Daniel moved into position and hefted his axe.
“Stop,” the collier commanded. “Already wrong. Stand here.
Cut upwards with the grain. Strike here.” He pointed across the branch.
Daniel did as he was directed. The head of the axe lodged in the wood and sent a rough vibration up his arm.
“Good, but don’t push the head into the wood-put some force into it and let the axe fall of its own. Use a strong, steady hand with a gentle touch. Continue.”
Daniel made more strokes, some of which went embarrassingly wide of his mark, and finally, after about fifteen blows, managed to cut the branch away while the collier looked on.
“Good, keep going,” he said, and then started working the other side of the tree, laying into a particularly large branch.
After a while Daniel asked, “Do the nine sons of Aarnieu rule Elfland now? Or F?rieland, rather?”
“The Faerie Princelings, yes, they do. They used the death of their father and the disappearance of Filliu as an excuse to hunt down and kill the remaining supporters of the late King Ghrian. It was plain to anyone with half a brain what had happened, but the populace decided to play along with a comfortable lie rather than fight for a difficult truth. This has opened the royal court up to any number of flatterers and extorters. There is one I’ve had several run-ins with-Agrid Fiall, who is particularly devious.”
Daniel had managed to remove two more branches and started on the third when the collier said, “Stop, you are weary. Never swing an axe in that state. Rest a moment.”
In truth, Daniel’s arms, particularly his shoulders, were nearly falling off. Daniel laid his axe on the ground and moved off to lean against a tree.
“Wait,” the collier commanded. “Never leave any tool just lying around. That is dangerous, disrespectful of both the instrument and your craft, and speaks badly of the craftsman. Always keep it with you. If you must leave it anywhere, for any reason, leave it like this . . .” He raised his axe and struck the fallen tree with it where the trunk was thickest. The handle stuck out at a 45-degree angle.
Daniel crouched against a tree, out of the way. He rested there, sweating hard and studying the collier’s form as he attacked the tree with a smooth and graceful confidence born out of experience.
“The Faerie rule is vast and now encompasses all the Elfin cities and villages. Only the farthest territories and hardest-to-reach places remain beyond their rule. At least, beyond their interest.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that of this forest. The Faerie territories are ruled by the nine princes, who have all degenerated into frivolous perversities. Two hundred years ago, on a whim, each of them wed nine sisters who they pass around among them, with as little sense of proprietorship-not to say love-as dumb beasts.”
When Daniel felt that he had cooled and rested enough, he rose and started working the tree again, at the woodsman’s side.
“What about the Elves in Exile?” he asked.
“We don’t speak of them here,” the collier said curtly. And that was the end of the conversation for another couple hours, until the tree was fully stripped and they made their way back to the hut.
“The Elves in Exile,” the collier said, as they ate lunch in the shade of his hut, “is the name of the court of the true king of Elfland-they preserve the royal line, unbroken for over eight thousand years. They believe that one day, when the people most desire it, they will storm the Elfin palace and reclaim the throne.”
By now Daniel was tired and exhausted. Daniel explained about his own time and the length of days, and the collier let him sleep some of the afternoon at the hut. He felt sure that he had been awake a full day, but the sun was still high in the sky.
When Daniel awoke he found another pile of branches, but no collier. He set about stripping them again. Then, as it was getting towards evening, the collier returned with the actual tree trunk itself, which had now been cut into three sections.
The collier taught Daniel how to saw and split the wood in the proper lengths, and he did this until it was too dark to work. They took dinner then and Daniel dozed off as they sat outside the hut together, in silence, under the stars. That was Daniel’s third day in Elfland.
The days after that continued much the same way-long periods of work that involved going into the forest to fetch wood and then cutting it into lengths appropriate for the charring pit. Daniel steadily improved his skill at talking to the collier in his own language and was pleased at his growing fluency.
After two more days they had gathered enough wood to be able to build the pits. This was done by first scraping the current pit, then uncovering an old one in the same clearing but on the other side of the hut. Grass had grown over that one, which was to become useful later. The collier cut the turf into rectangular sections with a thin, flat shovel, and Daniel helped to lift these sections up and set them to one side. The bottom of it was then raked flat, and a thin base of the powdered charcoal was laid down on both sites. The two pits were carefully and cleverly piled with logs of various shapes and sizes, arranged in a circle, with a round gap or chimney at the centre. The collier took a thousand pains to ensure that the pits were built to a perfect standard, often giving logs just a minute turn so that the space between them was exactly so.
Then they set about covering the woodpiles with the cut turf, tightly packing it close together everywhere except the very top, which was for the chimney. Dry soil was spread over where the turf did not extend.
It was getting late in the evening when the collier was satisfied enough to light them both. He made a small fire with charcoal from the previous batch, and once that was burning nicely, he divided up the coals with his shovel and, with orange sparks dancing high into the night sky, tipped them into both of the bonfire’s chimneys, where with a quiet crackle and a rich, musty smell, they started to kindle the rest of the wood. Then they sat back and watched.
It was vitally important that the piles burnt steadily, evenly, and not too hot. The collier took constant turns around the piles, laying his hands upon the turf walls, checking the vents, and gazing into the smoke that had started to billow from the two chimney holes. Daniel followed him around. There were a few energetic moments when fire broke through the turf wall and they had to hurry to repair the breach.
After these first few hours, the collier judged that the stacks were burning well enough that they could relax and take dinner- which was from a different bottle this time.
They drank and watched the piles. Daniel gazed up at the stars, which were strange and unfamiliar. None of the constellations he learned when he was young were there, which was disturbing but also exciting.
He had to get back to Freya.
Exhaustion overcame Daniel then, and he fell into a deep and well-earned sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
The Wild Caves
1
Before . . .
The Wild Caves were certainly wild, but it was hard for Daniel and Freya to think of them as just caves. At certain points they would open out into enormous expanses that seemed more like underground landscapes. It was hard to make out features in these areas, since the vast emptiness swallowed their feeble lamplight, but there would sometimes be a glittering seam that would throw their light back at them; or a pale green luminescence swathed against a rock face.
Then, without warning, they would enter another tunnel or turn a corner to find themselves in disturbingly small and claustrophobic passages that might wind on for miles without giving them a chance to stand up straight. The air hung around them, thick with cold and clammy moisture.
Generally Swi?gar led them along whichever path appeared to offer the quickest downward loop. The Sl?pismere, they knew, was a long way down, so whenever possible they would follow water-anything from a small trickle to a river. Just about any stream of water would eventually lead to the huge underground lake, they reasoned.
Sooner or later, however, each stream or trickle of water fe
ll into a drain or slipped into a crack in the wall. This was frustrating, yet they always seemed to happen across another ribbon of water they could follow, refreshing themselves and refilling their waterskins.
When they had been walking downwards for what seemed like days, they came to a sharp ridge of slate where they paused. A draft rising from below sent warm waves of heat rolling over them, causing them to sweat. They stayed for a time, sitting on the ridge, opening up their clothing and taking off their shoes-exposing everything that they had to the warm air in order to dry them as much as possible. There was no way of telling where the air came from, but Daniel’s mind pictured an open lake of lava beneath them, sending its heat up towards them through a series of vents.
But ever before and after that, the Wild Caves were invariably cold, wet, and miserably dark. The thick, oilcloth traveling cloaks and boots were snug enough, but not completely waterproof.
Finding a place to camp was a constant difficulty. Since there was no way to mark the passage of time below the earth, and they had no watches, it was hard to estimate how long they had been walking or how long they should keep walking. Many times they would hunt around for a bit of dry ground and spend some time setting up camp, only to find sleep still a long way off.
The physical hardships would have been enough, but having no knowledge of how far they had gone or had left to go was what Daniel and Freya found most dispiriting. Only determination kept them from depression. Daniel’s desire to get stronger and better at traveling helped him keep putting one foot in front of the other. Freya’s thought of how many people depended on their mission kept her feet moving forward, long after they had started to cramp and ache.
Swi?gar was grim and serious. He seldom spoke, walking always in the lead, keeping his eyes open and ears alert for any clue of danger or trouble in the path ahead. Ecgbryt, on the other hand, exalted in the prospect of danger and adventure.
The knights were ideal traveling companions-they seemed to be walking libraries. Ecgbryt would go a ways in silence and then suddenly launch into a tale about a battle he had participated in, usually with King ?lfred against the Vikings. Daniel would always press him with questions about the details of his exploits, but would be forced into silence when his store of questions was exhausted.
Freya found Ecgbryt and Daniel exasperating at times, and preferred walking with Swi?gar up ahead. She was fond of his riddles, and he seemed to know hundreds of them. She only ever guessed a few of them correctly, but a good one would keep her mind turning for hours before she allowed Swi?gar to tell her the answer. She was never disappointed-even when she needed him to explain the answer. She even memorised a couple of her favorites.
Both Daniel and Freya enjoyed the knights’ ballads. Both knew long ballads that sometimes took over an hour to recite; some of them were so complex, they had no idea how the warriors kept them all separate in their heads-although one of them would correct the other from time to time. Ecgbryt’s songs and poems all seemed to be about battles and heroic deeds; Swi?gar’s about journeys and strange experiences and observations.
They had been following the path of a small stream-barely a trickle of water that ran steadily downwards through a narrow, gutter-like tunnel-and this lead them into a larger, open space where the echoes of their movements grew further apart and softer, and a stiff wind blew across them. More significantly, they heard sounds that they did not cause.
“Whisht,” hissed Swi?gar, motioning them to stop. They all held their breath, crouching to let their ears pick out sounds of shuffling and scraping. The sounds were regular and continuous- not the sounds of people trying not to be heard.
“I think I see something,” said Freya. “Just up ahead. It’s a kind of swirling motion-things moving around a light-up there on that rock.”
“Swa swa, so it also seems to me,” said Swi?gar. “Let us approach cautiously. There may be danger in the shadows.”
“Let it fall upon us,” Ecgbryt huffed. “It will meet my axe coming up to greet it. The night before ?lfred harried the Viking chieftain Hastein at Appledore and Milton-”
“Hush, bro?or,” commanded Swi?gar.
“I am sorry, but my weapon is mighty tired from being carried around like an infant. It longs to stretch itself.”
“I will stretch it across your head if you do not strap your tongue to your teeth,” Swi?gar snapped testily. He halted in front of them but did not turn around. “God’s wounds, you are a worse prattler than Asser.”
“Aye, bro?or,” said Ecgbryt with a wink at Daniel, who grinned back at him. “Aye, calm yourself, it is well.”
They crept forward, approaching the lit figure. Looking around, Daniel could see that they were entering what seemed to be a confluence of tunnels. The walls were honeycombed with black, twisting holes of various sizes-from tall, black, foreboding ruptures in the walls that spewed cold winds to holes small enough to perhaps only wriggle through, but that were so smooth they may have been sanded out of the stone. The atmosphere was a bewildering confusion of cross breezes and vortexes.
The wide, flat ground stretching before them was about the size and dimension of a football pitch and looked like some sort of abandoned mining site littered with old rickety frames and boards that were slowly rotting next to decaying bits of canvas and string. A dry and crumbling bucket lay beside an old well, and there was the occasional stone ring that encircled a fire-scorched spot of earth.
Freya could now make out the moving shapes more clearly; they were people, all milling slowly around a glowing violet light. She blinked her eyes and shook her head. For a moment she thought there was something wrong with her, but then she figured it out-it was definitely people that she saw, but as she came nearer, she found that they were very, very small.
At first she had assumed them to be far away, but now she saw that they were quite close. The tallest of them could be no more than two feet high. There seemed to be about thirty or forty of them, walking around a shiny, cylindrical object that was nearly as big as they were-a brass lamp that gave off a faint purple light.
Half of them were moving in one direction, and half of them in the other. The lines wove in and out but without any bumping, jostling, or confusion, like bees around a hive, Freya thought. Closer, she could see that the little people were wearing roughly woven clothes of dark and faded colours. Some wore curious felt hats, others had twine belts. Some had tattered shoes, but most were barefoot. The men had long beards, and the women wore long tresses. All were dumpy, with sagging faces, glumly circling the brass lamp, faces to the light, murmuring to each other in low tones.
All except one. On a smallish boulder that nonetheless placed him several heads’ height above the others sat a fat figure, much better clothed than the rest, even if just as glum.
“Gnomes,” groaned Swi?gar, shaking his head. “Cuthbert preserve us.”
2
“Gnomes?” repeated Daniel. “Really? What do they do? I mean, what are they? Where are they from?”
“They are a long-lived people-perhaps the smallest of the underground races. They make their homes in the corners unused by the other earth-livers. They are generally happy folk and do not usually intend harm or mischief to any.”
“Not that it would make much difference if they were to,”
Ecgbryt muttered.
“They mimic the actions of other races-of men, elves, dwarfs, and even goblins, I have heard tell. I would guess that the one on the rock is the king or chieftain.”
Ecgbryt snorted. “The dwarfish races sometimes use them as cheap helpmates. They don’t ask for money, content only to do what they see the dwarfs doing.” He shrugged.
“Why do they copy others?” Freya asked.
“They are Healfmods,” answered Ecgbryt, “that is, half-spirited, or halfminded-they do not think entirely for themselves.
All of them share their thoughts, such as they are, with the rest.
Apart, each of them is stupid. Together . . .
in truth, together they are not much more.”
The gnomes were still moving and muttering to themselves in low voices, just as they had before. The only sign that they had registered the presence of the four newcomers was a quick dart of the eyes towards and away from the strangers, although their faces still remained sad and mournful, not in the least surprised or interested.
The travelers stood and watched for a time. The steady, circling movement and purple light was oddly hypnotic and relaxing. Daniel feared that he might turn into one of those mindless gnomes if he didn’t say or do something soon. Stepping forward, he drew a deep breath and called, “Hello!” in a loud voice.
The gnome on the rock jumped, his eyes comically wide. All of the gnomes stopped instantly as their heads spun around from every direction until they stopped at Daniel.
“Who said that?” said one with a bushy beard.
“Who’s there?” said another, a woman with a hat.
“Who said what?” asked a third.
“Hello,” answered a fourth.
“Who’s there?” asked a fifth.
“What?” said a sixth.
This fit of responses took Daniel by surprise and he stood in silence with the others. The chief had looked at him expectantly, as if he had spoken, though he never said a word.
“Um,” he began again, his eyes going from the chief to the crowd of gnomes and back again. “My name is Daniel and . . . uh, I’m-I mean we-are looking for a tunnel down to the Sl?pismere. If any of you, that is, if all of you, er, know of a way down, then that’d be, you know, great. Uh . . . otherwise, if you don’t, then that’s okay-but if you do, do you think you could . . .”
Daniel could hear himself babbling stupidly but he couldn’t stop. About sixty eyes were on him, staring steadily and expectantly. It wasn’t until Ecgbryt put a hand on his shoulder that he broke off.
The Realms Thereunder aet-1 Page 22
