“What happened? What happened?” raged Jeirran. He dug vicious fingers into Krelia’s shoulder, in a vain attempt to halt her noise. All he did was jar her to an even more ear-shredding screech punctuated with noisy sobs. Her eyes remained locked on some unseen vision of horror.
Jeirran gaped at the body of Ceris’ father, baffled, retching at the butchered thing beside it. Wrenching aside an overturned table, he halted, shock stifling the breath in his throat. Blood hammered through his head so hard he thought his skull would split clean in two. Eresken was dead, face ghastly pale and head half severed.
Who was this stranger, this thin-faced man with his mixed-blood hair and distant features? Aritane had brought him, told Jeirran to take his unsupported word. Lifelong habits of self-justification and excuse reared up within Jeirran but quailed beneath the cruel lash of inescapable truths. He had urged her to summon this mountebank. He’d turned a blind eye to their unseemly fumblings, telling himself his reclaimed sister deserved to know love, scorning the strictures of Sheltya vows. But that code was necessarily harsh, treacherous memory reminded him, to ensure strict neutrality gave no one grounds to dismiss Sheltya judgment.
“Where is Aritane?” Jeirran yelled at Krelia, his useless hands jerking in impotent confusion, desperate to beat some answers from the howling bitch.
“What has happened here?” Remet stood in the doorway.
“I don’t know!” Jeirran exploded with sudden fury. “You tell me; you’re Sheltya, all knowing, all wise. Tell me what has happened! Tell me what to do! Tell me why Eresken is dead and why did I ever listen to him! Tell me where to find Aritane!”
Jeirran stormed forward, grabbing the boy’s robe and forcing him backward, fistful of gray cloth twisted at his chest, other hand lifted in a threatening fist.
Remet’s eyes were huge in his pallid face. “I have no idea where she is. I cannot find her mind,” the boy said with a tremor in his voice. “All I know is the soke is under foreign feet, the fess is surrounded and we have no way out.”
“I don’t know what to do,” screamed Jeirran, “I don’t know how we came to this. Why has it all gone so wrong?”
“I can’t answer you,” quavered Remet.
Jeirran smashed his fist into the boy’s mouth, shocking a cry of pain from the lad. As he drew back his arm for an even harder blow, Remet wrenched himself free with the unexpected strength of terror. Pausing in his flight at the top of the stairs, he wiped blood from lips gashed on broken teeth. “You’ll answer for this, for all of this. Somehow, someday, you’ll answer.”
As Jeirran took an enraged step forward, Remet’s nerve broke and the boy scrambled down the stairs. Lifting his head, Jeirran took a deep breath, straightened his back, beard jutting as he set his jaw. Walking slowly, he took the stairs at a measured pace, closing his eyes for a moment before he pushed open the door and stood on the threshold.
“Give me that.” He took an axe helve from a nearby hand, thumping it on the planks at his feet. Three times, three more and three again, the ringing blows echoed above the heads of the milling crowd and the terrified motion slowed, faces upturned, bewildered.
“Everyone who can fight must find a weapon. Those who cannot must take to the upper levels of the rekin.” Jeirran struck the wooden balustrade at his side. “Cut this away and pack the lower level with turf and timber, ready to set slow fire in case we lose the walls. Ropes will get the defenders inside if we have to hold the rekin alone.”
The crowd exchanged uncertain glances.
“We can hold this place against thrice this number of lowlanders,” Jeirran declared with bravado. “Or does Misaen no longer make Anyatimm strong, Maewelin make them wise?” A few faint smiles greeted this sally. “To work!” Jeirran urged them and slowly the people began to move, a sense of purpose soon replacing the earlier aimless fear.
Jeirran jumped down from the wooden stair and, taking up an axe, began reducing it to ragged ruins. Slow fire in the ground level, the barriers of smoke and heat had saved more than one rekin in the past when walls and all seemed lost. It could do so again. If not, well, then he would find oil, spirits, whatever it took to raise fast fire and set the whole rekin alight as a beacon to kindle hatred of the lowlanders in every Mountain heart.
Teyvasoke,
19th of Aft-Summer
There are no chimes to sound inside mountains but by the time I judged we were Poldrion’s side of midnight I was feeling far less cheerful. I leaned forward to peer at Aritane; her breath was coming in harsh jolts jerked by ’Gren’s increasing pace, but I couldn’t believe anyone could lie that limply, so uncomfortably, and be faking. Lifting my lantern to check the color of her skin, I nearly burned her pale wrist on the hot metal as ’Gren halted.
Sorgrad had reached a junction in the workings. “The main seam should be straight ahead. This way.” Water dripped on my head and I felt a cold downdraft, suggesting some kind of ventilation shaft. The tunnel roof grew lower and more irregular, ragged diggings branching off, broken rock underfoot, stretches shored up with timber.
“Shouldn’t there be more of these props?” I wondered uneasily how much mountainside was hanging over my head.
“No need in this rock. That’s one reason Teyvafess has always been so rich,” ’Gren said over his shoulder. “Until their copper lode ran out, that is.”
I felt our direction changing from time to time but with no reference points beyond the ever-changing yet monotonous patterns of the walls, I soon lost my bearings. When a larger space finally opened out, I lifted my lantern to reveal a lofty cavern, though I couldn’t have said if it were natural or dug by hand. Sorgrad was looking for exits, the yellow candlelight throwing his features into sharp relief, the walls behind him melting into darkness.
“Which way?” ’Gren moved Aritane to his other shoulder. “This one’s not getting any lighter.”
Sorgrad looked at me. “All these seem to lead deeper into the mountain, not down the valley.”
I shrugged. “We won’t find out standing here. Better keep moving and hope to pick up some kind of crosswise tunnel.”
We opted for the widest digging and I walked beside ’Gren as Sorgrad scouted ahead. “I went down to the lowlands because I never fancied being a mole,” ’Gren muttered.
“Not because you were scared of the wyrms coming out of the deeps to eat you?” I teased.
“I’d throw them this one.” He hefted Aritane to a more secure hold. “She’d choke a litter of wyrms and leave something over for their dam.”
“She’s not that big,” I objected.
“Do you want to try carrying her?” ’Gren threatened to hand over the unconscious enchantress and he wasn’t joking.
“I’ve got the lantern.” I waved it hurriedly. “Anyway, I bet she’s lighter than a sack of ore.”
Sorgrad cursed something in the Mountain tongue that had ’Gren miss a step.
“What’s the matter?” I called out to him.
“This is just an adit to get to a series of seams.” He came toward us, shaking his head in disgust. A sudden radiance flared on the metal side of his lantern and Sorgrad dropped it with an oath.
A familiar voice sounded above the clatter of dented tin. “Just look into the spell, Sorgrad!”
He picked up the lantern. The candle was dead and guttered but the warm amber light of magic shone in its stead. Usara’s face smiled at us from a swirl of sorcery.
“Hello,” I said stupidly before Sorgrad turned the spell toward himself.
“You’re using the tunnels to get past the fighting?” Usara didn’t waste time on pleasantries.
“Have you been scrying us?” Sorgrad asked suspiciously.
“Snatching the odd glimpse. You’ll have to work right down to the bridge; the whole of the lower valley is a battleground.”