The letter closed with these words:
I wonder what final fate awaits the goblins’ other two captives. It seems from your description that they are being treated as ungently as they have too often treated their fellow men. Our ambassador in Cathair Rua has discovered the secret burial place where Ó Maoldúin laid the bodies of our councillors. The mortal remains of our beloved kindred have been disinterred, and are on their way, in state, to Rowan Green. Here in our cemetery they will be entombed with full honours. May rain fall around and upon them.
The Storm Lord had included letters from Asrăthiel’s friends, begging to know if there was any chance the goblins might change their terms and release her. She responded in writing, informing everyone that she believed it was highly unlikely she would be liberated, at least in the immediate future. Even Avalloc’s house guest Agnellus had penned a note, but to Asrăthiel’s surprise, there had been no message from William.
The letters filled her with delight; nonetheless, after she had sent off her replies and found herself purposeless again, she began to fall once more into a restless despondency. To counter this she filled the hours by continuing her exploration of the fantastic stronghold under the mountains, discovering a myriad wonders. There seemed no end to the labyrinth. Having fallen into the rhythm favoured by the nocturnal inhabitants, she took to sleeping during the day and waking at sunset.
Letters flooded in from the outside world; however, as the populace began to realise that there was no chance of her returning, their rejoicing subsided and the flood dwindled. Most people, especially the denizens of Rowan Green and High Darioneth, vowed they would never give up hope that one day Asrăthiel might be rescued.
Time seemed measureless. Nights elapsed, bringing no sign of Zaravaz, and the hostage languished amid the surreal elegance of the goblin fastness. Every day her handmaidens brought her voguish clothes to wear, delicacies to nibble, and trowish bards to provide entertainment. She dwelled in idle luxury, while her heart was being eaten empty with a hunger such as she had never known.
I would never have believed, she told herself, that the yearnings of homesickness could be so overwhelming. What does the future hold for me? Am I to be forever lonely?
One evening, Asrăthiel rose from her couch and put on a new gown that appeared to be fashioned from plum-coloured orchid petals stitched with the delicate green skeletons of leaves. Soon afterwards, Second Lieutenant Zwist arrived at her door, carrying a lighted lantern of silver filigree. ‘Condescend to honour me with your company, Lady Sioctíne,’ he said with charming gallantry, bowing in courtly fashion. ‘Tonight you are to visit the mines of Sølvetårn.’
This knight had always shown himself to be agreeable and ready to engage in conversation. Readily Asrăthiel accompanied him, thirsty for knowledge, yet also wanting to understand how such a courtly gallant could be part of the notorious goblin horde. She recalled the vehemence with which he had swung his sword at her on the Wuthering Moors, and his savage attacks on the soldiers who fought alongside her, mowing his way amongst them, striking left and right, glorying in the slaughter with a ferocity almost as terrible as that of his lord. It was difficult to reconcile these conflicting aspects.
They proceeded along a corridor whose walls were mottled, every inch, with the fossil imprints of dragonflies, sea spiders and horseshoe crabs, faithfully rendered in stone. As they walked, the weathermage quizzed her guide. ‘Lieutenant Zwist, do you hate humanity as passionately as does your lord?’
‘Like all of the Glashtinsluight, I detest your kindred.’
‘It must be difficult for you to be civil to me.’
‘Not at all. You have proved yourself to be different—in contrast to, for example, the Primoris Virosus, who, incidentally, currently decorates a mountain steeple in the skies above our heads. Of all the institutions maintained by humanity the Sanctorum is the worst, for it publishes a fabrication that the Fates decree the human race is entitled to oppress all other races.’
‘Oh, the primoris! Is that what they have done to him?’
‘It is. To the other also.’
‘Then they are dead?’
‘By now, undoubtedly.’
An image flashed before Asrăthiel’s eyes; sickened, she banished it instantly. There had been too many atrocities; first the slaughter of the weathermasters, then the bloodshed on the fields of war, and now this. Since the demise of her kindred she had found it hard to sleep, and the sleep to which exhaustion of spirit eventually drove her was troubled by ill dreams. It was clear she must either exile horror to a remote corner of her mind, or be overwhelmed and succumb to madness. She chose the former.
Knight and damsel passed beneath archways built of limestone embedded with exotic treasures of the underground; graceful whorls of petrified ammonites and nautilus. Asrăthiel began to speak again, hoping to distract herself from the appalling vision conjured by Zwist’s revelation. ‘I am sorrowful, knowing that you hold my people in such low esteem. I wish I could convince you otherwise.’
‘Even your people’s use of language demonstrates their selfishness,’ said the knight. ‘Human beings will say, “Thousands were slain” when they mean that thousands of human beings were slain. It’s as if no other species exists. They say, “It was a threat to the world” when they mean something was a threat to the human race. Ironically, a threat to the human race is likely to be a blessing to the rest of the world—bird and beast, leaf and tree, all would be better off without sheelnaue.’
Perceiving that nothing she could say would alter his opinion, Asrăthiel let the subject drop. ‘Tell me of these mines,’ she said as they travelled together along passageways whose ceilings were so high they were lost to view, and down vast staircases whose exaggerated dimensions seemed better suited to giants.
Obligingly her escort said, ‘The mines of Sølvetårn are ancient and extensive, a huge network of passages and stopes, caverns, drives and galleries, far below the halls where we dwell. Knockers dug the tunnels and now work them anew; you will soon see them chipping away at the lode. Kobolds toil down there too, but it is the knockers who do the actual digging and delving; that has ever been their trade and obsession, aided by blue-caps, who load ore, shovel gangue, and generally fetch and carry.’
‘I saw no such wights at your banquet.’
‘The miners never attend our junkets, for they will not leave off their digging. They are at it night and day. Mispickels, on the other hand, never miss a feast. They are great beerdrinkers.’
‘So,’ said Asrăthiel, ‘you are taking me to see your kobolds at work! I am glad. They are curious beings. Your lord informed me that goblinkind engineered them so that they might be your slaves.’
‘Even so,’ said Zwist.
‘How did you create such creatures?’ the damsel wondered.
The knight smiled. ‘Mispickels are the spawn of arsenic and cobalt and the gramarye of the Glashtinsluight,’ he expounded. ‘They were begotten in the silver mines, long ago, in the deeps of time. Cobalt often coexists with silver, as vein deposits with silver minerals. Indeed, humankind’s word “cobalt” is derived from an archaic term that ironically meant “goblin”—did you know? When human silver-miners work near cobalt, they are frequently plagued with maladies of the lungs, distempers of the feet and disorders of the brain such as delusions of persecution or grandeur. In days of yore their superstitious panic led them to believe that malicious, unseen wights associated with cobalt brought this mischief on them, and they named their imaginary oppressors “kobolts” or “goblins”.’
‘I do not understand why the miners supposed it was the ore that gave them trouble,’ said Asrăthiel. ‘Cobalt is not toxic. My people use it to make invisible inks, because it changes colour if heated. When paper that is apparently blank is held near a flame, it turns green where messages have been inscribed in cobalt ink.’
‘In sooth, the element itself is not toxic,’ Zwist explained, ‘but by nature it attracts arsenic. The hu
man miners’ madness and sickness were symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Coincidentally, and even more ironically, if kobolds had been skulking nearby, their presence would indeed have been toxic to the miners. Fortunately our rough imps will not affect you that way, Lady Sioctíne.’
So they do know I am invulnerable!
They walked away from another stair and along a broad promenade whose walls were curtained with falling water.
‘Kobold blood was spilled on the battlefield,’ said Asrăthiel. ‘It was silver-white.’
‘The colour of arsenic.’
‘I heard they abhor salt.’
‘Salt and iron, both. When in the mines, both varieties must avoid naturally occurring rock salt, iron ore, haematite and iron oxides.’
‘It is commonly known, salt and iron are anathema to many wights.’
‘Of course,’ said the knight, ‘iron is also an element carried in human blood, which can prove troublesome to the mispickels in battle. Their armour must be blood-proof.’
‘It is strange, their battle harness.’
‘The greater kobolds make their red armour from erythrite, also called “cobalt bloom”. It is a crust that coats the surface of skutterudite, a cobalt arsenite.’
Having crossed a wide landing they began to descend yet another spiral stairway hewn into basalt. Damp patches glistened on the walls, which contained fossilised bats and archaeopteryx, exquisitely detailed.
‘Your slaves wear a curious insignia, a cross with arms of equal length,’ Asrăthiel said questioningly.
‘It is their emblem,’ Zwist said, ‘because sometimes arsenic occurs as a mineral called mispickel, or arsenopyrite, and this is often discovered in crystals that form crosslike shapes. When struck with a hammer, mispickel gives off a garlic odour, the characteristic smell of kobolds. Our own term for our slaves is flaieen, although at whiles, as you have heard, we call them “mispickels”.’
Reaching the foot of a stair embossed with precious minerals, they walked through an arched portal carved with leering faces.
‘The skin of both kobold races seems dyed with woad,’ Asrăthiel commented, fleetingly admiring the exquisite precision of the carvings even as she paid close attention to the lecture.
‘It is neither dyed nor painted,’ said her informant. ‘Cobalt is used to make blue tinting for porcelain and tile glazes and stained glass. To make blue glass, one must mix cobalt oxide with silicon. Cobalt is therefore an ingredient of smalt, an artists’ pigment made of ground-up blue glass. Pigments made from pure cobalt tend towards violet in colour. Thus mispickels are blue-skinned.’
‘Your lore is vast, Lieutenant Zwist! I cannot help but be intrigued by the secrets of the underground. The jewels, the ores and their strange properties—it is like opening a treasure chest of knowledge! In my pursuit of weathermastery I have studied fire, air and water, but never have I learned much about what lies beneath the ground.’
‘That is quite natural, since weathermasters can interweave their senses with only three of the four elements,’ replied the goblin lieutenant. ‘You might find, Lady Sioctíne, that scientific inquiry into the structure of this ball of rock and iron we call the world is a topic of endless fascination.’ He ushered her across a crystal-studded bridge that spanned an abyss so deep that its floor could barely be seen. The movement of dots of light indicated that wights were working at the bottom. Towers of steam rose from below, along with the far-off clamour of drills, picks, shovels and splitters biting at the rock face. As they watched, a huge kibble, or bucket, came rushing at them from somewhere above and slid rapidly into the deeps. Asrăthiel ducked. It was only then that she noticed the thick steel cable strung above their heads. A moment later another bucket came banging up out of the depths, swinging from the constantly moving cable, travelling apparently of its own volition. With a metallic squeal it disappeared into the gloomy vaults above.
They crossed another flying bridge and went down a winding ramp, entering a torch-lit underground forest of wrought silver trees with argent leaves. Draughts, entering from cleverly placed vents, played pure, ringing music on pendant crystals. Asrăthiel marvelled at this splendour of light and sound. Her companion barely seemed to notice the triumphs of silver-smithery beneath whose glimmering boughs they were passing. ‘Did kobolds fashion these wondrous forests?’ Asrăthiel wanted to know.
Laughing, Zwist answered, ‘Mispickels smelt and forge most useful ores, and they are clever engineers, who don protective armour and work with iron. But for the main part we, the Argenkindë, are the silversmiths. Artistic work is to our taste, and we are geniuses in the craft.’
‘This I know well, from my experience of the Sylvan Comb,’ said Asrăthiel.
‘Ah yes, that object,’ said her companion. ‘We are pleased to have taken it back.’
‘But after you demanded the comb from us with such insistence you merely threw it away! Why did you want it if you care so little about it? Did you have some purpose in casting it aside? Is there some consequence you want to prevent, or did you simply want to stop it from falling into human hands again?’
‘The latter,’ said Zwist. ‘You see, Lady Sioctíne, we prefer to possess what is ours. Furthermore, we do not like our things to be sullied by humankind. Even if we have no use for one of our artefacts, we would rather keep it from mortal men. Besides, we own hundreds of similar items—hand-mirrors that appear to turn into lakes when flung to the ground, candlesticks that become towers, shoes that become ships, belts that become rivers . . . items that humankind would perhaps find useful to throw off pursuit, or to amaze their foes in battle, but which for us are merely toys.’
‘Toys to tantalise men, perhaps?’ Asrăthiel suggested.
‘Perhaps!’ Zwist said lightly.
Asrăthiel dropped the subject. ‘Where do the kobolds dwell when they are not toiling in the service of their masters?’
‘They frequent their own levels, which stink of garlic as they do: the Slyving, for example; and the Kingswood Toad; the Dundgy Drift and the Nine Rivets. They have their own breweries down there.’
‘Such curious names! What do you call this place where we walk?’
‘This particular gallery is called Chloride Street; it gives onto the open mountainside at both ends, one at Quartz Gate, the other at Upper Gate. We are now in the Main Silver.’ The knight gestured extravagantly. ‘In that direction lies the Great Course. Up there is the Middle Course, and the Little Course is far away to the west, beyond Fountain Hall and Firestone. The levels stretch for miles in every direction, joining with other diggings such as Castle Mine, Old Mine, and Fershull Pit.’
Puffs of white vapour were whistling and hissing through the levels, and the air thickened with humidity. They arrived at the base of a tapered, four-sided tower of crisscrossed struts and girders, a sight familiar to Asrăthiel, for many such skeletal structures loomed over mineshafts near the villages around Silverton. It was a poppet head. A huge revolving gin wheel at the top, driven by chugging, panting machinery, wound steel cable to hoist lifts and buckets in and out of the shaft.
‘How are your engines powered?’ Asrăthiel asked. The winding engines she had seen aboveground were driven by draughthorses, which had to plod in endless circles around a drum, a practice she deplored, and against which she often spoke out.
‘Steam gushes freely from the volcanic regions far below our feet. It drives the ore-crushing batteries, the traction engines, the cable-ways and all.’
‘I perceive how this can be, for I understand the forces of fire and water. In the four kingdoms, most people would wonder how steam could have such strength, it being so fragile and evanescent that the slightest whisper of wind blows it away. No human being has ever used this method to harness the power at the planet’s heart. You speak of wondrous things. I am glad my people know nothing of this, for they would leave no forest unrazed, no fuel source untapped, to generate steam power, and the skies would be blackened with their smoke. Where do your chim
neys vent?’
‘On the upper peaks, amongst the clouds,’ said Zwist. ‘They are thousands of feet high, driven through the rock above our heads. Their crowns issue amongst the lofty peaks so that the lead-poisoned fume from our smelters may blow away on high-altitude gales without hurt to mortal creatures. Some of our chimneys are wight-fashioned, but others are simply natural fumaroles. Unlike humankind, the Glashtinsluight do not hew trees for fuel, destroying the world’s lungs and the dwelling places of wild creatures. Our steam engines and furnaces are all volcanically fired. We burn neither wood nor fossil.’
Together they entered a metal cage bestraddled by the tower. From overhead, high up in a small cabin, a kobold peered at them. It threw a lever and the cage dropped thousands of feet in the blink of an eye, or so it seemed. Asrăthiel instinctively clutched at the mesh, feeling as if her stomach must fly out the top of her head. She was not afraid, but exhilarated and charmed by this new adventure. When the contraption came to rest Zwist courteously took her arm and they stepped out onto a dim platform, from which opened the masonry mouths of tunnels diverging towards various subterranean levels. The rumble of approaching wheels heralded the dark shapes of laden ore trucks rattling along their rails towards the platform. Shadowy, malformed shapes of kobolds moved in the gloom. Here and there a lantern shone like a yellow eye.
‘Now we have come to dangerous ground,’ said the goblin knight.
‘What travels in those carts?’ Asrăthiel asked, her curiosity whetted.
Zwist grabbed handfuls of small rocks from a passing truck and showed them to the damsel by the light of his silver lantern. ‘These ores were not gouged from any underground vein,’ he said with interest, examining the misshapen lumps. ‘By the look of them, these have been lying about on the surface in some distant part of the mountains where mispickels are prospecting.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘They are sunburned. Ah, but it looks as if the mispickels have struck more rich silver country!’
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