Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  ***

  Braden Shaw grew increasingly nervous as he watched the airship carrying the highborn delegation draw ever closer. It was not unusual for Caelen Law, Vulcrad’s overlord, to dispatch an envoy to ensure that his city was prepared to send a proper tribute to Phaer, but the recent discovery of an unusually rich vein of void stone had garnered special interest from the capital this year.

  “They’re almost here,” Braden said as the airship descended. “It’s bad enough when it’s just a highborn from Vulcrad. Now I have to entertain a delegation from Phaer too.”

  “Do you think Highlord Vagar will be amongst them?” Atin Cienne, the mine’s foreman asked.

  Like Braden, Atin was a free man of Vulcrad. He had worked this very mine since he was a boy, just as his father had. Unlike Braden, Atin did not accept the status quo and sympathized far more with the mine workers, most of them prisoners or slaves, than he did with people like the administrator.

  Braden was the closest thing the empire had to a middle class. Although lowborn, people like Braden had weaseled their way up the social ladder through sycophancy and often betrayal, at least in the eyes of people like Atin. Atin, and most members of his low status, considered them fools and traitors to their class. Men like Braden turned their backs on their own kind in hopes of pleasing those who would never accept them as anything more than well-trained dogs.

  “Shaft E8? Why the hell do they insist on seeing E8?” Braden asked under his breath.

  “It is the richest source of void stone we have found yet. I imagine that’s why.”

  Atin did not need to imagine it. He knew precisely why they were showing them E8, because he had altered the orders before he had passed them on to Braden. The group was supposed to see E6, but that shaft did not fit his desires. He might have to fake a smile while he led the emissaries down, but the smile he wore coming back up, alone, would be genuine enough. That was assuming all went according to plan. If it did not, he might never see light again unless he was standing on the gallows.

  “It’s also a damn unstable shaft! Have you got it braced good and proper?”

  “As best I can. It will hold for our needs.”

  “It had better. If so much as a pebble clunks one of these highborn on the noggin, I’ll see to it that it’s your back feeling the lash, not mine.”

  Atin locked his eyes on the gangplank being lowered out of the ship’s hold. “Don’t worry, I expect everything to go exactly as planned.”

  “It had better!”

  “Yes, it certainly had better.”

  The two men watched the delegation descend the stairs. Two men and one woman, dressed inappropriately in silks and fine wool, walked several paces ahead of their four armed escorts. Like all city hierarchy, Atin knew that Sub Lord Rian Bellerose was an accomplished sorcerer, and he presumed at least one of Phaer’s representatives was as well. Likely both.

  “Which of you is the administrator?” Rian asked.

  Braden made a stiff bow. “I am, sah. This is my foreman Atin Cienne.”

  “You should know who I am, but in case you are as ignorant as I assume, I shall remind you. I am Sub Lord Rian Bellerose, second only to Overlord Caelen Law within Vulcrad, including her holdings and townships. I have the distinguished pleasure of accompanying Sah Raphael Masson and Sahma Yvette Stenet from Phaer. Sah Raphael and Sahma Yvette report directly to Emperor Arikhan and have a keen interest in the void stone you are extracting from this mine.”

  Braden bowed to each of them. “It is my utmost pleasure to be in your company.”

  “I should think so,” Yvette replied without meeting his gaze.

  Sub Lord Bellerose said, “Let us get on with it. I should like to get this done with as quickly as possible. The thought of scurrying about in a hole like a skitter lizard does not appeal to me.”

  “Of course, sah.” Braden began gathering metal helmets from a table he had set up outside the administrator’s office. “If you would all please don these.”

  Yvette held the helmet in her hands. “Are you serious?”

  “Despite the mine being very sound, occasionally a stone does break free from overhead. I must take all measures to ensure your safety.”

  She curled her lip in an exaggerated sneer and plunked the helmet onto her head. Smiling, she rapped her knuckles against it and marched in place. “Look, Raphael, I’m a soldier now!”

  Raphael laughed. “Only if you did get hit in the head with a rock. A large one at that!”

  “Indeed, Sahma Yvette,” Braden said, smiling at her jape. “For expedience, I thought we would use the lift to reach ‘E’ level, but I am afraid it will not accommodate us and your escort. We will have to make two trips if you require them.”

  “I can’t see why they would be necessary,” Raphael said. “Do you, Sub Lord?”

  Rian locked eyes with the nervous administrator. “Absolutely not. There isn’t a man in this mine who would dare raise a hand against their betters. Isn’t that right, Administrator Braden?”

  “Of course not, Sub Lord! I will be the first one to throw himself between you and danger.”

  “Yes, you will.” Rian turned to his guests. “Besides, I think three accomplished sorcerers can defend themselves against any number of disgruntled vermin who might think to do us harm.”

  “I should say so,” Raphael concurred. He looked to his guards. “You lot stay here. We shall return within two hours.”

  At a gesture from the sub lord, Braden led the group into the mine’s great black mouth. He and Atin grabbed lamps hanging near the entrance before delving deeper into the mountain. The highborn contingent declined the use of lamps, preferring to create their own light through arcane means.

  It took fifteen minutes of walking before they reached the first lift that would take them farther beneath the semi-dormant volcano through which the mine was carved. Yvette studied the iron cage a moment before stepping into it and let out a demure shriek when it began to descend.

  “How does this contraption work?” she asked as she watched the rock wall rising up before her just beyond the bars.

  “Ingenious, isn’t it?” Braden asked. “Atin’s father actually invented the lift about thirty years ago. The time it saves getting workers in and out of the lower levels is invaluable. The lift is secured to a massive spindle by a cable turned by a team of rammox. We have three lifts, each going down two hundred feet. That’s about four levels per lift. It used to take over an hour to get the men working the deepest shafts to and from their dig site, and we were working three hundred feet shallower back then.”

  “And you are confident that the cable won’t snap?” Yvette asked. “The fear of being buried beneath a few tons of rock is bad enough without having to worry about plummeting to my death as well.”

  “Won’t happen, Sahma, and you can thank Atin for that. Atin, tell them about your brakes.”

  Atin shifted as all eyes turned to him. “My father’s design was very simple, a cage suspended on a cable and dangling over an open shaft. About fifteen years ago, I proposed attaching the lift to rails, sort of like our mine cars use. That steadied the box as it was raised and lowered. I also designed a centrifugal braking system that will engage if the car drops too quickly. If the cable snaps, the brakes will engage and hold it in place. There is a ladder bolted to the shaft wall and accessible through the trap doors here in the floor or out through the roof.”

  “How do the rammox know when to stop?” Yvette asked.

  “The man Administrator Braden spoke to just before we got on is the rammox handler, and he told him where we were going. The rammox driver knows the precise number of revolutions the spindle takes to reach each level. Those below needing to go up or down speak through a metal pipe running between levels. It is similar in design to the speaking tubes used on large airships.”

  Raphael nodded. “Clever indeed.”

  Yvette grinned and laid a hand on Raphael’s shoulder. “Do you think we could convince
Arikhan to install one of these contraptions in the central spire? That trek up the stairs is absolutely murderous.”

  “And live with the sight and smell of those filthy beasts? I think not. He would have us crawl up the stairs on our hands and knees before suffering such a thing.”

  Yvette chewed on the tip of her finger and her face brightened. “What if we made it an arcane design? If a lowborn sorcerer can float an airship, they can certainly lift a box! The gods know there are more and more of the cretins crawling out of the gutters. This gives them another avenue of worthwhile employment.”

  “That sounds positively brilliant, Yvette! We shall have to propose it to Arikhan when we return.”

  Yvette scowled. “Why is it when someone comes up with a fantastic idea and you are in the room it suddenly becomes we? It was my idea and I shall speak of it on my own.”

  Raphael was about to protest when the lift jolted to a stop.

  “We have to take two more lifts to reach sublevel eight,” Braden said, then stepped from the cage now on sublevel three.

  He led them to another lift a short distance away, spoke to the lift operator, and ushered his guests into the cage once again. The operator spoke the destination into a tube with a flared end like a musical horn and the lift began to descend. They rode in silence through this and the next descent until finally reaching their destination.

  “How far down are we?” Yvette asked.

  “Eight hundred feet below the surface, sahma,” Braden answered.

  She shuddered at the thought. “Eight hundred feet of rock perched over my head… I cannot imagine having to live in such conditions day in and day out. I am ready to flee this place already.”

  Braden grinned. “Keep in mind, there’s another twelve thousand feet of mountain on top of that, sahma.”

  “Good God, man, are you trying to give me a heart attack? Let us get on with it. Where to now?”

  “‘E’ shaft, sahma. That is where we found the rich vein of void stone.”

  “Lead on, Administrator.”

  Atin gestured to two men holding pickaxes and standing nearby.

  “Who are these men?” Sub Lord Rian demanded to know as they approached.

  “Bryce and Eldon are two of my best miners, Sub Lord,” Atin replied. “Where we are going is not the most stable of shafts, and it is prudent to bring experienced diggers along in case there is a problem.”

  Yvette asked, “What kind of problem do you expect? Are you speaking of a cave-in?”

  “I don’t expect any problems, sahma, but I do like to be prepared for them in any case, particularly when in the company of those whose lives are meaningful.”

  Braden butted in, “Atin has worked for the past week with his best crew ensuring that the shaft is perfectly safe, at least for a tour.”

  Yvette covered her mouth and nose with a kerchief. “Very well, but have them follow behind. I did not know that wash water was in such short supply here.”

  Braden gestured the miners back. “My apologies, sahma. They are hard-toiling men and work up a bit of a musk. I will begin enforcing an improved hygiene standard immediately.”

  “See that you do.”

  It took another twenty minutes to reach ‘E’ shaft. All along the way, pickaxes rang out as they chipped at the stone trapping the precious ore in its petrified embrace. The sounds dwindled but never disappeared the farther they traveled down ‘E’ shaft.

  Braden pointed to a black streak running through the grey rock along one wall. “Here you can see the vein that got our attention. It continues on through a natural crevice, and it gets larger the farther it goes. It has us all very excited.”

  “Why are we not harvesting it?” Sub Lord Rian asked. “Arikhan has demanded every bit of void stone you can pull from this mine.”

  “The shaft is still too unstable to work, Sub Lord. We have to dig all around it until we find a solid structure for the cavern supports. That will almost certainly collapse the tunnel we’re in now, but once we reach a solid roof and walls, we can dig it and the ore back out.”

  “And how long before that happens? Arikhan is not known for his patience and neither am I.”

  “It shouldn’t be more than about six months, Sub Lord. We are already pulling twenty percent more void stone out of another shaft than we were this time last year. I’ll be able to load nearly ten extra tons of void-steel ingots on the tribute ship coming next week.” Braden’s teeth glowed in the sorcerer’s arcane light. “Next year, we’ll need a second airship just for the extra ore we extract from this shaft.”

  Yvette ran her fingertips over the ebony mineral. “It is so black it looks like a tiny fissure, as if I can reach inside it.”

  Braden bobbed his head. “Aye, it’s an amazing material. I am a bit curious as to why the emperor needs so much of it. Is he making void-steel weapons for every soldier in the empire?”

  The two representatives from Phaer cast the administrator a dangerous scowl.

  “Do not presume to pry into the emperor’s designs,” Raphael said.

  Braden’s face went ashen. “Forgive me. I did not mean to overstep my bounds.”

  “Focus on extracting this ore. It is far more valuable than your or every man’s life in this pit,” Sub Lord Rian said.

  “I will, Sub Lord! I will make it my highest priority.”

  Eldon, one of the miners, called out, “Atin, can you come take a gander at this?”

  Atin made a small bow to the highborn. “Excuse me a moment, sahs and sahma.”

  Braden watched his foreman as he conversed with his men. “Is there a problem, Atin?”

  “Eldon thinks there’s been some deviation in this support beam. I want to run a line and measure it against the others to be certain. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen, twenty minutes to straighten out.”

  “Must you do it now?”

  “I’d rather not leave it. We aren’t far from the end if you want to lead them on ahead. We’ll be done by the time you turn around and come back.”

  Rian said, “Yes, Administrator, let us get on with it.”

  “Of course, Sub Lord. Not far ahead you will see where the cavern ends at a natural fissure. We are not sure how deep it extends beyond our digging, but you can clearly see that the void stone vein only gets bigger the farther we go back.”

  Atin watched the group walk on ahead of them while he pretended to study a rope strung between support beams. When the delegation reached the designated spot, he and his men heaved on the rope for all they were worth, pulling out the bottom of a support beam rigged to fall up ahead.

  Crashing rock drowned out Braden and the highborn’s brief cry of dismay. Atin and his men closed their eyes against the sudden gust of wind and dust forced at them by the cascade of stone.

  The rock stopped falling and light cast by the small oil lamps attached to the miners’ helmets fought to cut through the haze. All three crept toward the source of the collapse, unsure of what they would find. Still unable to see more than a few feet, they followed a solitary moan coming from somewhere beneath the pile of rubble.

  The men began pulling large stones aside. Sahma Yvette, blood oozing from a deep cut on her forehead, blinked up at the light when Eldon pulled a head-sized boulder away. Her hasty ward had prevented the cave-in from crushing her outright. Her companions had lacked her arcane dexterity.

  “What happened?” she cried.

  “Roof collapsed.”

  “Please, help me!”

  Eldon crouched over her, still holding the large stone in his hands. “All right, but I need you to do something for me.”

  “W-what?”

  “I don’t know if it’s possible. Magic ain’t my thing, but if you can, send me a message and tell me how the smell is down on the Tormented Plane. I’m betting they have quite a shortage of wash water as well.”

  Yvette’s quizzical look turned to horror as Eldon raised the rock over his head and brought it crashing down. He struck her
several times before leaving the stone resting over her ruined face, completing the cairn created by the cave-in.

  “Well, that’s that then,” Eldon said as he stood and wiped his hands on his trousers.

  Atin began casting rubble aside. “Let’s get that rope out of there. Vagar and Arikhan are not going to let his highborn stay buried here, especially not when they are entombed with several tons of void stone.”

  “Even in death these highborn are a huge pain in my ass,” Eldon grumbled as he began to dig next to the cave wall.

  “That’s only because we’re thinking too small,” Bryce said. “We just need to lure them all into the mines and collapse the entire damn mountain on top of them.”

  “Careful what you say. The mountain has ears and might just think you have a good idea, only she don’t care whose ghosts haunt her.”

  Bryce patted the cave wall. “Naw, this old girl knows who loves her.”

  Bryce’s declaration was met with a loud crack and the sound of grinding stone.

  Eldon shone his helmet lamp up at the cavern ceiling and watched a deep fissure run away from his light like a splintering pane of glass. “Oh, you prickly bitch.”

  Atin shouted, “Run!”

  He and his friends darted toward the cave junction, but the passageway collapsed ahead of them. Bryce and Eldon collided with Atin as he spun around and shoved them back in the only other direction they could retreat.

  The entire mountain seemed to shake as they ran. The tunnel sealed behind them as stone poured in like water. Nearly blinded by the dust kicked up by the falling rock, the miners raced down the passage mostly by feel until they came to the end. Atin thought they were doomed until he found the fissure where the digging had stopped.

  The split they had witnessed in the ceiling had continued on, widening the gap just enough for them to squeeze through. Eldon, being the largest of the three, had to let out his breath and could barely breathe at the passage’s narrowest points. Atin nearly fell as his foot touched nothing but open air when he reached the end of the fissure. Clinging to the rock face like a piece of lichen, he edged through the opening into a cavern of unknown size.