Dark Territory

by A. C. Cobble

  “What do you mean?” queried Ben.

  “Rhys was unique, well, almost unique, for a hunter,” responded Jasper. “Plenty of skilled assassins are willing to risk their life on a difficult target if the price is right. They play a dangerous game and they know it. Very few of them will target a mage, though. The reward is never worth that much risk. Rhys would accept a commission on any target, no matter how dangerous the quarry.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!” interjected Amelie. “Rhys works for the Sanctuary. Why would they hire him if he was doing what you say and assassinating mages?”

  “Not all mages are part of the Sanctuary,” reminded Jasper. He tapped his chest to drive the point home.

  “Is that why you don’t like Rhys? He attacked you?” asked Ben.

  “No,” answered Jasper, “but he has gone after people I know, my friends. A lot of good people have fallen to his blade. You say the man has changed, and I hope that is true, but I have to wonder. Why else would he work for the Sanctuary? What else do they need him to do except track down people like me?”

  Ben cringed. “He quit the Sanctuary. He doesn’t answer to the Veil any longer.”

  Jasper shrugged. “If you say so. If I see him again, I plan to discuss things with him. We have years of history to resolve, and there are things he needs to pay for.”

  Ben didn’t respond. Instead, he lay down atop his bedroll. He slept fitfully. This time, it wasn’t the oppressive darkness or the tight confines of the tunnel that bothered him. It was Jasper’s comments about Rhys. Ben knew his friend wasn’t always a good person, but Jasper’s personal experience was disturbing. He didn’t doubt the mage’s tale. The man had no reason to lie, and it did fit with what Rhys said about himself.

  Amelie, who was huddled close to Ben on the rock floor, whispered, “He’s talking about a person he knows. That doesn’t change who we know.”

  Ben snaked a hand out from under his bedroll and gripped Amelie’s hand. She was right. The man they knew was a good person, despite whatever he’d done in the past. People change, and no one is past redemption, right?

  Ben drifted to sleep, rolling the question over in his mind.

  ***

  Three more days of hiking down the smooth rock tunnel and they finally found something different.

  Ben was relieved. His discomfort with being underground had faded into boredom. There was nothing to see in the tunnel except smooth rock walls. The light from Jasper’s stone only extended ten paces in front of them so there wasn’t even much rock to see. It was like an unending dream, pace after pace of water-worn rock descending into a giant black hole of nothing. It lulled him into a daze. He was so lost in the daze that he didn’t notice the changes to the environment when they started happening.

  “Something is different,” declared Amelie from behind. She was bringing up the rear, shining the light for Ben and Jasper to walk by.

  “Moisture in the air,” commented the mage. “We’re approaching the lake.”

  They hiked another half bell before they finally arrived. At first, it didn’t look much different from the tunnel they’d been walking through. The light of the stone only stretched so far. It revealed a slightly sloping rock bank, walls extending out of sight, and crystal clear water. The water was almost invisible, it was so clear and motionless. When they stopped walking, Ben noticed something else. High above them, a subtle blue-green glow stretched across the ceiling of what he assumed was a cave.

  “What is that?” he asked, pointing above their heads.

  “Lichen,” answered Jasper. “It’s bioluminescent.”

  Ben blinked back at the mage.

  “It glows naturally.”

  “Ah,” remarked Ben. He continued looking up at the glow, trying to guess how far into the distance it extended. It was impossible to tell in the black of the cave.

  “Is the water safe?” asked Amelie, staring at the edge and shining the light into the clear liquid.

  “It’s the cleanest water you’ll ever drink,” responded Jasper jovially. “The water comes from a mountain spring above, pours down the tunnel we just walked, and then lies down here, motionless. The sediment falls to the bottom and the stuff up top is completely pure. Try it.”

  The mage was walking into the darkness as he spoke, down the rock embankment.

  Amelie bent and scooped up a handful of water. She splashed it in her mouth and grunted appreciatively. She then unhooked her water skin from her pack and plunged it into the lake.

  A scrape across the rock drew Ben’s attention. He saw Jasper emerge back into the light. He was dragging a small dinghy behind him.

  “We’re going to boat across the lake?” asked Ben.

  “It’s the only way,” answered Jasper. “This embankment ends in about one hundred paces and there is no walkable path around. It’s a half-day ride in the boat to cross. You’d never make it swimming.”

  They rested one more night on the rocky bank before embarking on the boat. It was a tight fit between the three of them and Jasper’s log of anima-wood. Amelie sat in front, holding the light ahead to scout where they were going. Ben sat in the middle and Jasper took the rear. The mage would begin rowing then Ben would take over when the older man got tired. Amelie offered to help, but with her still-healing collarbone, they refused.

  When Jasper pushed them away from the bank and hopped in the boat, Ben gripped the gunwales. The side of the boat dipped perilously close to the water. If they got further out onto the lake and took on water or flipped, it could be fatal.

  Jasper, back turned to Ben, dunked the oars into the clear water and pulled, propelling the boat across the glass smooth surface.

  Periodically, as they skimmed across the lake, rock structures would rise out of the water or dip down from a low point in the roof of the cave. Dimly glowing mats of lichen occasionally brightened their journey, but frequently they were so high or so sporadic that the stone Amelie held was the only source of light.

  “What if we take a wrong turn?” asked Ben during one stretch of uninterrupted blackness. “We could be circling out here for days.”

  “There are some landmarks,” grunted Jasper, taking another pull on the oars and shooting them forward a couple of paces.

  Ben and Amelie settled down. In the huge open space of the cavern, Ben’s discomfort with being underground lessened.

  The only sounds were the slap of Jasper’s oars churning through the water and the waves the little boat made as it glided along. Ben stared at the shifting patterns of lichen and relaxed for the first time in three days. He inhaled deeply of the damp air and let it out slowly. Strange, he thought, how the obvious danger of a small boat on open water was so much more comfortable to him than the solid ground of the tunnel. Fear was a funny thing.

  Amelie, leaning against the prow of the boat, suddenly perked up.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  Ben looked around her shoulder and saw the light of the stone was reflecting on something.

  “Right on target,” declared Jasper. “That is the object I believe the miners of old were searching for when they tunneled down here.”

  The closer they got, the more apparent it became that hanging down from the ceiling of the cavern, high above their boat, was a kingdom’s wealth of gemstones.

  Jasper took a break from rowing and they drifted underneath the cluster.

  “Ercidite,” he said.

  Amelie looked back at him then up at the gems with open-mouthed wonder.

  “For my eighteenth winter, my father gave me a necklace with an ercidite stone,” she said. “It was smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. It was the most valuable piece of jewelry he ever gave me. Even my mother was jealous. She didn’t speak to my father for a month. He tried to make it up to her, to buy her an even larger ercidite stone, but he couldn’t find one available at any price. I don’t think she ever forgave him for that. In her mind, he’d put his daughter above his wife.”

>   “That was awfully kind of your father,” murmured Jasper. “Not many fathers can afford ercidite jewelry for a daughter. Only a handful of very powerful lords, I’d imagine. You must have forgotten to tell me that part of your story. Anything else you didn’t mention?”

  “We told the important pieces,” claimed Amelie.

  Jasper snorted but didn’t reply.

  High above them, the sparkling cluster could have filled a house.

  Ben shifted in the boat, looking around.

  “That’s one hundred paces above us,” mentioned Jasper. “The bottom of the lake is deep here, about five hundred paces. The ercidite is growing in a crack in the rock. I’ve delved it so I know. The crack extends a good two-hundred paces high then fans out. If the ercidite was somehow freed, I believe a couple thousand wagons worth of rock would come crashing down on top of it.”

  Ben looked around them. Total darkness encapsulated them, the water, and unimaginable wealth.

  “You can’t get it down,” surmised Amelie.

  “No, I can’t,” said Jasper with a chuckle. “I’ve thought about it. I strongly suspect the miners who came down here made an effort. They must have been skilled and determined people, but there it is, still hanging above us.”

  Ben started, “Couldn’t you—”

  “Dig down through the mountain? There is a league and a half of hard granite above our heads.”

  “How about—”

  “Five hundred paces of water below us. You can’t sink pilings that deep. Besides, even if you did, you be flattened when the rock above the gemstones came down with them.”

  “Couldn’t you break off a small piece using magic?” wondered Ben.

  Jasper chuckled behind him. “Ercidite is hard, harder than diamond. Applying enough force to shatter the gem while that much rock is hanging above me isn’t something I’ve been bold enough to try. And if you’re not directly below to catch the falling pieces, then anything that breaks off will be lost in the depths of this lake.”

  Ben frowned at the brightly sparkling ercidite. In the black of the cavern, it was as if every star on the clearest of nights had been swept into one tiny corner of sky. The rest of the night was barren, but that one corner blazed like a cold, silver sun.

  “As far as I know, I’m the only one who comes through here,” continued Jasper. “I suspect it’s been centuries since anyone saw these stones without me. In a way, I think that makes those gems mine. I could make an argument that I’m the wealthiest man in Alcott. It’s not that different, is it, storing my wealth under a mountain instead of in a bank?”

  Amelie laughed, the happy sounds dancing across the water around them then disappearing into the vastness of the cavern.

  “Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you did get those gems down?” she asked.

  “With that kind of wealth,” answered Jasper, “I could buy Whitehall from King Argren and he’d walk away whistling a happy tune. His heirs would send me gifts and toast me every new year. But then what? I’d have a big, white headache. The Coalition would be a thorn in my side and my allies would be constantly hounding me for favors. No, I think if I had all of that, I’d be doing the exact same thing I do now. Spend my time making devices, enjoying what the world has to offer, and tweaking the Veil. Nothing wrong with that kind of life.”

  “You wouldn’t even pay a washwoman to sweep your hearth and do your laundry?” jested Ben.

  “Maybe that,” conceded Jasper. “Now that you’ve got me thinking though, I’d pay for an endless supply of good ale too. There’s absolutely nothing better than sitting on my back porch, looking over the stream and mountains behind my house while sipping a cold mug of ale.”

  “I understand that,” agreed Ben. “I’d give an awful lot to be back in my brewery, taste-testing a new batch right before I roll it off to the customer. For me, there’s nothing better than finishing a hard day’s work like that.”

  “Your brewery?” queried Jasper.

  Ben looked back at the man, only able to see him by the light reflecting from the ercidite. “Before I got caught up with bad company,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at Amelie, “I was a brewer.”

  “He was a good one too,” chimed in Amelie. “He was taking over the City before we had to leave. He had a warehouse and an entire team of people assisting brewing and delivering the ale.”

  “I thought you were a logger?” questioned Jasper.

  “I grew up in a logging town,” replied Ben. “I was the brewer there.”

  “We need to stop this fuddling around,” groaned Jasper, dipping his oars back into the still water and pulling hard. “It’s been months since I’ve had a really good ale. When we reach my house, you’ve got work to do, master brewer.”

  They shot through the water after that, the wake spreading behind as Jasper powered them ahead. Ben offered to take a shift, but the man declined. His back bent and straightened, smoothly rocking on the oars.

  “When we get to my home, I am serious,” said Jasper. “I want you to teach me to brew a good ale. I’ve learned a lot in my life, but my ale still tastes like a pig’s leftovers. My friends tell me it’s not fit for consumption. Teach me to brew, and I’ll row you across a thousand lakes.”

  “Ben, you really know the way to a man’s heart,” teased Amelie.

  “You want me to give you a few pointers?” he retorted.

  Amelie turned around in her seat and let the light flicker out. She leaned forward. Ben felt her soft lips against his ear. She whispered, “I think I know a thing or two about how to make a man happy, don’t you agree?”

  Her hot breath on his ear sent a tingle down his spine. Her hair brushed across his neck and he swallowed. He thought he could sense her body, hovering a finger-width away from him.

  “If you two want to get frisky in the boat, do it while I’m not in here,” complained Jasper. “We’re still a bell away from the far shore. That’s longer than I’d like to swim if you flip us over.”

  Amelie sat back and the light flicked on.

  “Sorry. Just reminding Master Ashwood of a few things,” demurred Amelie. “He talks about ale for a few minutes and it’s like all sense goes out of him.”

  Back into the Light

  Four days later, they emerged from a narrow mining tunnel. Ben breathed a sigh of relief. His nerves had frayed to the point he thought he’d go crazy. Clean mountain air filled his lungs as he took his first deep breath in the open. The scent of pine filled his nostrils. He surveyed their surroundings.

  They stood on the slope of a long valley. Pine and aspen grew in swaths across the valley floor and up the sides. A lake sparkled in the distance. As far as he could see, there was no human habitation. The valley extended maybe a week’s walk. It was closed at the far end and he saw no low points in the surrounding mountain range. There was no obvious entry or exit.

  “It’s warm,” remarked Amelie.

  Jasper, hefting the log of anima-wood, responded, “A unique quirk of this geography. The valley is set high in the hills and has steep sides so it doesn’t draw a lot of weather from the surrounding area. It makes for milder winters, milder summers.”

  “This is your home?” asked Ben. The terrain was beautiful, but he’d been looking forward to sleeping inside for a change.

  “There’s a roof and four walls. Don’t worry,” replied Jasper. “We have another day of hiking before we get there. Come on. The sooner we start, the quicker we arrive.”

  Ben stared around the sylvan valley as they passed below the tree line. Fallen pine needles whispered underfoot.

  Jasper, taking long strides down the slope, looked back at Ben and Amelie. “Come on. Aside from that little stop at Creegan’s, I’ve been underground or on the road for the last four weeks. I can taste the mutton shank now. The ale is no good, but we should have some decent wine left.”

  “Mutton. You have sheep?” asked Ben. “What do they do when you’re gone?”

/>   “There are a few permanent residents of this valley in addition to myself,” replied Jasper.

  “Mages?” asked Amelie.

  “Sometimes they like to think so, but no. I’m the only one here who is a real practitioner. These are people who are just looking to get away. They are tired of the system of the lords and ladies. Some of them find their way here. I personally don’t see how it’s much different. They live in my valley, and they follow my rules, but that is their choice. They help by tending to my sheep and other domestic tasks so I don’t complain.”

  “That sounds like Free State,” murmured Ben.

  Jasper glanced at him sharply. “Free State?”

  “People who are tired of living under the thumbs of the lords and ladies,” answered Ben. “We’ve encountered two of them now, little communities of people who are trying to make their own way apart from the world.”

  “Two of them,” queried the mage, “where?”

  “One in the wilderness northeast of the City and one that was at the edge of the Wilds,” answered Ben. “That one…”

  He didn’t need to finish.

  Jasper, shaking his head, muttered under his breath, “He’s really trying to do it, the fool.”

  Ben glanced at Amelie and she shrugged. He thought about pressing Jasper for more, but the serenity of the valley washed over him. After a week underground, it was difficult to gather his thoughts with such lush beauty surrounding them. He decided he’d question the mage later.

  They hiked toward the broad, flat tree-covered floor of the valley. They were headed in the direction of the lake, which made sense to Ben. Wherever Jasper built his house, it would be near fresh water.