shot drew and fired towards Silas’s hiding place. The bullet shaved some needles off the fir tree and whizzed past Silas’s head. He fired back, and hit the man in his shooting arm.

  By now, the four miners who were still standing had dropped their packs and started firing back. Silas stayed low behind his tree and let them shoot blindly at him, the bullets flying harmlessly past. A shout of pain from the other slope told him that either Banfrey or Dobay was hit. He peered around the tree and shot two more men, while a shot from the other slope hit a third miner in the chest. The last miner standing fired up the other slope. His shot was answered by another cry of pain. Silas fired his last bullet into that man’s back.

  All ten miners were down. Silas reloaded his revolver while he watched for movement from them. They all lay still and silent except for a few moans and groans. There was no sign of life from the other slope; Silas prayed to the Gatherer and the Defender that he wouldn’t have to face Lainie with the news that he had let her father get killed.

  After several long moments, he stood up and stepped out from behind his tree. One of the men in the gully twisted up into a sitting position and fired again, then stiffened and fell forward, an arrow through his back. Silas ducked back behind the tree. He didn’t want to be the next one with an A’ayimat arrow through him. Gun cocked and at the ready, he waited to see what would happen next.

  One at a time, half a dozen A’ayimat, four men and two women, emerged from the trees on the slope above the cave entrance. The deep blue tone of their skin was much more pronounced in the sunlight, and their hair, bound into dozens of braids, shone white as snow. All of them were armed with bows and an assortment of swords, knives, and spears both short and long. At the moment, none were poised to attack. “Grana wizard!” one of the men called out. “We want to talk to you.”

  Silas holstered his gun, though he stayed ready to draw again at the first sign of trouble, and walked along the slope towards where the A’ayimat stood above the cave entrance. He stopped about a dozen paces from the group. “What do you want?”

  “Your companions are wounded. We’ll take them with us and care for them, along with the men down there who are still alive. When you bring us the man who trespassed on our territory, we’ll release them to you.”

  “I want to see them first,” Silas said. For all he knew, Dobay and Banfrey were dead and this was a trick.

  The A’ayimat man who had spoken to him gestured with one arm, indicating that Silas should cross the gully. Keeping an eye on the A’ayimat group, Silas scrambled down the slope and up the other side.

  He found Dobay sitting up, his hands pressed to a wound on his thigh. His pants were soaked with blood, though the wound didn’t seem to be close to the major blood vessels of the leg. Banfrey lay on his back, moaning in pain, blood spreading across the right side of his chest. Neither of them looked good, but at least they were alive.

  “Are you going to let the blueskins take us?” Dobay asked.

  Silas looked back at the group of A’ayimat, then at Dobay. “I’ve heard they have healing magic. And they shot a miner but they didn’t shoot any of us. I don’t think they mean us any harm.”

  “Can you handle the rest of Carden’s men yourself?”

  At least seven more miners, plus Carden. Not his favorite odds, but an idea was forming in his head. “I’ll manage,” he said. “You let the A’ayimat take you with them and get those wounds fixed up, and I’ll be along for you as soon as I’m done with Carden.”

  “Would have liked to take a shot at him myself,” Banfrey groaned.

  “Just stay alive, that’ll be enough,” Silas said. “I expect if Carden doesn’t kill me, Miss Lainie will if I let you get yourself killed.”

  Banfrey chuckled weakly at that. “I reckon you’re right.”

  The A’ayimat men came over. Two of them helped Dobay to his feet and draped his arms over their shoulders so they could support him. The other two lifted Banfrey between them, carrying him with unexpected care. Silas watched the A’ayimat take the wounded men up the slope and over the ridge, then disappear down the other side of the mountain.

  When they were out of sight, Silas crouched down in the brush on the slope and considered his plan. Ten miners had carried out packs full of ore, with instructions to return with the empty packs. If Carden was expecting those men to return, he might send someone to look for them when they didn’t. If Silas hid in the tunnel they were using, he should be able to eliminate some of the remaining miners one or two at a time.

  Down in the gully, another half-dozen A’ayimat had appeared and were looking over the downed miners. A few of the miners were clearly dead; the A’ayimat left them to lie where they were. With wordless efficiency, they bound the hands and feet of the miners who were still alive. The ones who protested were silenced with cuffs about the face and head.

  As the A’ayimat took care of their task, Silas climbed back down the slope and retrieved both of his water bottles from his gear, along with some lengths of rope and a couple of kerchiefs, which would come in handy for taking prisoners, and some more bullets. He also asked the A’ayimat to look after Abenar and the ranchers’ horses.

  Prepared for the fight ahead of him, Silas entered the cave and summoned a mage light. Fresh footprints showed on the ground, coming out of the tunnel he had identified earlier as the one Carden’s party had taken. He dowsed his light, shielded his power, and began making his way down the tunnel.

  It was a long way down. Not quite as steep as he had guessed it would be, based on the heavy breathing of the miners who had come up that way, but not easy, either. There was no guessing time or distance as he felt his way in the dark, or how much farther there was to go. At least he didn’t pass any tunnels branching off of this one; there was no chance he had taken a wrong turn, or failed to take a turn he should have taken.

  By the heavy sense of cold, dark malice, strong enough that he could feel it even with his power shielded, he knew that the ore Carden sought, and Carden himself, lay farther down the tunnel. At length, a sharp whiff of urine reached
his nose and he heard voices ahead. A faint orange glow appeared in the distance. After a few gentle bends in the passage, the light grew brighter, the smell stronger, and the voices louder. He recognized Lainie’s voice; though he couldn’t make out the words, it sounded like she was arguing with Carden. Some of the weight of worry lifted from Silas’s mind; she was still alive, and fighting.

  Silas moved forward silently until a cavern at the end of the tunnel came into view. He got as close as he could without revealing himself and looked in. The cavern was lit by a globe of orange mage light, darkened by the threads of black power twisting through it. Silas counted nine miners chiseling at the black ore that covered every surface of the enormous cave – more men than he had been expecting. Carden was walking a circuit of the cave, inspecting the growing piles of ore. His movements were nervous and jittery, and his increased power seemed to shimmer off of him like summer heat off of bare ground, only in waves of darkness instead of light.

  Lainie sat slumped against the wall to Silas’s left, cradling her right arm against her chest. She looked haggard, tired, filthy, and banged up. Her face was smudged with dark patches that might have been dirt or bruises or both. Anger swelled in Silas’s heart at the thought of Carden hitting her; he repressed the urge to go in right away, and went on observing the situation.

  Carden walked past Lainie towards the tunnel entrance where Silas was lurking, and she shot a look of pure poison at his back. With Carden facing away from her, she seemed to sit up a little straighter, and the expression on her face became more alert. Silas could see her glancing from the miners to Carden to the tunnel entrance, then back again – she was looking for a chance to escape. Neither Carden, nor the miners, nor the dark, heavy, malign power in the cavern had been able to extinguish her spirit, he thought admiringly. She was a long way from giving up.

  Again he was tempted to ditch his plan to take on the miners one or two at a time and just go in, gun and magic blazing, to get her, but he held himself back. It was too likely that she would get hurt in the crossfire. She had held on for this long; she looked like she had it in her to hold on a little longer while he did this right. He sent up silent prayers to the Provider and the Avenger for continued courage and strength for her, then eased his way a short distance back up the tunnel and settled in to wait for his first victim.