He had to duck his head from the low roof—which itself was disconcerting. Like all Guld’guhlians, he was bowlegged and hard-headed in all manners of that term. It was as if the sun had beaten all of them into squat shapes, maybe all the better to work the thousands of mines that spread the breadth of the territory’s coast, from the stone forest of D?dwood to the north to the endless southern Wastes.
He ran a hand along the wall, feeling the cracks in the chalk. Here the timbered supports had long turned to stone, hardened by the centuries in the mineral-rich air. As he continued, those fissures widened and grew in number.
He craned his neck, noting the fractures along the roof.
Distracted, he tripped over a pile of loose stone and fell. He came close to smashing his wayglass, but he caught himself with his other hand. His lantern swung wildly from his waistbelt. He held his breath, fearing the flame would snuff out.
It flickered wildly but held true.
He checked the stones on the floor. Their edges were too sharp and a gap in the roof suggested they had recently broken from up there. If he had any doubt about circling toward his doom, he had proof in hand.
“Gods be,” he muttered. “I’m straight back under the section that caved in.”
He shook his head, pushed up, and dusted himself off. He glanced down to the wayglass. The lodestone had stopped spinning round and now pointed down the tunnel. He sighed and placed his hopes that it meant something.
“So be it.”
He headed along the narrowing passageway, only to discover in another hundred steps that the tunnel had shattered into a slide of broken rocks and sand that cut even deeper. He checked his wayglass. The lodestone still pointed straight ahead, down the precarious ramp of scree and sharp boulders.
His fingers gripped the wayglass with frustration.
“My arse if I’m traipsing down there.”
Exasperated more than scared, he swung angrily away. As he did so, the feeble flame at his hip blew out. Darkness collapsed onto him.
No, no, no …
The blackness drove him to his knees, then to his palms. He gasped and quaked. He squeezed his eyes closed, then open again, struggling to see, refusing to accept his fate.
“Not like this,” he mumbled.
He rolled onto his backside and hugged his knees.
Though godless, he prayed to the entire pantheon. To the Mother Below and the Father Above, to the silvery Son and the dark Daughter, to the shrouded Modron and the bright Bel, to the giant Pywll who held up the skies and the lowly Nethyn who hid deep in the Urth. He continued, leaving no one out, begging everyone in the Litany. He stuttered this way across every prayer taught to him on his mum’s knee.
Then, as if someone heard him, a faint glow rose ahead. He rubbed a knuckle against his straining eyes. At first, he thought it was some figment dredged up by his fear. But it did not go away. Maybe it had always been there.
He shifted to his knees and crawled forward. As he reached the edge of the chasm, his hands knocked loose a rock and sent it tumbling down the slope. The shine—a faint pearlescent blue—rose from the bottom. He did not know what created that glow. All that mattered was that it was a haven from the darkness, a bright port in a dark storm.
With a jangle of his ankle chains, he swung his legs forward into the chasm, gritted his teeth, and set off down the steep slope. The way was treacherous, the descent precarious.
Still …
Anything is better than this infernal darkness.
5
BLOODY AND BONE-BRUISED, Rhaif slid down the last of the rockfall. He dug in his sliced heels and drew himself to a stop at a towering fresh-cracked slab of black brimstan. Ten times his height, it rose from the white chalk floor like the fin of a monstrous Fell shark.
The glow rose from its other side.
As he gulped down his fear, he swiped away strands of sweat-plastered auburn hair and tucked them under the felt hat that protected his head. He rose into a wary crouch. He did his best to pull up his breeches, the bottom all but ripped away, and tightened the short leather vest over his roughspun shirt.
He did not know what awaited him ahead, but he did his best to ready himself.
An acrid odor filled the lower reaches of the chasm, like burnt chalk and oil. He took short whiffs, fearing it might be poisonous. He had witnessed miners being lowered into a deep shaft—a pit that was safe the day before—only to fall into a stupor or die from air gone bad.
After several breaths, all seemed well, so he continued ahead.
He edged around the brimstan outcropping and peeked at what lay beyond its shoulder. It took him several blinks to make sense of it. The raw chalk wall ahead looked like a shattered mirror, the cracks all radiating out from a crumpled copper egg near its base. The egg appeared to have been cracked open long ago, its edges blackened and torn.
The shine rose from inside it.
He squinted but could make out no details from this distance.
“Just go look,” he told himself.
“Maybe I’d better not,” he argued just as forcefully.
He chewed his lip, then nodded and set out toward the mystery. With each step, the bitter burnt odor grew. He gaped at the wall ahead of him. His gaze followed the cracks into the darkness overhead. A worry grew.
Could this be the source of the earlier quake?
If so, he feared any misstep could bring it all crashing down atop him. His pace slowed but didn’t stop. Curiosity drove him forward. He could not resist knowing the truth. It was that or retreating into eternal darkness.
So, he kept going.
As he neared the shattered opening, the walls of copper looked polished and seamless and over two hands’ breadths thick. Cringing, he noted something at the edge of the egg. A skeleton lay sprawled just outside, half buried in chalk, as if drowning in the rock. The hue of the bone was not white or a hoary yellow, but a dull greenish blue. He knew the color was not a trick of the glow, but some alchymy of pyrites and minerals that had infused into the bone over untold centuries.
He skirted the dead, touching fingertips from forehead to lips to heart in solemn respect, lest he wake the spirit trapped here. He reached the blasted opening of the egg, wanting—no, needing—to know what cast such a sheen in the dark.
He bowed his way under the copper lintel, all twisted and scorched, and pushed into the glow. What he saw froze him in place.
Gods below …
The inside of the egg was the same seamless copper, like a glass bubble blown by the subterranean goddess Nethyn. Its inner surface shone from a complicated web of glass piping and copper joinery. A golden fluid bubbled through those tubes. But the true source of the glow was on the far side, where it seemed all that contrivance led. A shape stood within a glowing glass alcove, like a shining bronze spider in a web.
What manner of god or daemon is this?
Despite the cold terror, he could not look away.
The figure was a woman, sculpted of bronze, as seamless as the copper shell. Her face was a handsome oval, her hair a smooth plait of the same bronze. Her limbs were long and shapely, with hands clasped at the belly, hiding her privacy. Her breasts, though mere suggestions, added a subtle beauty.
It was a masterwork of a skilled artisan.
But it was the expression that captured his attention. Her closed eyes hinted at a hidden grace, while the shape and fullness of her lips suggested a profound sadness, as if somehow Rhaif had already disappointed her.