The Humanarium

by CW Tickner

  A gaping hole led deep into the boulder beside Harl. He peered inside. It was too dark to see much, but he could pick out the detail of more narrow holes cutting deep into the rock. Cracks criss-crossed the stone, like the pattern on a china cup, and threaded their way through the tunnels into the heart of the boulder. It was chilling how weak it looked. It was as if the whole thing was just waiting to crumble.

  Harl sighed as he looped his satchel over his chest. The ancient planks creaked under his feet as he picked his way along the first level of scaffolding.

  ‘Did you see who arrived last night?’ Troy asked.

  Harl glanced at his friend. Troy was trying to mask it, but there was a definite twinkle in his eye.

  ‘No. Who?’

  ‘Chloe,’ Troy kept his face straight until they reached the next ladder, but then burst out laughing. ‘Are you going to ask her out again? What’s it now? Seven times? Eight? She’ll weaken eventually.’

  Harl groaned. Chloe was the daughter of Carl Rayne, the carpenter. She was petite and fiery, with eyes so dark they were bottomless pools. There was a danger about her that most men found exciting. He’d tried and tried to get something as small as a smile from her, but she had no interest in him. She’d slept with everyone else, of course, or so the rumours said. Everyone but Troy. Troy had nothing to do with her for some reason. She’d tried to seduce him, but Troy had just laughed her off.

  ‘Not interested,’ Harl grunted.

  Troy launched his bag up to the next level and scampered up the ladder.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, ‘but I’ll wager that the thought of her warming your mattress will win you round after a few more cycles in here.’

  When Harl reached the top of the ladder he found Troy crouched near the opening of their tiny crawl hole. He was helping Ryker drag a bucket of rock out as the older man spat a constant stream of vicious curses, dragging himself from the hole.

  Ryker had been at the quarry for at least twenty cycles when they arrived. He was short – barely up to Harl’s chest – so he was ideal for the narrow tunnels. Tight, corded muscle rippled on his arms as he hefted the bucket up and tipped the contents over the side. He wore tattered trousers and a leather waistcoat over his bare chest. His long hair had been yanked back into a ponytail coated with rock powder.

  ‘Below!’ he shouted as the rubble tumbled away. Curses came from the lower level.

  Troy grinned. ‘Perhaps a little more warning next time?’

  Ryker spat on the dusty planks and then started to crawl back into the hole.

  ‘Ain’t no fun if I do that, boy.’

  Harl crouched down and used his flint and steel to light a candle. His hands shook when he lifted the candle up. The hole swallowed Ryker into the dark before him. It looked smaller than it had on the previous cycle.

  Troy laid a hand on Harl’s shoulder.

  ‘I can go in if you want.’

  Harl shook his head, took a breath, dropped to his knees and then crawled inside.

  When the dark cycle fell, the guards blew a whistle to signal the end of the shift. Harl crawled out, coughing and hacking up dust, then collapsed on the scaffold. Troy handed him a skin of water to swill his mouth out.

  ‘Any luck?’ Troy asked.

  Ryker wriggled out and grabbed the waterskin from Harl. He took a long draught and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘not even a gleam of ore,’

  Harl closed his eyes and focused on breathing the clean air. The air inside the tunnels was choked with dust. It was like breathing in bitter treacle. He looked at the scratches and bruises that covered his calloused hands. He even had blisters. He hadn’t had any of those since starting in the forge, but the small tools and awkward working conditions had left him raw and bleeding. His shoulders had been scraped on either side and the scars would taint him forever as having done penance in the quarries.

  They packed up and returned to camp. Small shacks circled a wide yard where an open cookhouse was preparing food for the returning shift. Workers trudged out for the next session as Harl collapsed onto his bedroll. Prisoners with a higher privilege level had a shack to themselves with bedding inside, but everyone else had to sleep on the ground. The guards had a small barracks at the head of the quarry and sentry towers ringed the pit. It was miserable, especially when the rain came during the dark cycle. The only cover was a few tanned hides folded over as a makeshift tent, but water still seeped through the holes and they ended up wet.

  It was harder for those inside the tunnels. Harl had worked the dark shift a few times since arriving. It made the light shift seem easy. Rainwater filtered down through the rock to drip and flood around the workers. Miners with any sense dug at a slight incline so that water always ran back down the tunnel away from them, but more than a few had died as the water gushed through and trapped them in a small hollow. And then there was the dust. When the rain came, the dust turned to cement. Thick and sluggish, it set hard unless it was scraped away regularly.

  Troy slumped down next to Harl and shoved a half-full bowl of stew into his hands. Harl shovelled it down, slurping the last remnant before staring into the empty bowl. It was barely enough to live on. Ryker had already finished his own bowl and was curled up asleep in his blankets.

  ‘I don’t know how he does it,’ Troy moaned. ‘He didn’t even look that tired when we finished.’

  Harl nodded. He looked at his own blankets as the first rain started to fall, but then climbed to his feet and stepped out from under the shelter. The rain was a cascade of relief on his face. He scrubbed the filth away and took a few steps forward.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Troy mumbled, pulling a blanket up to his chin as he closed his eyes and yawned.

  Harl considered the question. ‘I need to stretch my legs. I can’t stand it in those tunnels, Troy. They smother me.’

  Troy began to snore.

  Harl paced the perimeter of the camp letting his mind and body relax. It felt good to work his legs. Rain stung the blisters on his hands, but the taste of the clear water in his mouth was invigorating.

  There was very little to see with the light out. Flickering torches smoked and sizzled under the deluge of water, but their light died quickly, falling far short of its normal reach. He looked up at the boulder behind its shroud of scaffold and ladders. Shouts and flickering candles were the only things that pierced the dark. He would be back there again come the light, but at least he could breathe fresh air until then.

  In the darkness it was impossible to see the quarry rearing up around him. He imagined the steps cut into the rock. How many cycles had it taken to carve them? It seemed impossible that they had ever managed to cut so deep into the ground. No well reached this far down.

  He paced back-and-forth, arms folded behind his back as the horrors of the cycle played out in his mind, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling of being so far below ground level. He imagined the river breaking through from above and cascading down around them. How long would it take to fill the quarry? He didn’t know, but there weren’t many who could swim. He scraped a foot across the ground, drawing a line in the gravel. There wasn’t even anywhere for the water to go if it flooded. It was just rock down there, hard, black, and unforgiving.

  He turned away and began pacing back towards the campfire. His steps faltered. Black rock? Spinning around, he raced back to the mark he had scraped in the wet ground. He slid to a stop and fell to his knees. It was there, clear in the dirt before him.

  The base of their world.

  The same black glass that formed the barriers around the world stared back at him from the ground. He ran his trembling fingers over it. The base of the world. He had never heard of anyone reaching it before. It had been a running joke: if there was a roof, then there had to be a floor. He tapped it and it sounded hollow, just like the walls around them and the Sight that showed the realm of the gods. He lay down and pressed his face against it, cuppi
ng his hands either side of his eyes to block out any light from the fires flickering around the shacks above, but there was nothing there. It was just black, cold and featureless against his skin, another barrier to trap them, another wall to pen them in. He smashed a fist against it and then rolled onto his back.

  It was useless. He had somehow thought that digging into the ground might be an answer. Perhaps there was a way out down there? But it was just another wall. The prison was complete.

  He climbed to his feet and then scraped the gravel back over the floor with his boot. There was no point anyone else seeing it. Perhaps they already had and had come to the same heart-breaking conclusion?

  Voices came from behind him and he ducked into the deeper shadow of one of the shacks. He didn’t want to see anyone just now. The pain was too fierce inside, the hatred too strong. Bracing his back against the wall, he peered out from his refuge.

  Queeg appeared. He was hobbling along, slapping his coiled whip against his leg as he talked to a smaller companion. The burn scar on his head shone pale in the dark. The two figures stopped near one of the shacks. Lamplight captured them and their faces were revealed in the light. Queeg’s companion was a petite woman.

  Chloe.

  She laughed at something the man said and ran one finger down his cheek and neck, and then slid it across his chest. Her long dark hair was slick with the rain, but her eyes seemed to catch the light and flash with fire. Her simple cotton blouse and trousers were sodden and plastered to the contours of her body. Queeg’s eyes were drinking it all in. He licked his lips, took a swig from a skin and dragged the looped coil of his whip across the sodden fabric covering her breast. She laughed again and tapped his nose with her finger. He wrapped an arm around her waist and slammed her against him. She arched her back slightly to keep her face away from his as he lunged forward to bite at her ear. His eyes were wild.

  Harl clenched his fists as anger flooded through him. He began to step out, but then Chloe turned her face towards him. Her lip curled into a mocking smile and she waggled one finger in his direction before pushing Queeg back into the shack and closing the door.

  Harl stood frozen in the rain. He felt dirty.

  Chapter 7

  Who would have thought they could be so intelligent. I have decided to make them my life’s work. How will my fellows react to them and how will they react to my fellows?

  The cycles passed and Harl and Troy began to fall into the rhythm of the quarry. Half a cycle on, half a cycle off. It didn’t matter whether it was light or dark. Those who fell ill or injured were taken away to the healers. They would return when healed to complete their penance, but when the numbers fell short, those left just had to work that much harder.

  He only caught glimpses of Chloe. She had seduced her way into Queeg’s favour and never worked the quarry like the others, although she paid a heavy price for it. One cycle, shortly after the rain stopped and the light came back, he caught sight of her washing her hair in a bucket outside the hut. Both wrists were bruised and an angry red welt circled her throat. She saw him, but her lip just curled up in the familiar snide smile and she wrung out her hair and turned away. He didn’t see her after that.

  Troy had accepted his fate grudgingly and was getting on far better than Harl. Harl kept getting assigned to the tunnels, whereas Troy worked the scaffold, carting rubble and ore away. The tunnels began to choke Harl. The flickering candlelight played tricks on him and he began to feel the weight of all the rock pressing down above him. It didn’t help that Ryker was so small. The tunnels he dug weren’t big enough for Harl. Rock pressed around him on all sides until he ended up wriggling like a worm through the tunnels. But he forced himself to continue until he staggered back out into the open space of the quarry to sleep at the end of the cycle.

  Like the others in the quarry, he would climb the rickety scaffolding and wriggle, head first, into the tunnels in search of the elusive ore seams that ran through the giant rock. The guards were always present, lashing out at those who were too slow, or forcing prisoners back into the rock. It felt like digging his own grave at times.

  It was ironic that he was using one of his own tools for the job. It had been a large order three giftings back and the work had kept him busy at the anvil for a long time. He’d had no idea at the horror the simple tools would be a part of, and the excitement with which he’d looked at the stack of credits he’d received sickened him now. If another order came in he would refuse it. But would that condemn the prisoners to using inferior tools as well as hardship?

  A loud crumble of stones focused him on the tunnel ahead, snapping him from his reverie. He tensed, ready to crawl away at the first sign of a rock fall, but it was only Ryker. He had broken through into a neighbouring tunnel, leaving a wider space than normal. A whisper of air came from the outside, but it did little to ease the unrelenting heat.

  Harl wiped sweat from his brow and shoved a bucket behind him as he started to wriggle his way back towards the opening. He got a brief glimpse through the tunnel opening as the next worker grabbed the bucket. Troy had been a few steps to the side chipping away at a rock to make cobblestones for repairing the roads in town. Harl thought about calling out, but his throat was so dry that he gave up.

  A guard poked his head into the hole.

  ‘Go on, get up there. Your boyfriend won’t be joining you until later. And if you don’t hurry up, I’ll pour some fire liquid in there after you. Now get back to work!’

  Harl’s candle had gone out, but he scrambled deep into the tunnel before relighting it. He lay there panting for a few moments before grabbing his tools and then wriggling further into the darkness. Maybe this time he would find something. The workers who found ore got better rations and privileges, but so far he had found next to nothing.

  The candle slipped from his fingers, sputtered, and went out. He drew in deep breaths as panic started to set in. He ran his fingers across the rock ahead of him searching for the candle. Nothing. He pressed forward half a stride and his blunted nails skimmed it, but the candle skittered from his fingers and rolled away. He snatched at it and clawed it back to him, panting and screaming inside. His body strained against the rock around him. The tunnel was too small, too tight. The blackness was too extreme. He clamped his eyes shut, but it didn’t help.

  And then he remembered her. The woman who had been reflected in the god’s clothing filled his thoughts and all of the panic flowed away. The startling clarity of her bright blue eyes was a wave of calm that washed over him. Harl clutched the candle to his body and lay there in the dark, the loneliness and fear banished by her simple existence.

  Who was she? He was certain that she had been real. There was a purity about her. It was a daft thing to think about in the overwhelming darkness, but she looked so different to Chloe. This strange woman’s eyes had been filled with caring. They had captured some part of him and he knew that she would be thinking about him. He leaned his head against the rock and laughed. What was he thinking? It was all impossible. She was probably a figment of his imagination. And yet somewhere deep inside he knew that she wasn’t. There was a truth about her appearance that cycle, as though she was the key to his freedom. He had no idea how, but it was there and he cherished the feeling. It was his future. She was his future. He had to believe it. It was either that or go insane among the sheep. She was more vivid now than when he’d first seen her. That golden flow of hair, like staring up into the light above. Her blue eyes, more precious than the gems and ore they were mining for.

  But her very existence presented far-reaching implications. If she lived somewhere beyond the black barriers that surrounded the world, it meant that their world wasn’t the only place of existence. There might be other people in her world. What would they be like? Would they even speak the same language?

  He opened his eyes and then relit the candle. It flickered in the narrow space and threw shadows across the walls. Harl pressed his hand against the rock and smiled.
It didn’t feel so bad now. The weight of it seemed less. He wriggled forward a few steps.

  The thought that another world lay only a few paces from his own was staggering. Was there a way to get there? He knew the black barrier had proved impenetrable, but there had to be a way, even if it was climbing up to the roof of the world and escaping when the god opened it. But why would the gods divide the two worlds from each other and what would they gain from it? The answers didn’t come to him in the sputtering candlelight. He just crawled on. But he wasn’t alone any more. She was with him.

  The muted shriek of a whistle reached them some time later. Ryker grunted and shoved the last bucket back to Harl and they began the slow crawl out of the boulder.

  Harl slid to the ground once he’d emerged and waited as Troy poured half a waterskin over his head. Torches were being lit along the scaffold now that the dark cycle was nearing and tunnel workers were making the slow climb down the scaffold now that the shift had changed. Smoke curled into the air over the camp from where the cookhouse was preparing their meal.

  Ryker grabbed the final bucket of stone and upended it over the handrail. The stone tumbled away below them.

  ‘Below!’ he called with one hand cupped to his mouth.

  Curses came in answer.

  Ryker leaned on the barrier and scrubbed the dust from his hair.

  ‘Another one done,’ Troy said.

  Harl nodded. Thoughts of the woman still whirled around inside his head. His eyes drooped shut, but he shook himself and snapped awake.

  ‘We’d best get back and eat,’ Harl said.

  Troy reached out a hand and dragged Harl to his feet. They both turned to see Ryker still leaning on the barrier. He grinned at them.

  ‘Another two cycles-’

  A boulder split from the rock above and slammed into him. Ryker tipped out over the handrail and fell from the scaffold. His scream froze most people in their tracks, but Harl and Troy rushed to the rail and peered over. Ryker was lying on the ground thirty paces below them, his body arched across the top of a large rock. One leg was twisted back underneath him.