“Sire, I must protest!” exclaimed Biorkis, clucking his tongue. “Durwin would tell you if he were here, and so I tell you in his stead-listen to him if not to me; you must rest. Your strength is but half recovered, and your ride into battle has tired you. Rest, I say, and let your commanders make ready all that is necessary.”
Eskevar fixed him with a baleful stare. “You little guess the danger gathering at our gates. Who is there to look to these preparations if not the King?”
Biorkis, well warned by Durwin regarding the obstinate pride of his patient, did not flinch from his duty. “What good will you be to your people when you lay exhausted on your bed, unable to even lift your head, let alone wield a sword or shout a command? Rest now while you may.”
The King frowned ferociously. “I am sound enough, I tell you! My strength is none of your concern.” Even as he spoke, he tottered uncertainly.
“How so, Sire? It is now the concern of every man and child in the realm who would see his King deliver him from the hand of the enemy. You need rest. Gather your strength that the day of the trial does not find you enfeebled.”
“Enfeebled! The way you talk! And to your King, by the gods!” Eskevar snapped. His face darkened in such rage that Biorkis thought it best not to press the matter further for the moment. “There is much to do and someone must look to it that it be done well,” Eskevar growled as he went out again. Biorkis did not see him the rest of the day, though he waited near his chamber for the King to return.
FORTY-SIX
IT WAS STRANGE to wake in the vast darkness of the mine. When Quentin opened his eyes, he did not know that he had opened them at all. The sensation of blindness was so overpowering that for a moment Quentin’s heart clenched in his chest until he remembered where he was and how he had come to be there. Just to make sure he winked both eyes several times, but could discern no difference. So he lay on the hard, uneven stone and waited, not inclined to bump around in an attempt to light a torch. From the deep, regular breathing which filled the chamber’s towering silence, he knew the others were still asleep. He would wait.
They had made two more long marches before fatigue overtook them and Durwin decided they must sleep before moving on. They had reached the first level shortly after they had stopped to rest and eat the first time. The corridor with the low roof had ended in a steep incline that emptied upon a room of interminable size, judging by the echoes which the stony walls flung back at them when they spoke. But they had no light to see how large the room was, for the torchlight failed to illuminate its furthest dimensions.
They had crossed the great room, passing huge columns of reddish stone carved of the rock of the mountain’s core, rising out of the floor like monstrous trees sweeping up from the ground, their tops lost in the inky blackness above. Quentin counted twenty such pillars before they reached the far end of the room, which tapered to a huge arch through which they passed. The arch bore the unmistakable marks of having been made by Ariga stonecutters. Quentin would have liked to stand and admire it, but they passed quickly on. The next corridor was more difficult to navigate than the first.
It was wider and its roof higher, allowing for more freedom of movement, but numerous shafts and galleries opened off of it, often abruptly and at slight angles. It forked in several places, splitting off to the right and left. Sometimes they would pass by an opening which Quentin could not see until he felt a chill breeze on his face and smelled the dank, musty odor of stale air and stone. Once they crossed a stone bridge that arched across a wide crevice, splitting the floor before them in a sharp divide. On the bridge Quentin felt a warm updraft and guessed that the rift was the chimney of some subterranean fire eternally blazing.
Each time Durwin came to a fork or a turn which offered a choice of paths to follow, the hermit elected to take the one which promised a downward course. He admitted he had no precise notion of what they were looking for, but had the idea that the highly-prized ore they sought lay at the deepest levels of the mine.
They had rested in a curious domed chamber on the far side of the stone bridge. They talked among themselves at first, but somehow-through fatigue, or through the wearing oppression of the deep darkness-the conversation seemed to dry up like a trickle of water in the desert sand, vanishing slowly without a trace of it’s having ever been there.
Though tired, and aching from the weight of the packs they carried, they had decided to press on. The slope of the downward track increased dramatically once they left the domed chamber. With the extra weight they carried on their shoulders, the falling grade impelled them onward at a faster pace than they would have normally had strength or inclination to attempt. The result was that they reached the second level in what seemed no time at all.
Quentin knew they had been walking some hours when they tumbled into the enormous cavern that formed the central chamber of the second level. But time had ceased to function in its normal way. Hours collapsed and minutes stretched out incredibly until it seemed that time had no meaning at all unless it was measured in footsteps or in tunnels passed.
They had been walking in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts as in a hooded cloak from head to toe, when Quentin felt a touch at his elbow which caused him to jump in fright, nearly dropping his torch. “Toli! You scared me. I did not hear you creeping up behind me.”
“Excuse me, Kenta. I did not mean to alarm you.” He looked at Quentin with large, shining eyes as deep as fathomless pools. For a moment Quentin was reminded of a time, long ago now it seemed, when he had met a young Jher in the forest dressed in deerskins and peering at him with the soft, wary eyes of a wild creature. The look Toli gave him now was exactly as it had been then. With a sudden creeping sensation Quentin imagined Toli had returned once again to his earlier, more primitive state. Looking at those large dark eyes glittering in the quavering light of the torch was like looking into the eyes of a wild and frightened animal.
“What is it, Toli? Is something the matter?” Quentin spoke in a bare whisper.
Toli stared around him in a queer, wide-eyed way. When he spoke again, it was with a voice quivering on a strange note Quentin had not heard before in his friend. Toli appeared poised and ready for flight; Quentin feared that he might suddenly dash off into the darkness never to be seen again. “My people do not love dark places,” said Toli. “We have never lived in caves. In ages before this one, when holes and caves were home to many men, my people lived in the forest and made their homes in the light.”
The way he spoke made it seem that Toli was offering a deeply personal confession. Quentin did not know what to think.
“There are still those among us who speak of the times of the cave dwellers,” continued Toli. “Some even have been inside caves when they have come upon them in the forest. But I have never been.”
All at once Quentin realized what Toli was trying to tell him. And he realized what strength it had taken for the Jher to follow him into this dark place. To Toli it was not a mine; it was an ancestral taboo which, out of love for his master, he was willing to put aside. But the darkness and the endless walkways of stone boring ever deeper into the bowels of the earth had at last stripped Toli of the veneer of civilization he had acquired in living with his Kenta. He was the Jher prince once more, wild as the free creatures of the Wilderlands.
“We will soon be finished here, Toli. Do not fear. You will see the living land once again, and very soon.” Quentin felt the emptiness of his words. The more so when Toli turned an uncomprehending, glassy stare upon him and seemed not to recognize him at all. Quentin had the odd feeling that he was looking at a stranger whose face was as familiar as his own. The Toli he knew had vanished.