Once, long ago, heroic knights from the lost city of Sanctaphrax had set out on quests for the precious lightning bolts that had landed in the perilous woods. In twilight, stormphrax weighed no more than sumpwood – but in darkness, a single shard weighed more than a thousand ironwood trees. With its tip embedded in the dark earth, it took only moments for a lightning bolt to bury itself out of reach of even the most intrepid knight.
Now however, many centuries later, humble phraxminers searched for these elusive lightning bolts, tunnelling deep below the woods in mines lit by lamps that filled them with a twilight glow. Maintaining these lamps was Nate’s job.
A week earlier, a lamp had gone out in number three chamber on Nate’s watch. When mining for stormphrax, it was vital for the twilight glow to be maintained at all times if the exposed crystals were not suddenly to become immeasurably heavy. Thankfully, the consequences had not been too severe. Some scaffolding had collapsed and a pit prowlgrin had suffered a crushed leg when a single crystal dislodged itself from the pitface in the sudden blackness and crashed down through the chamber. Certainly, it could have been a lot worse.
Not that the mine sergeant, Grint Grayle, had seen it that way. The thin, gimlet-eyed Grayle, his face crisscrossed with scars that testified to countless knife fights and worse, had relished this chance to pick on the young lamplighter. He’d given Nate an ultimatum. Accept the loss of a shift’s wages for negligence, or take a flogging.
A burly hammerhead mine guard had stepped forward with a copperwillow cane in his fist. Nate had no choice. A flogging – however unjust – was nothing compared with losing a whole shift’s wages. Particularly with the five cartloads of phrax-laden rubble they’d just mined on that shift.
Nate took his punishment as the grinning mine sergeant looked on. He knew that he’d filled the lamp in number three chamber with darkelm oil. If it was empty, then someone had deliberately emptied it.
‘Wouldn’t have happened if your father was still alive,’ said Rudd. ‘He was the best mine sergeant in the Eastern Woods.’
Nate looked at his friend and smiled.
He and Rudd had found themselves in the same digging team three years earlier. Nate had just lost his father and the hulking cloddertrog – the strongest and best cutter in the mine – had taken him under his wing. A mining stockade was no place to be orphaned and friendless, and Rudd had watched Nate’s back. He was a true friend.
‘He certainly was, Rudd,’ Nate agreed, stepping back from the trough and taking the grubby square of towel the cloddertrog handed him.
His father would never have allowed flogging in the mine in his time. In fact, his father had built a reputation throughout the mining stockades of the Eastern Woods for fairness and safety in the mines he ran. How ironic, then, that he should have died in a freak accident, to be replaced by Grint Grayle, an ambitious sergeant with a reputation for brutality.
If indeed, Nate had thought to himself often over the past three years, it had been an accident …
• CHAPTER TWO •
Drying himself as he went, Nate returned to the cabin. He took his clothes from the hook at the bottom end of the floating bunk and put them on. Thick trousers with a belt and braces; an undershirt, a woollen waistcoat and heavy leather topcoat. He buckled the ironwood shoulder guards into place and secured the strap of his mine helmet under his chin. Then, crouching down, he unlocked the small chest suspended beneath his bunk and lifted the lid.
Inside was everything he owned in the world. It wasn’t much.
His birth parchment, his silver naming spoon, the letters NQ engraved on the handle, and two mine sergeant’s epaulettes – embroidered red chevrons – which his father, Abe Quarter, had worn for so short a time. With Rudd’s words fresh in his mind, Nate stroked the epaulettes, tears springing to his eyes …
‘Wouldn’t have happened if your father was still alive.’
Just beside the other items in the chest was a small leather pouch. Nate picked it up, untied the drawstring and slid the small medallion it contained into his hand. He turned it over. It was a tiny painting – faded paint on cracked wood – set into a frame of ornate gold and threaded onto a thin length of yellowed cord.
It was the only thing he had that had belonged to his mother, handed down through the family for generations. And when she had died and his father had taken his infant son with him to seek their fortunes in the Eastern Woods, it had come too.
‘Always remember,’ his father had told him, ‘that you come from one of the old families of Great Glade. This portrait proves it. I gave it to your mother on our marriage day, and now I give it to you, son.’
Nate stared at it, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he dried his eyes. He’d always liked the miniature painting. It was a portrait of a young lad with deep indigo eyes and a smile on his face, wearing an oversized suit of gleaming armour. Behind him, picked out in muted colours, were the fabulous towers and spires of an ancient city. Most likely, it was no more than a coincidence, yet there was something about the ancient face in the tiny portrait that reminded him of his father.
‘Get a move on, Nate,’ said Rudd. ‘Else we’ll be late.’
‘Sorry, Rudd,’ he said, slipping the medallion back into its pouch and shutting the box of memories. ‘Just thinking about my father …’ He locked the ironwood chest, tugged the pulley chain to raise the sleeping bunk up to the ceiling and hurried across the cabin to the door. ‘Wait for me,’ he called.
Outside, the air was colder, but no fresher. Despite recent rain, a pall of dust, rank with the odour of burnt woodalmonds, hung in the air above the mine stockade. As he followed Rudd across the muddy yard, Nate glanced up over the roofs of the cabins at the wheelhouse beyond. Its jutting chimney belched clouds of steam into the air, while beneath, a steady stream of rubble and dust poured out from the waste spouts of the light funnel onto a great slag heap. This was the reason for the all-pervasive mud, and Nate knew there was no escaping it.
It was all part of the phraxsifting process. A phraxengine turned a huge wheel which, in turn, drove the funnel – a long, revolving tube which was split into three sections, each one separated by a plate studded with graded holes. Making use of the fact that stormphrax becomes heavier in darkness, the light funnel sorted out the worthless rock from the priceless crystals embedded in the phraxrubble from the mines.
The valuable crystals were collected and stored in the phraxkeep under armed guard, while the rubble – collected by gnokgoblins with shovels and hammelhorndrawn carts – was dumped outside the walls of the stockade. Each week, a phraxbarge visited the mining stockade to collect the precious stormphrax and ship it back to Great Glade.
Nate adjusted his helmet strap and caught up with Rudd. The pair of them joined the phraxminers pouring out of the other cabins. They formed a long line, slotting in one behind the other, and shuffled slowly and silently towards an open-sided hut where two red-faced mobgnomes were dishing out breakfast. The first was ladling a thick grey slop into a shallow bowl, the other added vegetables.
‘No tripweed for me,’ said Nate cheerfully. ‘Can’t bear the stuff.’
The mobgnome shrugged.
‘I’ll have his,’ said Rudd with a smile.
‘You’ll get what you are given,’ snapped the mobgnome, forking out a single portion into his bowl. He looked past the expectant cloddertrog. ‘Next.’
Rudd and Nate took their food to the trestle tables, where baskets of barleybread and pitchers of woodale had been laid out, and were about to squeeze into a narrow space between two underbiter goblins who’d budged up to make room, when someone shoved Nate hard in the small of his back, sending him tottering forward. He clutched the slopping bowl to his chest, for there would be no seconds if any got spilled.
‘Well, well, well, if it ain’t the little lamplighter,’ came a gruff voice.
Nate turned to see a brawny figure standing before him. It was the hammerhead mine guard who’d given him t
he flogging the previous week. There was a taunting smile on his brutal face as his great fist closed round the handle of the copperwillow cane at his belt. Nate turned away. He didn’t want any trouble. The mine guard, however, had other ideas. He grabbed Nate by the shoulder and pulled him roughly round.
‘Don’t turn your back on me, lamplighter,’ he said. ‘Daddy’s not here to look after his precious little boy any more – remember?’
‘I remember,’ muttered Nate, his eyes blazing.
Beside him, the underbiters hurriedly finished their breakfast and, climbing from the bench, made themselves scarce. Rudd placed his bowl down on the table and, stepping calmly forward, took Nate’s from his trembling fingers and placed it down alongside his own.
‘Maybe not, Thuggbutt,’ said Rudd coolly. ‘But I am.’
The mine guard turned his brutal face towards Nate’s friend. ‘This is nothing to do with you, Rudd,’ he growled.
‘Well, I say it is!’ snarled Rudd, his face reddening with sudden anger. He shoved the guard hard in the chest, sending him sprawling to the ground, the stew and tripweed splashing down his face and chest. Rudd stood above him, his clenched fists raised. ‘Fancy trying your luck with me, eh?’ he demanded.
The hammerhead glowered, but did not take up the challenge.
‘Thought as much,’ said Rudd. He clapped his arm round his friend’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Nate. Tuck in before it gets cold.’
Behind them, as they took their places, the hammerhead guard scrambled to his feet and looked down at his fouled uniform. ‘You’re going to regret this, Rudd,’ he spat. ‘There’s a new mine sergeant now. Times have changed.’ He turned and stomped off heavily to the wash troughs.
Rudd snorted. ‘But you still need us to get the phrax out of the ground!’ he called after him.
Nate sighed. His friend had got him out of more scrapes than he could remember, but he feared that one day that temper of his was going to get him into trouble. He picked up his spoon and began poking at the stodgy broth. It was mainly trockbeans, boiled to a mush and flavoured with tiny morsels of meat – though it didn’t do to enquire too closely what animal it might have come from. Although the mine owners promised bed and board to their workers, they spared every expense they could.
‘A banquet fit for a mine owner!’ Rudd announced seemingly seconds later. His spoon clattered into the empty bowl. He drained his mug of woodale and patted his stomach. ‘Just what I needed. Though next time, Nate, take the tripweed and I’ll have it.’
Nate chuckled. The food and drink were vile, but most phraxminers didn’t care. Not when there were fortunes to be made deep below the Twilight Woods. Soon his own bowl and mug were empty, and the pair of them climbed to their feet. All around them, the rest of the phraxminers were doing the same. Together, they tramped off across the camp. Past the wheelhouse they went, the air filled with the hiss and hum of the phraxengine and clatter of hammelhorndrawn rubble carts; between the stagnant dewpond, thick with vicious woodmidges, and the creaking light funnel; and on through the heavy gates that were set into the stockade’s great perimeter wall. Before them lay a two-mile hike.
They’d barely covered a hundred strides when Rudd started grumbling. ‘Still don’t see why they couldn’t have built the camp nearer the mine.’
Nate laughed and punched his friend on the arm. ‘You know it’s too dangerous to live too close to the Twilight Woods,’ he said, ‘even for a great thick-skulled trog like you, Rudd. The golden glow would tempt you in, and before you knew it, the woods would have robbed you of your senses. You’d be lost for ever, unable to die, the flesh rotting from your bones as you stumbled blindly on …’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Rudd irritably. ‘Don’t go on. All I mean is, two miles between the stockade and the pithead! Isn’t that being just too cautious?’
Nate didn’t reply. His attention was fixed on the forest around them.
For him, walking through the Eastern Woods was the best part of every day. He stepped from the boarded walkway onto the forest floor, savouring the loamy smell that rose up as he tramped through the lush vegetation. Around him, the beams of sunlight flickered through the leaves and, as the bustle and mud of the mine stockade was left far behind, Nate listened out for the calls and cries of the forest creatures.
There was the hooting of a distant giant fromp; and another, answering its cry. A moment later, from far above his head, he heard the chattering of a flock of emerald green skullpeckers …
Slowly, as they drew closer to the mine, a different sound filled the air. It was low and indistinct, a muffled rumbling interspersed with a loud jarring clatter; the sound of phraxrubble-laden mine wagons being hauled up from the depths of the mine and emptied at the pithead in a great mound. The night shift was delivering the fruits of its labours and waiting, no doubt, to be paid a ‘rubble price’ by the mine sergeant.
Ahead, the golden light of the Twilight Woods glowed between the trees – beautiful, yet treacherous. The sickly odour of scorched woodalmonds returned, stronger than ever.
There was something about that unchanging golden light that beguiled any who strayed into the Woods. They became disorientated, slowly losing their memories, their senses, their sanity. Their very bodies decomposed. Yet they could not die, for the golden light granted them a terrible immortality; a living death that Nate could barely comprehend.
‘Anyway, there’s your answer,’ he said to Rudd, nodding to his left.
The pair of them looked across at an ancient abandoned stockade which had been built on the very edge of the woods. Numerous stakes, the size of tree trunks, had fallen, leaving the perimeter wall looking like a gappy grin. Inside, the wheelhouse and cabins were little more than heaps of wood, while the light funnel had been removed completely.
Rudd shrugged. ‘I sometimes wonder whether twilight madness wouldn’t be better than the lives we phraxminers live,’ he said. He sighed wearily. ‘At least you wouldn’t know when the mine sergeant’s cheated you on your rubble price.’
Nate said nothing. Occasionally, some poor wretch who had lost themselves in the Twilight Woods would stumble out of them again and be rescued. ‘Death cheaters’, they were called, and Nate had seen a few – gibbering drooling and half-crazed living skeletons for the most part, robbed of everything but their lives by the treacherous Woods. He would walk ten miles if it meant avoiding that fate. And so, he knew, would Rudd. But then the cloddertrog was never at his best when a long shift was about to begin.
Up ahead, the pithead came into view. It was a low, broad timber-lined cutting, sloping down into the earth. At the far end, flaming torches illuminated the entrance to the mineshaft – a narrow doorway, above which a pair of jagged tilder antlers had been nailed. In a clearing beside the pithead, there stood a rough-hewn log cabin which housed the mine guards, and next to that was the rubble heap onto which mine wagons, pushed by prowlgrins, were emptying their contents in a cloud of dust. A little way off, a scrawny shryke peered out of a high-sided stockade on wheels – the tally wagon – and made a careful note of each load.
‘Come on, move it, you twilight-touched oafs,’ bellowed a horribly familiar voice just up ahead, ‘or I’ll fine every one of you half a shift’s rubble price!’
Rudd and Nate exchanged glances.
At the pithead, they joined the group of phraxminers, who were milling about waiting for the last of the night shift miners to leave. They shuffled past in a straggly line, their heads down and shoulders slumped. They looked exhausted, and were covered with grime, from the tops of their helmets to the soles of their boots. As they went by, a few of the older miners wheezed and coughed the distinctive dry phraxcough, wisps of water vapour curling up from their mouths.
Nate shivered. It came to all phraxminers who stayed too long in the mines, as the purifying phraxdust embedded itself in the lungs and slowly turned the blood to water. ‘Phraxlung’, it was called. Joints swelled, limbs withered, and the unfortunate victim eventually dr
owned. The only cure was to make your fortune and get out of the mines as soon as you could.
Nate’s father had known this, and didn’t allow any miner to serve longer than five years at the phraxface without a six-month break. But he wasn’t thanked for it. In fact, that was about the time the first whispers of discontent began – discontent that some were quick to exploit for their own ends.
Nate looked across at the entrance to the mineshaft. Mine sergeant Grint Grayle, the brutal scars on his thin face contrasting with his elaborately braided side-whiskers and expensive high-collared topcoat, tapped his cane impatiently. The object of his irritation – two emaciated lop-eared goblins who were struggling at either end of a stretcher – stumbled forward.
‘Another accident,’ said Rudd, nodding towards the blanket-covered mound in the centre of the stretcher.
Nate nodded gloomily.
‘Come on!’ bellowed Grint, the cane prodding the shoulder of the lop-ear at the back. ‘Get that out of the way. You’re holding up the day shift.’ He glanced across at the waiting miners. His gaze met Nate’s and held it defiantly. Then he winked. Nate felt his cheeks colour and his ears burn. He turned away.
‘Don’t rise to it,’ Rudd advised his friend. ‘Grint’s just looking for an excuse to dock our wages.’
‘I know,’ said Nate, his voice hushed but hard. ‘I need this job. It’s all I have. I’m not going to throw everything away by picking a fight with a mine sergeant, however crooked he might be …’
‘Right, you lot,’ the mine sergeant shouted across. ‘Get down there. A new seam’s been unearthed, and I expect a wagonful of phraxrubble from each of you by the end of the shift at the very least.’ He tapped his cane and smirked. ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’
• CHAPTER THREE •
The miners shambled forward, lighting the side lamps on their helmets as they approached the entrance to the mine. Grint Grayle ticked their names off his list as they passed him. Nate stepped up to the pit entrance, his gaze fixed on the tunnel beyond. As he walked past, the mine sergeant stuck out his cane. Nate tripped and stumbled forward, landing heavily on the ground. He looked round to see Grint’s thin face sneering down at him.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 2