by Mel Odom
Baldarn spent his energy on clambering onto his horse again and didn’t answer.
Long years and hard wear had all but eliminated the once-proud sign that had been carved on the right side of the mine entrance. Hypnotized by the writing, Wick slid from Sonne’s horse as the band of thieves gathered in front of the mine by the remnants of the rusty iron tracks where ore carts had once rolled. The little librarian crossed to the wall by the mine entrance, then carefully dug debris and packed dirt from the letters. It was in a dwarven dialect close enough to one of the others he knew for the translation to come readily to mind.
Mine Shaft Number Six
Property of
IRON HAMMER PEAKS CLAN
No Trespassing
Plenty of Graves inside for Trespassers
“Can you read it?” Lago asked.
“Yes,” Wick answered. Although he’d been expecting to see the mine marked in some manner, actually seeing legible writing outside of Greydawn Moors seemed somehow … heretical. “It’s written in a dwarven language.” Written! His astonishment kept rolling over him.
“Well,” Brant prompted.
Wick swiftly read the information.
“Plenty of graves inside, eh?” Baldarn repeated doubtfully. “Not very inviting.”
“I know,” Lago said, laughing. “It sounds very much like a busy dwarf’s greeting.”
“Can you tell if the mine shaft goes through?” Brant asked.
Wick read the inscription again. “It doesn’t say.”
“Will it inside?”
“Very probably.” Wick took his journal from inside his shirt, then took a piece of charcoal from his coin pouch. Working quickly, the little librarian made a rubbing of the inscription, having to use six sheets of paper to get it all.
Brant organized his band of thieves, sending them scurrying into the nearby brush at the mouth of the mine to get branches to make torches using the pitch pots Lago carried. For the first time, Wick realized how dark it was going to be inside the mineshaft. He shuddered, not liking the images that his mind summoned up in no time at all. When a dwarven mine was operational, no creatures—not even bears or ogres—dared lair there. But now, with the decrepit state of the mine, anything could have moved into the shelter provided by the stone walls.
Lago piled the oily black pitch onto the torches the thieves found during their scavenging. The old dwarf also managed to find yet another bread loaf in the pack he carried, but Wick knew they had to be getting dangerously low on supplies. Would the Purple Cloaks or starvation overtake them first?
“Somebody else has been here before us,” Cobner said, gesturing at the ground.
Wick looked at the hard-packed earth and spotted the tracks of horses that marred the ground.
“How long ago?”
“Looks recent.”
“Can you tell who it was?” Brant asked.
Cobner knelt and dug loose dirt from the tracks. “The horses were unshod.” He glanced around at the ground. “And there were a lot of them. Fohmyn Mhout’s Purple Cloaks all ride shod horses.”
Tseralyn knelt down as well and examined the tracks the big dwarven warrior had dug out. “Goblinkin slavers,” she announced. “They work through the Forest of Fangs and Shadows and the Broken Forge Mountains. Blackgate Cove lies on the other side of this mountain range. There’s a dozen halfer villages scattered through those lands that fish and trade with ships.” She looked up at Wick. “I’d thought at first that maybe you were from there, but you’re not, are you?”
“No, lady,” Wick answered.
“None of the halfers there knows how to read.”
Wick looked away, realizing that he’d inadvertently let yet another person in on his secret.
Tseralyn glanced meaningfully at the little librarian’s journal. “You know how to write, too, don’t you?”
Wick closed his journal and put it away. “Yes.”
The elven warrior stood, a small, curious smile on her face. “How is it that you know how to do those things? Only wizards know how to read and write.”
“I’m not a wizard,” Wick said.
“Easy, my lady,” Brant said. “The little artist’s secrets are his own. For his own reasons.”
Tseralyn looked over at the master thief. “You don’t seem like a man much inclined to let mysteries and secrets pass you by.”
“I’m not. But I let your secrets stand, my lady.” Brant regarded her, his black eyes flat and neutral. “And so I let his stand as well.”
Tseralyn nodded. “I respect that.”
“Good. I should hate for any problems to arise between us.” Brant took one of the pitch torches from Lago. The master thief popped one of his hands and sparks jumped onto the torch. The flames quickly crowned the torch’s head, burning brightly for a moment before settling down somewhat. With a deft move that hid the flint and steel he’d undoubtedly used to light the torch, he held his hand out for the elven warrior’s inspection. “Cobner.”
“Yes.”
“Would you take the lead?”
“I’d be happy to. There’s always more action at the front.”
“And keep an eye out for any more writing on the walls that you may see.
Cobner took another torch and lit it from the one Brant held. The big dwarf hitched his battle-axe up onto his shoulder and fearlessly strode into the mine.
“Wick.”
The little librarian looked up at the master thief.
“Stay with Cobner. Use those quick eyes of yours well. You might find something Cobner misses.” Brant held out the reins to Cobner’s horse.
Wick accepted the bridle reins and took a final look around the mine-shaft. The rusty iron tracks ran out into the level ground ahead of the mine, disappearing into the scrub brush and trees. Somewhere around there, he felt certain, would be the remains of the dwarven village of Mattletown.
Cuperious Eltuth had written dozens of monographs in different books detailing the wondrous automatons the Iron Hammer Peaks dwarves had forged over hundreds of years. There was supposed to be a mechanical deer that actually walked and ate corn, and a metal duck so cunningly made that it flew as easily as the fowl that it had been modeled on. Finding those, or any of the other automatons the human historian had written about, would have been amazing.
Resolutely, Wick took one of the torches Lago had made, watching as Tyrnen and Zalnar bundled dozens more sticks and strapped them to their horses. The little librarian stepped into the mine shaft after Cobner. Broken stone and debris littered the way, occasionally joined by rusted mining tools.
“A dwarven miner would never have left all this behind willingly,” Cobner said softly. The big dwarf’s voice echoed inside the cavern.
“Shengharck was said to have struck suddenly.” Wick lifted his torch and examined the wall next to him. Curiously, he scratched at the black color. It peeled free of the wall in crystallized flakes.
Cobner stood in front of Wick, gazing at the clean patch on the wall. “What is that?”
“Soot,” Wick answered in a small voice that cracked. He lifted the torch higher, revealing a large expanse of the wall. Cobner’s own torch showed that the devastation continued down the cavern, all of it marked in black soot scarring.
“From the dragon’s breath?”
Wick nodded, feeling small and insignificant while surrounded by the old scars of the conflagration that had once filled the mine. “There was nothing else in here to burn.” Glancing at the rusty tools in the debris at his feet, the little librarian saw that none of the wooden parts had survived. Even the wooden planks between the iron rails for the mine carts were gone. Everything was burned! He continued following Cobner, amazed at how big the cavern was—and how extensively the fire had damaged everything. Blackened timbers still framed the three mine shafts ahead where Cobner had stopped.
The sound of the horses’ hooves striking stone echoed behind them, making the cavern sound even emptier to Wick. The little li
brarian couldn’t help wondering how many dwarves had died in the mines after Shengharck’s arrival. There couldn’t possibly have been many survivors!
Cobner turned and faced him. The torchlight fell only partially into the three dark-throated tunnels that split off the main cavern. “Which way?” the big dwarf asked. Although he kept his voice neutral, pain showed in his eyes.
Wick stepped forward, dropping the bridle reins. The horse snorted tiredly behind him and stamped its feet while munching on the bridle bit. The little librarian rubbed his hand across the stone on the right side of each shaft, clearing the soot and debris from the writing carved there. Plankless mine car tracks ran down each shaft, vanishing at the end of the flickering torchlight.
The shafts were marked in order from left to right.
Mine Shaft Six, Tunnel One
Mine Shaft Six, Tunnel Two
Mine Shaft Six, Tunnel Three
Smaller writing under the first tunnel indicated that the tunnel had been abandoned and had collapsed. A list of seven names followed the declaration, all of them noted as dwarves that had died in the cave-in.
Wick took out his journal and quickly copied the names off, thinking he might be able to cross-reference them back at the Vault of All Known Knowledge if he got the chance. At least the names might provide another linchpin bridging the information of the pre-Cataclysmic times and what historians believed to be true now.
“Is this the tunnel we need to take?” Brant asked.
“No,” Wick answered. “This one collapsed a long time ago.” He put the journal away.
“What about the other two?”
“They’re both open according to the information there, and they lead to the other side of the mountain.”
The volcano rumbled again, and the warbling growl trapped inside the cavern seemed to boil up from the bowels of the mountains. Debris and a cloud of dust shivered free of the cavern ceiling and rained down over Wick and the others.
“The way that sounds,” Baldarn griped, “all these tunnels could come down at any time. We might be better off taking our chances with the Purple Cloaks.”
“No,” Brant said, wiping dust from his traveling cloak. “These tunnels have been here for decades—” He glanced at Wick and lifted his eyebrows.
“Hundreds of years, actually,” Wick said. “Possibly as much as two thousand.”
“There you go,” Brant said. “If they’ve stood like this for hundreds or thousands of years, they’ll surely stand for another few hours while we make our way through them.” He paused. “Which tunnel, little artist?”
Wick didn’t know how best to answer. The information carved beside the tunnels indicated that they went through to the other side of the mountains, but there was no way of knowing if that was true any longer. Shengharck could have caused damage that could have closed any of them down. “Either the center tunnel or the one on the right should be fine.”
“Okay,” Brant said. “We’ll take the center tunnel. Cobner, lead on.”
Without a word, the big dwarf stepped into the tunnel and moved forward. Wick watched for a moment, not really wanting to step into the waiting darkness. Then Cobner’s light got far enough away that it created a bubble of illumination that no longer touched the little librarian’s. Wick took a final glance back at the open mouth of the mine shaft on the other side of the large cavern. The dimming day had already cast a shadow over the outside world.
Heaving a quiet sigh, trying to convince himself that stepping into the unknown dangers of the mine shaft was preferable to facing Fohmyn Mhout’s Purple Cloaks, Wick grabbed the reins of Cobner’s horse and trudged into the mine tunnel.
Thoughts of Blackgate Cove kept the little librarian’s mind busy. Brant and his group had talked about the area uncertainly, but Tseralyn spoke of it as if she’d been there. Can there be villages of dwellers living on the other side of this mountain in safety? After seeing everything that was happening to dwellers in Hanged Elf’s Point only a couple days’ ride away, it was hard to imagine.
Even should it exist, Wick told himself, those people there may not know anything about Greydawn Moors. He would be just as lost then as he was now.
22
Under and Through the Mountain
It’s getting colder,” Cobner said quietly as he led the way getting down the Cobner said quietly as he led the way down the tunnel’s incline.
“We’re going deeper into the mountain.” Wick pulled his own traveling cloak more tightly around him, hoping to stave off some of the chill. “There must be underground streams nearby,” Wick replied. “There’s supposed to be an entrance to an underground lake beneath the Iron Hammer Peaks as well. I’ve been told that people once lived on the islands there.”
“Do you believe it?”
Wick shook his head. “I think that part of the stories is a myth. It was never confirmed, only mentioned in rumors. But I believe there could be an underground lake.” Frost glistened on the tunnel sides now, proof of the water that ran through the land underground.
Probably, the little librarian guessed, remembering Ruital’s Basics of Ground Water, rain occurred on both sides of the mountain range and fed the lands on either side. Dream had been located on a peninsula of land, and the Shattered Coast probably hadn’t changed that much. Rain would sweep in from the oceans on three sides. Some of the Iron Hammer Peaks dwarven clan historical writings had included notes on underground rivers in the area that created the Dankmire Swamps further south. They hadn’t mentioned the underground lake so big that it had an island in the center of it. Only the humans had written of that.
“With the volcano sounding so near,” Cobner said, “you’d think it would be a lot warmer.”
“In other places it is,” Wick said. “The writings I read talked of the hardships the Iron Hammer Peaks clan faced in digging the mines here. In some of the shafts they dug, the dwarven miners broke through walls that flooded whole tunnels before all of them could get clear. Other tunnels gave way suddenly to bottomless pits. And still other tunnels led only to steam vents from the volcano that boiled the flesh from the miners’ bodies in the space of a drawn breath.”
Cobner walked silently for a few moments, gazing at the blackened walls of the tunnel. “I never did like mining that much. I like building things just fine, but the only time I want to go into a hole in the ground is when I really don’t care about living anymore.”
Wick silently agreed. He held his torch high and made sure he stayed far enough in front of Cobner’s horse that he wouldn’t get stepped on. The horse’s hooves thudded against the tunnel’s stone floor, echoing with the hooves of the other horses that followed them. The mine car tracks wound through the center of the tunnel, but there still weren’t any planks between the twin rails. Only a little further on, Cobner stepped around a set of rusting wheels and iron brackets, remnants of at least one mine car that had burned at that point.
Cobner raised his fading torch. “There’s another tunnel ahead.”
“I see it,” the little librarian said, peering through the darkness to see the mine shaft barely limned in the torchlight ahead.
A number of smaller tunnels branched off the one they followed. All of those tunnels followed veins the dwarven miners had discovered in the mountains, and all were clearly labeled and numbered. None of them led to the land on the eastern side of the Broken Forge Mountains. The miners had followed the ore veins until they’d played out, then marked the tunnel as closed, concentrating on the sections that offered the fastest return on their labors.
Wick handed his torch to Cobner, who called out to Lago that he needed a fresh torch for himself. The little librarian concentrated on scraping the writing out with his dagger point. His eyes burned from spending hours trudging through the darkness, and from the smoke and dust that filled the tunnels every time the volcano grumbled.
Cobner stepped closer with his fresh torch. “What does it say?”
“It’s another cl
osed tunnel,” Wick replied. He took out his journal and flipped it open to the loose map he was making based on their progress. He jotted the notation on the new tunnel and started to move away when a flash caught his eye.
“Come on,” Cobner said. “Do you think we’re halfway through these mountains yet?”
“I don’t know.” Wick took his torch back and shoved it into the new tunnel. The access shaft was only a few inches taller than Cobner. The flickering flame triggered a flashing reflection from something deep inside the tunnel.
“What did you find?” Brant asked, joining Wick.
“I don’t know. There’s something shiny further down the tunnel.” The little librarian peered intently, his dweller’s covetous instincts combining with his librarian’s curiosity. Before he knew it, he’d taken three strides into the tunnel, leaving his companions behind, hypnotized by the gleaming blue flash.
“Little warrior,” Cobner called. “Give caution there. You could find all manner of hostile creatures in that tunnel.” The dwarf’s hobnailed boots crunched in pursuit of Wick.
Although fear thrilled inside him, Wick didn’t stop till he reached the blue gleam. Only as he knelt did he realize that whatever it was lay ensnared in a broad, bony ribcage that had once belonged to a dwarven miner. Soot covered the bared skeleton, as it covered four others huddled there beside it.
“None of them had a chance,” Cobner whispered behind Wick. “That foul dragon burned them down where they lay.” He paused in silent reverence. “At least it couldn’t eat them the way it evidently ate all the others it found.”
Wick played his torch over the skeletons, noticing for the first time that they’d fallen forward. “They were running from the dragon when it breathed on them. They died instantly.”
“What was it that caught your eye, little artist?” Brant asked.
Hand trembling, Wick reached into the skeleton’s chest. He tried to think that the dust and debris that he reached through was just that, and that it wasn’t the ash of flesh that had once been part of the dwarf. He closed his fist about his prize and pulled it free. Unfortunately, his closed fist was too wide to fit back through the chest cavity.
