The White Fox

by James Bartholomeusz

  A few minutes later Ruth returned carrying a small box. She opened it and handed Jack and Lucy a burnished metal ring each.

  “Thanks, but I have enough jewelry,” Lucy said, staring at the offensively unfashionable accessory in disgust.

  Ruth laughed. “They’re translator rings. They convert the vibrations of someone speaking into ones you’ll be able to understand and vice versa.”

  Jack and Lucy slid them on to their fingers. The metal glowed green for a second, then shrank to fit comfortably.

  “How does that work?” Lucy asked skeptically.

  Adâ and Ruth exchanged looks.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Say something in another language,” Jack said.

  “We’d best be on our way,” Adâ said coolly, picking up the bag she’d pulled out of the hatch. She strode off down the plank that had slid out again from the turtle’s side, forming a bridge between the ship and the land.

  Lucy couldn’t quite manage a smile but gave Ruth a stiff nod and followed Adâ.

  Jack stood for a moment, almost unwilling to leave. Ruth had been much more fun than Lucy on the ship and had actually made an effort to talk to him. Lucy had been moody and sick all the way, and now he was stranded alone with her and a woman who seemed to have a nihilistic attitude towards life in general, let alone two teenagers she had been dumped with.

  Ruth grinned at him. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you soon. You have to come home somehow.” She gave him a quick hug. “You definitely need a shower, by the way …”

  Jack laughed nervously. He stood there a moment longer, then turned to follow the others. He only looked back once he was on dry land and had heard the hatch clang shut.

  “Come on, then,” Adâ called in a bored tone to him.

  He jogged to catch up, and they set off.

  The pass between the rocks became increasingly narrow, a sleek path driven deep into a mountainside. It sloped steadily upwards, and in some places they had to scramble up near vertical ridges caused by rock falls. Eventually, the incline became so bad that they had to climb in places, something both Jack and Lucy found distinctly gut-wrenching. The path snaked around the side of the mountain, changing direction unpredictably and sometimes disappearing altogether. As they progressed, small breaches in the rock became more and more prevalent, out of which hot gas issued intermittently. They didn’t need Adâ’s warning to stay well clear of them.

  Finally, they rounded a corner, and the path dropped into oblivion. Before them was a massive ravine, a shadowy pit, surrounded by towering cliff faces. Far, far below them, a sleek band of glittering light revealed the existence of a serpentine river. Mountains, all white tipped and some wreathed in clouds, extended up and behind the gorge. A thin, dangerous-looking path slithered around one edge, and on the other jagged rocks jutted out. Something like a falcon swooped high overhead, cawing to the sky.

  Lucy made a step towards the path, but Adâ put out her hand to stop her. She paused, listening intently. Then she shoved Jack and Lucy back behind a rock so they were hidden.

  Jack listened. Voices could now be heard coming from somewhere behind them. They were rough, high, and scratchy, yet strangely he could understand what was being said quite clearly. Remembering the language ring, he held it up to the light. The single symbol carved in it was glowing faintly green.

  “The boss wants us back by dusk,” one of the voices said.

  “No, he don’t,” another replied. “He said tomorrow mornin’. You obviously weren’t listenin’. He said take as long as you like to find the entrance but don’t let anyone see you.”

  “He didn’t. You’re just sayin’ that ‘cause you don’t want to go back. You’re scared of him, you are. Scared of some fancy alchemy tricks.”

  “I ain’t scared. You’re the one who’s scared. You’re the one who ‘fused to go into his tent to tell him about the rock slide!”

  “Shut your gizzard!”

  Jack peered around the rock. Three figures were hopping down the jagged platforms on the left side. Their legs were extremely bowed, and they moved almost like monkeys, using their hands as much as their feet. All of them had scaly, greyish-green skin and huge ears. Their nails were filthy and yellowed, and their teeth were even worse. They looked as if they had been dressed by Quentin; boots, cloaks, chain mail, helmets, gauntlets, tunics, and belts all made an appearance somewhere but not always in the right place. The two in front gripped their blood-dried scimitars close, but the one behind was swinging it round casually like a police baton. Strangely, that seemed much more threatening.

  The two in front argued loudly, their raised voices echoing around the ravine. What was worse, they were heading straight for their hiding place.

  Adâ bent down slowly and picked up a pebble from the dusty ground. With superhuman speed, she darted around the rock and hurled it as hard as she could. There was a pause, then a cracking sound echoing around the ravine.

  The creatures’ heads whipped around in unison, searching for the source of the noise.

  “You two,” said the third, speaking for the first time, “head back that way. I’ll go round the side.”

  The two creatures nodded and scuttled back up the rocks, out of sight. As soon as they were gone, the third glanced around, checking that he was out of sight. Then he leapt into the air. Two bat-like wings unfurled from the creature’s back. They began to flap, carrying it up and over the pointed cliff.

  Letting out their tautened breath, the three hiders stepped out of concealment.

  “What were those things?” Lucy exclaimed breathlessly.

  “Goblins,” replied Adâ after a moment. “But there’s a problem.”

  “Monsters that look like giant lizards don’t count as being a problem on their own, then?” Jack asked.

  “They’re no more monsters than you or I,” she reprimanded him coldly, “but goblins can’t fly. That last one at least was something else.”

  By the time Jack had realized that goblins could now be added to the demon, sorcerer, and elf list, she was already ten feet along the path. He caught up quickly, not wanting to be left as a straggler.

  “Will they come back?” Lucy asked.

  “Unlikely.”

  Jack was already starting to find this annoying. Of all the people who could have accompanied them from The Golden Turtle, he would have rather it be anyone but Adâ. Plus, he could tell that it wouldn’t be long before Lucy shared a piece of her mind with her. Somehow, though, he thought that Adâ’s reaction would be more like a pit bull terrier’s than a human’s.

  It took them another few minutes before they reached the top of the path. There, Adâ stopped abruptly, making the others stagger sideways so as to not crash into her. Jack immediately saw why. A large chunk of the path leading to the top of the cliff had crumbled away, leaving a hundred-foot drop directly below them.

  “Where do we go now, then?” he asked Adâ.

  She ignored him. She seemed to be working something out in her head, looking back at the trail they had just come up and counting.

  After a few seconds’ calculations, she took three steps to the left and placed her hand on the rock, just as Gaby had done on the door back in the manor. She muttered a few syllables under her breath. Faint white light began to trace in swirling patterns out from her hand, inlaying the rock with complex illuminations. About a foot either side, the light stopped and surged upwards and over into a tall, thin doorway. There was a low rumbling, and the two halves of the door cracked apart, folding inwards. The gap in between had been infinitesimal and completely unnoticeable just a moment before. What now lay before them was a dark tunnel that seemed to lead directly into the mountainside.

  There was a pause.

  “Well, it’s not very subtle, is it?” Lucy remarked.

  Adâ didn’t answer. She crossed the threshold and began striding off into the dark.

  Jack and Lucy had both given up any pretence that they might have
a say in this. Still not speaking to one another, they followed.

  Ruth stood in the observatory, looking upwards at the mountainside through the colossal brass telescope that extended from the ceiling. Between two outcrops high above, she saw the trio disappear into the dark arch etched out of the cliff side. As she watched, the double doors rumbled closed, and there was nothing remaining to suggest the presence of a hidden doorway. Still, it didn’t feel quite right. Everything was a little too quiet.

  Something moved on the upper edge of the telescopic bubble, and she adjusted her positioning. Too big for a bird, it was flapping its way through the ghostly cold air to the east. She unclipped her own telescope from her belt and found it through the lens. It was a reptilian goblin but one like she had never seen. Instead of arms, it had clawed, bat-like wings. She clicked a button on the side of the scope, and the lens changed to red. Through this view, the creature looked very different—a winged wolf, horned like a goat, and buzzing with a cloud of purple energy, like a swarm of dark locusts.

  “What is it?” asked Quentin, who had just joined her.

  “Demon. Doppelganger, by the looks of it,” Ruth replied grimly. She knew this particular form of demon all too well. Doppelgangers were particularly tricky. By devouring a living creature, they could replicate its physical form, in this case a goblin. No one knew exactly what their true form was like, though rumors had arisen about it being a sort of carnivorous plantlike bear with fins. As goblins tended to categorize leadership qualities by brute force, this “goblin” was probably pretty high ranking by now.

  “What course of action should we take, Captain?”

  Ruth thought for a moment, still following the creature as it disappeared farther into the distance. “Keep to our original plans. But make sure we’re ready to return at any time. If there are demons here too, then who knows what Sardâr’s got himself into.”

  Chapter II

  thorin salr

  The tunnel had been carved into the side of the mountain, a path delving steadily downwards into the subterranean depths of the peaks. Though it was straight and clearly purposefully crafted, stalactites still clung to the ceiling, limp claws dripping with moisture. Torches were held in brackets at regular intervals along the cave walls, shedding dim light and sending scattering orange sprites to dance in the stagnant puddles all around. The tunnel was so tall that the ceiling could not be seen—lost as it was in the shadows that seemed to cling like thick cobwebs in the corners and nooks. Shapes formed in the gloom, and in the puddles the reflections of the flames were magnified into strange silhouettes.

  Jack got the impression that they were walking through some kind of sewer conduit. Noises from outside were completely muffled, the tunnel instead magnifying every one of their footsteps into rock slides. He could feel Lucy moving slightly closer to him in the dark, whilst Adâ marched ahead.

  They must have walked for at least twenty minutes before a small disc of sunlight became visible at the other end. The exit of the tunnel was under an overhanging rock, which they had to stoop under. The moment they were past it, sunlight flooded their vision.

  The land before them was another rocky valley, surrounded by a plateau of cliffs that formed the lower steppes of the mountains. The amber sunlight of the onset of dusk cast itself across the plane in angular waves, catching the cliffs to their left and dyeing them a brilliant, rusty red. The light also caught on a multitude of old-fashioned cranes, pulleys, ladders, and counterbalances below them. They were clustered around several smaller ravines, the shadows emanating from them numbing the sunset glow. Figures, tiny from this height, scuttled around or operated the machinery, lifting bundles of rock onto the edges to be hacked away at by more figures. Metal crates and large boxes were stacked beside each pit, and it was into these that the smaller rocks were being placed to be moved by smaller cranes onto separate piles.

  The area was far from even. Along the left side a gap in the cliffs, probably from some ancient lava flow, formed a twisting path. It stretched steeply upwards and wrapped around the side of one of the mountains—a starkly pointed edifice of rock, down which the tangerine sun appeared to be rolling, like a massive, shining boulder.

  Directly opposite the outcrop on which they were standing nestled under another grey giant was a very unusual structure. It appeared as though the rock had grown out of the cliff face into a sort of colony, an immense extrusion with many different layers and levels. It was, however, clearly inhabited. Gangways and small buildings clung precariously to its sides, connected to or leading into wide openings in the rock. Dozens of rusted chimneys spiked up out of holes in the rock like industrial limpets, thin trails of ashy smoke sweeping upwards above the cliff. A rectangular reddish stone gate was set into it at its foot under a balcony of overhanging rock. It was carved with a stylized axe surrounded by seven stars and a crown. It looked as if there could be an entire city housed inside.

  It took Jack a moment to realize that Adâ and Lucy were nowhere to be seen. He scanned the valley for them and spotted them passing between two of the mining pits. Wondering why neither of them had stopped to marvel at the view, he sprinted down the incline after them.

  A few minutes later he caught up, panting heavily. Typically, Adâ didn’t give him a second’s acknowledgment.

  Lucy turned back to keep pace with him. “Where do you think this is?” she whispered. She sounded scared, though definitely not on the same level that she had been in the mansion. This place didn’t look overtly dangerous, but they could be wandering into anything.

  “No idea,” Jack replied.

  As they continued walking, he looked around. The cliffs, the mountains, and the tower of rock seemed even taller from down here. Now he could just about see the figures working around the mines. They were several hundred feet away on either side, but still they all seemed short, only about five feet high. Their faces had a healthy glow and were quite tanned from working in the sun. They were wearing assorted tunics, gloves, and boots, mostly russets and mahoganies. They, like Adâ, were dressed highly anachronistically; Jack was reminded of pictures in textbooks of peasants on medieval farms. Moreover, they were not operating shining futuristic equipment like that on The Golden Turtle. There seemed to be only wooden pulleys with rocks and rope, with no electricity at all. And, he now realized, he had not seen anything like a telecom pylon to suggest any electricity since they’d arrived.

  The trio of elongated shadows flickered over the uneven rock as they neared the gigantic stone doorway. It was flanked by several more short people, wearing fern-green tunics with bronze shoulder pads and gauntlets, looking even more like medieval militia. They were all holding double-bladed axes with exceptionally sharp edges.

  “Yes?” the guard challenged. He spoke in what on Earth would have been something like a Scandinavian accent, but, of course, the language rings translated.

  “Adâ Sharif,” Adâ proclaimed, stopping a foot clear of the door, “here to see the king.”

  Jack saw the guards exchanging dark looks.

  “And who are these two?” grunted one of the guards after a moment, passing Adâ and staring at Lucy in a menacing way. The ten-inch deficiency in height didn’t seem to inhibit him.

  “My nephew and niece,” Adâ answered shortly.

  Jack and Lucy both turned to her, alarmed, but she gave them a look that made them hold what they had been about to say. Jack was sure that Lucy was thinking exactly the same thing that he was.

  “Do they have an invitation from the king?” the guard asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “As a matter of fact, they do.” And with a (rather unnecessary) flourish she pulled a thick piece of parchment from her tunic and handed it to the guard.

  He examined the writing and wax seal. “Very well,” he said, giving it back to her. “They can go.”

  Adâ removed her gaze from him and stepped towards the door.

  Another guard raised his axe and thrust the butt onto a raised panel
in the ground. Out of the gigantic gate creaked open a small door, just over five feet high and at least that much thick.

  Adâ rolled her eyes and bent over to shuffle through it. Lucy followed her, and as Jack did so he thought he heard the guard muttering something about the impertinence of elves. Jack couldn’t help silently agreeing.

  The inside of the rock was not at all like the tunnel they had just come through. They emerged into an enormous chamber, though a cave was probably a more accurate description. The walls were the rock that this city was carved out of, and the floor was paced with smooth flagons. Brackets in the walls housed more flickering torches, and huge carved pillars supported the cavernous ceiling.

  Patterns, symbols, scenes of battles and glorious victories were engraved into the columns, the ceiling, the floor. In the center of the chamber, a raised octagonal roundel encircled by runes depicted a feast, where figures crowded around a gargantuan roasted ram set upon a table. This was illuminated by light issuing from a gaping hole in the ceiling. This sight only added to the impression that they had wandered into a kind of alternative Middle Ages European community, the chamber a monument to the achievements of craftsmen, warriors, and kings.

  Adâ led them past numerous hallways. Despite the lack of windows, crevasses in the rock let in jets of evening sunlight, forming jagged patterns on the flagons. The area surged with many more of these strangely short people, most in simple cotton tunics, carrying baskets of food and grain, piles of parchment or crates. Many were clustered in the hallways, looking more like refugees than miners, with their thickly layered worn clothes, carts laden with possessions, and small children playing and chasing each other.