by Layton Green
It flew into the air and exploded upwards in a million shards, coating the ceiling with gold buckshot.
The woman jumped to her feet, her eyes intense and narrowed on Val. No trace of a smirk remained on the faces of the two men. Val moaned, sinking to the floor and cradling his burnt hand, fighting not to black out from the pain.
As he writhed in agony, the woman reformed the block of gold from the suspended fragments, then lowered it to the floor. “Elgan,” she murmured, her gaze locked on Val, “take this man to the infirmary right away. Then have him added to the student registry.”
-18-
Hammers and pick axes in hand, the albino dwarves fanned out to pin Will and his companions against the rock formation. The stumpy humanoids looked as dense as pit bulls, at ease with their weapons, and far more sinister than dwarves were supposed to look.
“Who are you?” Will asked, trying to sound tough but knowing he sounded weak and lost. They had been so close to escaping.
“I’ll be asking the questions around here,” the lead dwarf said. His knee-length red tunic showcased the bunched muscles in his arms and calves. A white goatee hung six inches below his chin, and his yellow eyes, possessed of two vertical slits like cat’s eyes, glittered in the darkness.
The dwarves took their weapons and prodded them back to the tusker camp. Grilgor looked cowed when he approached the lead dwarf, whose name Will overheard as Farzal. As they talked business, four of the tuskers locked Will and the other escapees back into the chain of prisoners.
Will noticed a tusker dragging a dead human captive towards an iron cauldron in the middle of camp. It was the woman who had been chained next to Yasmina. Marek, the man whom Will had fought over Caleb’s dinner, was giving Will an accusing stare across the circle. He couldn’t blame him. “She’s dead because of us,” he said, feeling as if he might be sick.
“Not just dead,” Dalen muttered. “Breakfast.”
That almost tipped the scales, but Will choked back his vomit. It was a harsh world, and he knew that if he wanted to survive, he had to learn to cope.
The dwarves handed over five sacks of coins to the tuskers, then herded the line of prisoners towards the rock formations. Will was behind Dalen, and whispered as softly as he could, “Did you expect this transfer?”
“Not this soon, but it makes sense, rucka. The delvers don’t want the tuskers in their mountains.”
Delvers, Will thought.
Half an hour into the mind-blowing rock formations, the entourage stopped at the entrance to a cave. Fifteen more delvers joined them at the cave mouth. Thirty in total.
“Listen well,” Farzal boomed, addressing the crowd from atop a boulder. “It’s a two week journey through the Darklands before we reach the mountain. If ye know anything about the Darklands, then ye know that what ye just tried with the piggies,” he looked right at Will, “would be exceedingly stupid down there. If ye want to live, shut yer mouths and do as yer told.”
“Why should we?” shouted one of the female prisoners. “You’re taking us to the mines. We’ll never survive.”
Will shrank, thinking Farzal would send one of the delvers to punish the speaker. Instead Farzal gave the woman a ruthless smile that chilled Will to his core.
“We’ll provide food and shelter in the mines, which is better than most of ye were doing before the piggies found ye. And if ye work long and hard for us,” he grinned again, “who knows, maybe ye’ll see the light of day again.”
“Lucka,” Dalen muttered to Will. “Delvers never free anyone.”
“And if ye still have doubts,” Farzal said, “remember there are fates in the Darklands much worse than the mines.”
They traversed a series of caves deep underground, the forks in the passages so convoluted that even Will quickly lost track. Delvers on either side of the captives carried torches so the humans wouldn’t trip in the darkness.
A few hours into the journey, far beneath the surface, they reached a bronze door set into the cave wall. An alien scrawl of runes covered the face of the metal.
“King’s Blood,” Dalen said in an awed voice. “A real entrance to the Darklands.”
Farzal touched a series of runes in unison, too fast for Will too follow, and the door swung open on silent hinges.
“Is he a mage?” Will whispered.
“Delvers aren’t wizard born,” Dalen whispered back, “though they can do things with stone and metal that seem magical. My Da said they use geomancers and warders to augment their work.”
The door opened onto a wide tunnel with an arched ceiling. Will estimated it was seven feet high at the apex. Giant blocks of stone, fitted together smoothly and without mortar, comprised the walls of the tunnel.
“Thank God,” Caleb murmured behind Will. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to stand.”
Every fifty feet, lanterns lit the tunnel with a sickly green glow, barely enough light to see by. When they passed one of the lamps, Will looked inside and saw a cluster of phosphorescent minerals.
The delvers didn’t talk much, but when they did, they spoke in raspy but fluent English. Will assumed they had their own language, but he had yet to hear it.
The tunnel continued for another few hours, until they reached an enormous natural cavern with five identical tunnels exiting in different directions. Stalactites and stalagmites filled the grotto, as well as a pool of murky water. A colony of bats hung from one corner of the ceiling, and a pair of mineral lanterns provided faint illumination.
The delvers had set a brutal pace. When they gave the order to stop marching and set camp in the grotto, the prisoners slumped to the ground.
“Break it down,” Farzal ordered, and the delvers orchestrated a symphony of coordinated action. They arranged the prisoners in a circle near the basin of water, set up the mess area and began preparing dinner, posted sentries in the tunnels and at the entrances to the cavern. One of the delvers applied a salve to Will’s bloodied arm, presumably to insure his value in the mines.
After a meal of cold stew and cave water, Will eyed his ragtag companions. All of them were suffering from malnutrition, exhaustion, and the chill of the Darklands. He was on his last legs himself.
Yasmina had been shaking and vomiting since they entered the caves, making Will think something more sinister than cold and exhaustion was plaguing her. He had no idea whether it was day or night, but as they settled in to rest, one of the guards, a delver with a flat nose and a ponytail of dreadlocks, approached Yasmina and asked if she would like something to warm her up.
“Please,” she said.
He unlocked her from the circle while three more delvers looked on and smirked. “Just follow me,” he said, his eyes roaming her body with a hungry gaze.
Yasmina hesitated.
“I’ll keep ye as warm as ye’ve ever been.”
She stumbled back to Caleb, and the guard laughed and chained her up again. “If ye get too cold, lassie,” he said, shoving her into Caleb’s arms, “ye just remember Fargar’s offer. I’ll hold it open for ye.”
Yasmina curled into a ball, and Caleb waved Will closer. A faint blue rash had formed on the exposed skin of her arms. They pointed it out to Dalen, who swore.
“What is it?” Caleb asked, hovering over Yasmina like a mother hen.
“Breakbone Rash. From chewing the stinkweed bulb. Aike. It’s rare but I think she’s got it.”
“What?” Will said. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
“Would it have changed your mind?” Dalen shot back. “We took a risk.”
“What’s it mean?” Caleb asked. “I mean . . . how bad is it?”
Dalen couldn’t look at Yasmina. “Some people survive,” he said weakly.
A while later, as the delvers drank and chatted amongst themselves, Will turned on his side to face Dalen. “You asleep yet?”
The illusionist’s eyelids fluttered. “Yes.”
“We need to talk.”
“About what?�
� Dalen asked, in a defeated voice.
“About escaping.”
“In the Darklands? Lucka, Will, forget it. We’ll never find our way out of here.”
“Isn’t getting lost down here better than facing the mines? Surely we can figure something out, if we can get away.”
“For starters, delvers are much cleverer than tuskers. And crueler. They’ll kill one of us as an example if they catch us. But that’s not it. Don’t you understand where you are? No one knows the Darklands except the delvers and whatever else,” his eyes flicked to the shadows, “lives down here.”
“What does live down here?”
Dalen threw a hand up, then realized he had made a sudden movement. He and Will waited in tense silence until sure no one was looking. “Aike. Rock wyrms, titan crabs, cave fiends, darrowgars, darklings. And those are just the commons. From what they say, the delver tunnels are only the beginning. The Darklands go deep, deeper than you can ever imagine. Old things live down here. Even if we escaped the delvers, we’ll be lost or eaten within days, if not hours. Not to mention the lack of food, water, and light.”
“Sounds promising,” Will muttered. For once, he didn’t get the sense Dalen was exaggerating. His eyes found Caleb and Yasmina, huddled on the floor beside him.
“Lucka, Will, wizards don’t come down here. At this point, I’m more worried about reaching the mines alive than trying to escape.”
The next two ‘days’ were an endless series of tunnels and intersecting caverns. Judging by the position of the lanterns, most of the time they were traversing a gentle downward slope. Thinking of how far underground they had journeyed gave Will a queasy feeling.
On the fourth day, they descended a narrow staircase that led straight into a chasm. The dwarves lit the torches for the prisoners, but outside of the penumbra of light, Will saw nothing but darkness in every direction. It was terrifying.
After the chasm, which descended for at least a mile, the tunnel leveled out for the rest of the day. They encountered countless more intersections, some of which contained jagged holes that the delvers crept around as if something would spring out of them. Will peered inside one and couldn’t see the bottom.
Did Urfe have a mantle and a molten core like back home, he wondered? If so, how close were they to it, and what lived down there?
At the end of the day, the passage spilled into a cavern with a vast underground river flowing through it, so wide Will couldn’t see the other side. Sandy soil the color of blood filled the cavern, and giant phosphorescent mushrooms, most as tall as Caleb, sprouted from the weird topsoil.
“It’s beautiful,” Yasmina said, startling Will. She had barely spoken since their descent into the Darklands. The rash had grown more pronounced and she had developed a fever.
Caleb took her hand and squeezed it with a grave expression, as if realizing the need for a moment of happiness. “It is.”
The delvers set up camp next to the river, which was the same crimson color as the topsoil. The surrounding mushrooms towered over the four-foot tall delvers.
Will noticed a somberness to their captors’ demeanors. Less ale was quaffed during dinner, more sentries were posted, and the delvers’ yellow pupils kept flicking into the darkness.
“What do you think is out there?” Caleb asked, hands hugging his knees.
“Dunno,” Dalen said, “but I hope it stays out there.”
The delvers had stashed Will’s sword in one of the burlap sacks they carried, and he felt naked without it. If something decided to attack the camp, he would be as helpless as a babe.
The prisoners huddled together, as close as the chains would allow. After a long period of lying awake in silence, Will finally fell asleep, until his eyes opened at some point deep into the night. The camp was quiet, the river still, the cavern an eerie dreamland lit by the green and yellow glow of the mushrooms.
Before his eyes closed again, he glanced around, as if to reassure himself that nothing was out there.
And saw a creature creeping into the cavern from one of the side tunnels. The thing resembled a giant pink salamander, only with a long and narrow head like a crocodile’s, its jaw lined with hundreds of dagger-sharp teeth.
The creature was creeping upside down along the ceiling, above the two sentries. Sticking out of its mouth was the limp torso of a delver.
Will opened his mouth to yell, but one of the sentries beat him to it.
“Darrowgars!” the delver roared. “DARROWGARS!”
-19-
The woman huddled in a damp corner of the cell, clutching her gray caftan as her lips formed a continuous string of prayers. She was not afraid, just cold and wet and miserable. When the time was right, Devla alone would decide to save or take her life, and that knowledge made her feel secure. Her god had formed the world, raised the mountains, filled the seas—he possessed more power in a single breath than all the wizards of the Congregation combined. If He wanted to free her, then He would.
The heavy door creaked open, allowing light to flood in. Two days had passed since the pyromancer had snatched her from the fountain on Bohemian Isle and deposited her in this stone prison. She was weak from hunger, thirsty beyond belief.
Her downcast eyes caught the legs of three people entering the room, and she heard the door close behind them. Legs clad in the finest of wool, feet shod in smooth calfskin boots. Wizards.
The woman’s eyes lifted and then widened in surprise. The tall, stately wizard in the middle she knew on sight.
Lord Alistair, Chief Thaumaturge of the Congregation.
Accompanying him was a handsome dark-haired man, as well as a delicate blond woman with cruel eyes and a thin but expressive mouth.
Lord Alistair opened his palm towards the prisoner, forcing her to stand against her will. The woman tried to wriggle free, but she couldn’t even twitch. Filthy, evil wizards.
“What is your name?” Lord Alistair asked.
She glared back at him, defiant. Knowing her name, Magdala of Clan Argentari, would give the wizards leverage over her family.
“Who sent you to the fountain?” Lord Alistair asked, when she didn’t respond.
The woman spat. “You know who. The Prophet.”
“And where is this illustrious teacher who commands the immolation of his followers?”
“Embrace the power of Devla, nonbelievers. Embrace Him or thou wilt burn.”
“Braden?” Lord Alistair said. “If you will?”
The dark-haired mage stared at the captive. She felt a terrible pain in her fingers, looked down, and watched her fingernails peel away and fall to the floor. She gritted her teeth.
“It will be better if you talk,” the blond woman said. “Trust me.”
The captive spat. “Knowest there is nothing thou canst do which would cause me to betray my prophet or our God. Nothing.”
Braden flicked a wrist. One of the prisoner’s arms shot straight out to her side. She tried to lower it, but it wouldn’t budge. As she watched, horrified, her elbow began to invert at the wrong angle, bending further and further until it snapped.
As she screamed, Lord Alistair took a step closer, looming over her. “I care not about your fictional deity. But, young lady, you will guide me to the Prophet. Do you understand who I am? Who stands here with me? The sort of power we wield?”
The woman’s arm was still outstretched, the urge to cradle her broken wing almost unbearable. She was hyperventilating from the pain, and had to gasp her words. “If thou thinkest thou can break me, thou dost not understand our beliefs. Compared to the agony of eternal damnation, the pain of this world is a drop of water in the ocean.”
“We’ll just have to see about that,” Lord Alistair said, nodding to Braden.
The cuerpomancer’s liquid eyes betrayed no emotion as they focused on the captive. As he raised a hand, her shirt flew off her body, and she shrieked in pain as her skin peeled back from her fingers and palms. The process continued all the way up her arms an
d across the top of her chest.
“We prefer not to continue,” Lord Alistair said. “But we will.”
When she still refused to speak, Braden gave a contemptuous flick of his wrist that sent the flayed husk of skin flying into the opposite corner, where it settled like a piece of soiled laundry. The prisoner’s arms and upper chest were a red mass of exposed flesh.
The pain was almost as intense as her immolation had been. She lost control of her bowels, and forced herself to remain conscious long enough to deliver her final words. “Thou shalt burn for eternity in golden fire for thy wickedness,” she screamed, her body convulsing in waves of uncontrollable spasms from the pain. “Thou shalt burn.”
-20-
It was Registration day for wizard school.
Jittery with anticipation, Val prepared a pot of coffee as the sun broached the horizon. Sleep had never been a priority for him.
After caffeinating, he replaced the bandages on his hand. A cuerpomancer in the infirmary had managed to repair most of the damage and somehow regrow the skin, but Val had to keep his hand out of the sunlight while the scars formed. He didn’t know what the cuerpomancer had done, but most of the pain had subsided—less than a week after plunging his hand into a basin of hot lava.
It wasn’t impressive. It was miraculous.
Next he downed two eggs and a ration of bacon he prepared on the wood-burning stove, as well as a piece of fresh-baked bread with butter. He had found an excellent provisions store three blocks away. After a quick wash in the clawfoot tub, he donned tan breeches and a high-collared dress shirt, put a handful of gold coins in his pocket, and left his staff in the cellar again. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself at the Abbey.
Gus was waiting by the curb. He and Val had settled on a monthly fee of ten gold coins for transportation to and from the school. Val knew it was a steep price, but he believed in paying his people.