“Wait,” said Hap. “Where are you going? We’ve got to rescue Sophia.”
“Not now. Stay with me.”
The trail led generally upward before petering out among icy crags. Markie shook his head, seeing Hap struggle. “You sure picked the wrong shoes for rock climbing.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Hap peered ahead but despite the moonlight could see nothing but stone and ice, with stunted evergreens between. Another stretch and they reached a wide ledge, where Hap noticed packed-down snow and a long crack in the rock face. Getting nearer, he saw that the opening was wide enough to step through, and it led inside the mountain.
Markie went first, lighting a kerosene lamp that hung inside the entrance. “They got here before us,” he said quietly.
“Who?”
“Watch your step.”
It was warmer within. The stones were wet with ice melt and slippery with lichen as the friends made their way. Hap was surprised to see an orange glow ahead. Uncertain at first, it grew brighter as they went on. Finally, turning a corner and ducking beneath stalactites, they stepped into a high, open area, wide as a train station. In the center, half a dozen people stood beside a fire.
They were all looking at Hap.
He looked at them as well but had trouble making out faces silhouetted against the flames.
One of the men moved aside, and a dwarfish creature stepped forward. Hap realized at once it was an Auki—one he’d seen before. It took a moment to place him, but the woolen watch cap and tufted eyebrows gave him away.
“What,” exclaimed Hap, “are you doing here?”
“Welcomen, sone,” said Ulf, the ferryboat captain. “We been expecting ye.”
As Hap stepped closer, other faces revealed themselves amid the dancing shadows. He didn’t recognize the men, but there among them, bigger than anyone, stood Mag the mule driver.
“Well, well,” she said.
“Hello, Mag,” said Hap.
“Here’s a mug of tea to warm your gizzards.”
Hap took the drink gratefully. The steam, with the mingled scents of cinnamon and clove, tingled against his face.
“We hear your friend’s got herself in a bit of trouble,” she said.
Ulf cleared his throat. “Shouldst ye nought ha brought her in the first place, but let that pass.”
Markie spoke up, introducing the others. Most were miners, but one—a tall, somber-faced man in military khakis—was a guard. “These are your friends,” said Markie. “Learn their faces.”
Hap looked around at them. “My friends?”
“The underground. The resistance,” Markie supplied. “Ulf here is our leader.”
Hap was confused. Ulf hadn’t seemed the smartest creature he’d ever met. Then he remembered Mag’s words: Sometimes it’s smart to be dumb. It might have been Ulf who’d taught her that.
“We figured,” said Markie, “since we’re all in the same game, it would be good to know who’s playing on your side.”
“What game is that?”
“That’s what we call it, in case we’re overheard by the wrong ears.”
“I see. And the game is …?”
“Revolt.”
“Freedom,” said Ulf.
“Doom to evildoers,” said Mag, crossing her arms before her.
Hap had to smile.
“And you expect to go up against Slag and his guns?”
“There’s more of us than you see, but you don’t need to know ’em,” said Markie. “Better you don’t.”
Hap sipped carefully from the mug. “How do you know you can trust me?”
“A fair question. For one thing, we’ve been watching you. And then …” He looked around at the others. Ulf nodded. “And then,” Markie went on, “your dad said you were all right.”
“My father!” Hap’s heart started beating hard. “You know where he is?”
“We do. He’s been sending us messages.”
“Where is he?”
Markie hesitated. “He’s with Slag’s men.”
“No!” Hap burst out. “He would never—” He looked around angrily. “You don’t know my dad if you think—”
“What I meant,” said Markie, “is that he’s with them. He’s not one of them.”
The words sank in. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It is.”
“Is he …” Hap could hardly say it. “Is he all right?”
Everyone was silent.
“Will somebody say something?”
Mag put a weighty arm around Hap’s shoulder. “He’s a brave man,” she said. “Brave as my Ulf.”
“Here,” said Markie, “maybe you should have a seat.” He sat down near the fire and patted the stone beside him. “We’ve got a lot to go over.”
For the next twenty minutes, Markie and the others told the boy what they knew. When he’d arrived on the mountain, Silas had been as miserable as anyone could be. He was known among his co-workers as “the silent one.” Finally, he got so bad it was either die or— sing.
“Your dad has quite a voice,” said the man in the guard’s uniform.
“I know,” said Hap.
“Singing,” said Markie quietly, “was his way of not dying.”
Hap bit his underlip. It hurt to think of his father this way.
“Anyway, it made him feel better,” Markie went on. “Made others feel better, too.”
Hap nodded.
“The guards didn’t know what to do. There’s no actual regulation against singing in the mine, since nobody’d done it before; but it’s understood the workers aren’t there to enjoy themselves. Your father was not showing the proper amount of misery.”
The guards, said Markie, reported Hap’s father to the foreman, and the foreman reported him to the overseer. Finally, he was brought before Slag himself, who ordered him separated from the others and kept in headquarters to entertain Slag’s men exclusively.
That was how the former beekeeper from Aplanap ended up in the inner circle of Xexnax Command Central. It was only a small step to becoming a spy.
“He doesn’t know about you yet,” Markie added.
“But you said—”
“He talks about you all the time. Says how trust-worthy you are. But he has no idea you’re here.”
“You’ve got to tell him!”
Markie stroked his chin.
“We’re afraid how it might affect him. We don’t want to throw him off. He’s too useful.”
“Useful!”
“Yes. Except for him, we wouldn’t know your friend’s been captured or where she’s held. I call that useful.”
Hap couldn’t argue. “So, where are they holding her?”
“There are cells in the basement of the headquarters building.”
“We’ve got to get her out of there!”
“We will,” said Markie. “Soon as we can figure out how.”
“What do they want with her?”
“They’re asking her questions.”
“Interrogating her?”
No one spoke. Big Mag came over and sat beside Hap. “We all want to rescue her, and your dad, of course.” She glanced over at Ulf. “But there’s more than them involved. There’s a whole mountain of people.”
Hap was staring into the fire.
“Slag’s after something,” Mag went on. “Your father’s learning what he can. So, you see, we don’t want to rescue him too soon.”
Hap looked from Mag to Ulf.
“He nic want it,” said the Auki, “ere he leornst hwaet Slag’s aboot.”
Hap recalled that he himself had once told somebody not to rescue him. “But Sophia—”
“Different story,” said Markie. “But tricky.”
Hap remembered how Sophia had once crawled through the air vents of the Aplanap prison to save him. “I’ll do anything,” he said.
“We know you will,” said Mag.
“Meanwhile,” said Markie, “you might want to
hold on to this.” He handed the boy a tattered little book. “I found this in the snow outside the window of the headquarters.”
Hap stared down at it. One Hundred Easy Spells for Beginners.
He slipped the book in his pocket.
Eighteen
THE SMOKE WAS so thick the soldiers could barely make out the face of the man standing on the table, and their voices were so loud they could hardly hear him sing.
It was a sweet song, a little sad, about life in old Aplanap. For the older soldiers, those who remembered happier days, it was a favorite.
And Silas knew how to keep a song fresh. Every time he sang “The Cuckoos of Aplanap,” the words were a little different, as if he were making them up on the spot. The soldiers liked that, too.
“So clever he is,” remarked a bewhiskered gent, giving his head a shake.
“Another round, boy!” yelled an impatient guardsman at the end, thumping his tankard on the table.
The serving boy, a tall, resentful-looking lad on the fringe of his first mustache, set down the tray he was carrying and wiped his hands on his pants bottom. “Hold on, I’ll get to you. Gert’s just bringing in a new barrel.”
“You hear that? He’ll get to you,” called out another, leaning back and clunking a booted foot on the table. “In his good time.”
“Silence!” A sharp, clear voice rang out. Mr. Slag had entered the room, with his black dogs on a leash and his short shotgun jammed in his belt. He tossed his hat on the table. “I want to hear this fellow Silas.”
Talk dwindled to a murmur as the dogs curled at their master’s feet. The serving boy came around with a jug.
“Sing us something else, Mr. Barlo,” said Slag. “Your songs are too sad.”
“What would you like?” Silas’s button-brown eyes blinked patiently, but his crooked nose gave a twitch, a sign of nerves.
“Something lively, for heaven’s sake.” Slag squinted at him through the tobacco haze. “What do you know that’s lively?”
“There’s that hiking song I used to sing with my boy during our jaunts.”
“That’s right. You’ve got a son, haven’t you?”
“I do.”
“A fine-looking boy, for a thief.”
“Excuse me?” The nose twitched, first right, then left, like a trapped hamster.
“What? You didn’t know?”
Silas suddenly had trouble speaking. “Are you, um, talking about Hap Barlo?”
“That’s the name. He’s been our guest on the mountain for the past several weeks.”
Silas couldn’t speak at all.
Hap on Mount Xexnax!
“So, then,” said Slag heartily, “what have you got for us? I’ll tell you what. Sing us about that nose of yours. With all this smoke, it’s the only part of you I can see.”
A general laugh went up, followed by much quaffing of grog. Soon empty tankards were thumping on the table.
“And give us a dance while you’re about it,” Slag added.
“A dance and a song. Yes, sir.”
Silas paused. It was a longer pause than usual, as if he were looking around for his voice. A soldier called out for him to hurry. Suddenly, Silas gave a slap to the little drum tucked under his arm and thrust his face forward, accentuating his crooked nose. He did a fancy shuffle and turned right around, stopping like a statue where he’d been before. “My nose,” he sang in a rising tenor, “my beautiful, shining nose …”
A roar of laughter filled the low-ceilinged room.
Whappity-whappity-whappity on the little drum. Several men started clapping to the rhythm.
My nose is excellent at smelling.
In fact, it’s smelling like a rose!
Whap-whappity!
It sniffs out crime, it sniffs out dirt,
it sniffs that fellow’s undershirt.
The guard with the soiled shirt blushed red as his companions howled.
“A fine thrust, Mr. Barlo!” called Slag.
“Keep on.”
It smells the grog the guardsmen quaff——
Loud laughter from the two guardsmen at the table.
and smells the burp in their belly laugh.
Now everyone laughed except the guardsmen.
“Again,” cried Slag, raising his mug. He glanced around at the others.
“He hits again!”
But the smell that makes these nostrils gag,
worse than the feet of an unwashed hag …
The drum grew louder and Silas’s voice more intense as it wound around the strange melody he was improvising.
… or rotten fish in a saddlebag,
or the smell of blood on a battle flag …
Silas did a neat pirouette and came to a stop directly facing Slag. The room fell silent. The two men stared at each other.
Whappity-whap!
…is the smell of a lie and the smell of a brag
by some scurvy-minded scallywag….
“Careful, Mr. Barlo,” Slag breathed. One of the dogs grumbled.
But such foul thoughts need never nag,
no, never, never, never nag
our dear, illustrious …
Here Silas broke into a twinkling smile.
…Mr. Slag!
The room remained silent until, slowly, Slag lifted his hands and clapped them together. Then everyone clapped. More than that, they yelled with pleasure.
“Very good, Barlo,” Slag said when the applause had died down.
“You’ve earned your dinner. Why don’t you take it in the kitchen?”
Silas made a short bow and climbed from the table. On his way out, he accepted slaps on the shoulder from several of the men and a wink from another.
He lurched into the kitchen, looking around distractedly. He gave a nod to Gert, who was just leaving.
“Playing it pretty close to the edge, aren’t ya?” murmured the under-cook when the door had closed. He was a wooden-faced man seldom given to speech.
Silas didn’t answer. He leaned his back against the wall, then slid down till he was sitting.
“Look!” said the scullery maid’s little daughter. She was peeking out from the safety of her mother’s skirt.
“Look, Maman, he’s crying! He’s crying all over his funny nose.”
Nineteen
SOPHIA, HAP THOUGHT, his mind taking on the rhythm of the train car rattling through the darkness. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia …
He took out Sophia’s little book of spells and flipped through it. Several of the sections had her check marks next to them, and one was completely underlined: the “Never-Fail Love Spell.”
Why was that particular spell so important?
The thought struck him: Was she trying to use it on him?
Did she really think about him that way?
For heaven’s sake, he thought, this was a booklet for tourists interested in that moldy old legend! It was about as real as the little ceramic figurines of the goddess, in three sizes, that lined the store’s counter. Surely she understood that!
The train arrived at the new workstation, deeper in the mountain than before. The work was hotter than yesterday, and yesterday had been hotter than the day before. Mining operations in Xexnax had definitely taken a turn: in direction, down; in temperature, up.
Hap hadn’t slept much after last night’s adventure and had to be extra-careful not to make mistakes, especially here, where a miscalculation could cost you an eye or an arm. To his surprise, he noticed the Aukis making blunders themselves. They lived in this mountain and knew better than that. Now they could be found digging in places they shouldn’t be and not digging in places they should.
Pec, the Auki foreman, shouted at them. Sometimes he stung them with the little whip he carried in his waistband, but still they kept getting things wrong. Hap began to wonder if they were making mistakes on purpose.
But why? What did it matter where they dug? Stone was stone.
He looked from one worker to the next,
gauging whether he could trust any of them. His task, Markie had told him, was to get the Aukis to help the resistance. Hap had asked the obvious question: Why not have Ulf talk to his fellow Aukis?
Ulf had looked at him with a sadness Hap hadn’t seen before. No one, he said, would talk to him. They considered him a traitor for marrying a human. Now he was an outcast in both worlds, doomed to steer the ferryboat back and forth between them.
No, Ulf had said, if anyone could win the Aukis over, it would have to be Hap.
Having a few minutes free while the shovel crew worked, Hap decided to go looking for the Auki called Baen. He was the bony old fellow with the sympathetic eyes who’d helped Hap get to his feet that awful first day in the mine. Over the weeks, they’d become almost friends. If anyone would help him, he’d be the one.
They called him Baen, or Baen Hus, but that was just a nickname, of course. No one would actually be named Baen Hus (“Bone House” in Auki). They called him that because he was so skinny.
Hap was the sort who made friends easily, and the others no longer spat at him. It helped that Baen, a respected elder, had befriended him. But what surprised the workers most was Hap’s mastery of a number of Auki words. They didn’t know what to make of it. He was, after all, a member of the oppressor race. Nobody like him had ever bothered to learn their language.
He set off now at a trot. Baen, he’d been told, was setting explosive charges in a small side tunnel not far away.
“Thaer ye erest, Baen!” Hap called out in Auki, seeing the old fellow up ahead.
“Habbst kear!” cried the Auki, waving him back.
The warning to be careful came just a moment too late. A deafening explosion knocked the boy off his feet. He blacked out, felt himself floating, then falling, all in slow motion.
Am I dead? he thought dreamily. People he knew drifted into his vision: Grel looking up from his workbench, Silas holding out his arms, Sophia shaking her head and smiling.
A moment later, his body slammed onto the rocks, and he was shocked awake. Shocked, too, at the pain shooting up his side. Coming to his bruised senses, he cringed as dust and jagged shards from the roof rained down on him. He choked violently, as more and more debris fell onto him. Clawing about, he struggled desperately for air, but the rubble was now over his head.
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