“What do you keep under a smithy?” I asked.
Darren looked at me, confused. “I don’t understand. Is this a riddle?”
“No,” I said. “Seriously, what do you keep under a smithy? Supplies? What? We need to get down there.”
Barius stepped in. “Supplies, aye. Extra tools, maybe. In this place, though, that’s where they keep the smithy’s main furnace. It passes heat to all the workbenches through a system of pipes.”
I nodded. “Okay, Barius, you should probably do most of the talking. Ask them for the furnace master or whatever. Tell them we’re here on slaver’s business. Some of the ones below have been getting uppity, and we’re here for some discipline.”
“What, to beat up some slaves?” Raven scoffed. “They’ll never buy that. What are you going to tell them about me and Calvin?”
It was a good point. Barius, Samuel and Darren looked like fighters. Me too, maybe. Raven was slim, slender and beautiful, and Calvin was thirteen.
“Just tell them I’m some kind of crazy torturer,” Calvin said eagerly. “I’ve got a great crazy eye.” He did it, and I had to agree. But still, it was a thin story.
“Tell them Calvin and Raven are healers,” I told Barius instead. “In case we rough some of them up too bad. Don’t want to damage the stock.”
Raven sneered. “Wow, you’re disgusting.”
I shrugged with a wry grin. “I know a little something about terrible people.” Calvin’s gaze jumped to me for a second, but I pretended not to notice.
The plan set, Barius led us all straight to the first slaver we saw in the wide front doors. The man looked up at us with an ugly expression. He was big, bald and shirtless, and he had vicious-looking tattoos drawn all over his chest and biceps.
“Need to know where the furnace is,” Barius said brusquely.
“And I need a thousand marks,” the man replied. “Shove off.”
“We’re here for the slaves,” Barius said. “Word is they need a little extra muscle down there, what with all the trouble the worthless mongrels have been giving them.”
The man’s eyebrow furrowed. He looked around at all of us, and his eyes fell on Raven and Calvin. “What about them two?” he asked. He hocked a glob of phlegm on the floor. It nearly missed Calvin’s boot. “Don’t tell me they’re here to lay a hand on anyone.”
“Physickers,” Barius responded. “In case anything breaks while we’re working. Are you going to tell me how to go below or not?”
The man looked at him testily. “And so what if I say no?”
Barius hesitated for half a second. I stepped forward and pushed the man on his bicep. Not hard, but hard enough to spin him a bit. He reminded me of an older, bigger Chuck. And I knew how to deal with people like Chuck.
“Listen, dogface,” I said nastily. “We’ve been paid in advance. We’ll happily walk right on out of here. But if they find us after, we’ll tell them you sent us away. Think they’ll take that out of your pay? Or do you think they’ll just clap you in chains instead? Maybe you’ll be unloading these wagons next time we show up.” I tossed my head at the wagons.
The man’s eyes narrowed as I talked, like there was something wrong he couldn’t quite put his fingers on. I hoped that he didn’t know about the Realm Keeper’s gift of speech. But with my last couple of lines, his bronzed skin became a couple of shades lighter. He glanced at the wagons, all the wind suddenly blown from his sails.
Typical, I thought. Terrified of what he does to other people every day.
The man swallowed, then shrugged as though my words hadn’t had an ounce of effect. “Fine, curse you. That way. Second door on the right once you’re within.” He pointed at a door.
I didn’t thank him, just strode straight for the door and hoped the others would follow. They did, and in a moment we were safely within the smithy’s walls.
It was worse than I could possibly have imagined.
There must have been hundreds of slaves within. They were chained to their workbenches, all of them placed right next to the white-hot furnace in the center of the room. The furnace kept dozens of ever-burning fires going, with more slaves chained to their wheelbarrows as they came through the room to refill them. Meanwhile, the slaves at the benches pounded, quenched, pounded, quenched again, never pausing for a moment’s rest. Catwalks ran above, where still more slaves passed by with carts and wheelbarrows full of supplies, moving them from one part of the room to the other. As hot as it must have been on the floor level where we were, I could only imagine how much hotter it must have been twenty feet above where they slaved away. I saw many of them pausing as they were overcome with great coughing fits. No wonder: the smoke from the fires poured straight up and into their lungs on its way to the smoke vents high at the top of the smithy.
We’d stopped to gawk far too long. “Come on,” I said, stepping forward. Calvin didn’t move until Darren grabbed his arm and prodded him gently along behind me.
I found the second door on the right. It was unlocked, of course. Who would willingly go deeper into this terrible place? We found a short staircase that led to a vast furnace room beneath the smithy.
If the smithy was hot, this place was a bonfire. I felt it in the weird way I noticed temperature changes in Midrealm — a definite sense of the heat, while at the same time I was utterly impervious to it. I knew it was hot, but it might as well have been a cool autumn day in Rhode Island.
Raven and Calvin didn’t fare as well, sweat breaking out on their faces as soon as we stepped into the furnace room. Their outfits were soaked with it in less than a minute.
Down here there were far fewer people, just a few slaves moving back and forth with wood, running here and there to open valves, and bringing pitchers of water and ladles around to the others. A single slaver oversaw the work, naked except for a loincloth, a cruel sword at his side.
“Barius, Darren, guard the door,” I said. They looked confused, but they obeyed. I led Samuel across the room to the slaver. He looked up at us as we approached, his attention momentarily diverted from the slaves.
“What do you lot want?” he asked.
I swung, my fist catching his jaw full-on and knocking him to the ground. He struggled to his knees before Samuel brought the pommel of his sword down hard on the back of the man’s head. The slaver dropped to the ground, out cold.
“Nice right hook,” said Calvin shakily.
I shook my hand hard, trying to dispel the sudden sting in my knuckles. “Thanks,” I said. “Wish I could have given it to a few more upstairs. Now let’s find this tomb.” I looked up and around the room.
Every slave in the place had stopped dead in their tracks, staring at us numbly. It was several seconds before any of them moved. When one did, he bolted for the staircase leading up. Barius and Darren caught him. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to escape, or if he was trying to warn the men upstairs. I hoped it was the former. A slave who wanted to help his captors was pretty much the most pathetic thing I could think of. When the rest of the slaves moved, all they did was walk as far away from the furnace as possible and sink to sit on the floor, planting their heads into their arms. Taking a break. I’m sure they didn’t get that opportunity often.
I walked all around the room, looking for an obvious door or passageway. There wasn’t one. I sighed. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
“See anything?” I asked Raven and Calvin. They shook their heads.
We hadn’t heard any disturbance upstairs, but I was starting to get nervous. If anything went wrong down here, someone was bound to come down and investigate. And without slaves stoking the fires, the workbenches above would soon experience a drop in temperature.
“Maybe there’s nothing here,” Raven suggested, wiping a river of sweat from her forehead. “I mean, it’s the same size as the other two tombs, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
I was about to reluctantly agree with her when I saw Calvin’s eyes light up. “That!” I said. �
�What is that? That looks like an idea face.”
Calvin shrugged. “I don’t know. It might be nothing.”
“Pretend it’s something. Spill.”
“If it’s the same size as the others, shouldn’t we be looking in the center?” asked Calvin. “I mean, the center of the the circle above Jada is where the sphere of water was. And the center of Malus’ tomb had the symbol of Mind set into the floor.”
I turned. The only thing in the center of the room was the furnace. “Great idea, but how are we supposed to move that?”
Calvin stooped over. “It looks like there’s enough room to crawl beneath it,” he said. “We could try that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fantastic idea. You’d cook yourself in seconds. I’ll go.”
“You don’t mind even that heat?” Raven said, her normal emotionless mask cracking into unbelievability.
I gave her a look, then stood straight. I walked to the burning fires pouring from one of the furnace’s open doors. Without blinking, I thrust my hand straight in and picked up one of the blazing coals. I held it out for them to see as flames erupted from it, guttered and died. The sleeves of my shirt were scorched to black and fell away, but my skin was untouched.
“Touché,” Raven said, nodding.
Getting back on hands and knees, I summoned a small ball of fire. Then I lifted it from my hand, sending it floating across the floor beneath the furnace. I got down on my hands and knees, still pushing my fire along to light the way.
It reached the center of the furnace, but I couldn’t see anything. The floor was too soot-blackened to see any marks, no matter how bright.
“Calvin, blow some of that grime away,” I said. “Let’s see what we can make out.”
Calvin sent a gust through with a wave of his hand. The thin layer of black was wiped away from the floor like a blanket being pulled back. And on the floor beneath the center of the furnace, I saw a worn out but familiar-looking symbol: the symbol of Fire.
“Jackpot,” I whispered.
“Okay,” said Raven, crouched between us. “Now what?”
“I’d kill to have Sarah with us,” I said ruefully. “Calvin, any ideas about how to get below this floor?”
Calvin looked at me blankly. “Why are you asking me?”
“I don’t know, you’re the super-genius,” I said with a shrug. “Just asking.”
I studied the floor beneath the furnace. It was all close-set stone, with no catch, trap or lever that I could see. Plus, if there was a door set in the floor of the room, the furnace would fall right through it once we opened it.
“Maybe I could just burn my way through,” I mused. “Burn a hole in the floor beneath the furnace, and then scramble underneath it to drop through.”
“You’ve got no idea how deep it would be,” Raven said. “It’s a big risk.”
“This whole day is one big risk,” I grumbled. “What’s one more? Let me take care of the floor first.”
I put forth my power. It was pretty easy, since the air was superheated already. A ring of fire about six feet wide erupted on the floor beneath the furnace. I felt the wave of its heat roll out from below the furnace as a background awareness. Calvin held out his hand and I felt these new waves of heat stop, cooled by his mastery of the air.
I concentrated, turning up the power of my flames as high as possible. The flames changed from red to orange, from orange to yellow and yellow to white. They began to sear in my vision, and the air beneath the furnace began to warp and twist as it grew superheated. The stone grew white-hot in a perfect little circle beneath the furnace. I turned the flames up even more. The stone began to bubble, then to boil. Soon it was churning furiously as it liquefied in the blazing heat of my fire.
With an abrupt noise like a sea of molasses sliding across gravel, a perfectly circular section of melted floor fell away to reveal a hollow space beneath the furnace.
I dropped my hands to my side and released a gush of breath. I felt like I’d just run a marathon.
“Nice,” Raven said, sounding impressed despite herself.
“Thanks,” I panted. “All right, I’m going in. You two stay here.”
“Okay,” Calvin said shakily.
I crawled slowly beneath the furnace. Immediately my entire outfit was covered with soot, making me look like I’d just been rolling around in the ashes of a campfire. My elbows and knees shuffled against the stone as I propelled myself under the furnace.
In the back of my mind, I noticed that it was sweltering. Ten times worse than working on a rooftop on a hot summer’s day in the Sahara. But in seconds I’d reached the edge of the pit. I gripped it and rolled my body off.
The floor was still covered with a puddle of liquid rock, so I used the edge of the pit to swing myself as far as I could, landing beyond the scorching white stuff. It wouldn’t hurt me, but I didn’t want to burn my boots off and have to spend the rest of the day barefoot. I landed hard and fell to my hands and knees, using my momentum to roll as far away from the liquefied rock as I could.
Immediately the waves of heat from above abated. It still felt hot as a sauna, but compared to the blast above it was like a fridge down there.
I created a small ball of flame in my hand, just enough to see by, and observed my surroundings. I was in a wide circular chamber, just like the entrance to the tomb of Jada that we’d found in Elladorn. And just like the tomb of Jada, there was a door on one side.
The door was locked, so I stood against the opposite wall and blasted it with a ball of flame. The ancient wooden timbers cracked and buckled before the blast, tumbling away into the darkness beyond.
Another hallway stretched for perhaps forty feet, descending slightly into the bowels of the earth before ending abruptly at a spiral stone staircase that went even further down. As I descended it, the temperature grew once again. It rose and rose until eventually the heat made the temperature in the furnace room seem like the tiny, pathetic flame of a candle.
It ended at another wooden door, this one unlocked and unlatched. It opened easily with a gentle push, swinging inward to reveal the tomb.
It was an arsonist’s dream. The tomb of Jada in Elladorn had been deep underground, but it had been cooled pleasantly by twin underground streams that ran through it. This was the exact opposite. In the center of the room, straight across my path, ran a steady flow of liquid magma. I’d never seen lava before except in movies and stuff. It was strangely hypnotic. Occasionally the lava would superheat the air, igniting it in furious little bursts of fire. A tiny bridge of stone with low handrails spanned the lava’s flow, providing a way to cross the chamber.
On the other side of the tomb was the sarcophagus, and in the middle of the chamber was a pedestal. On top of the pedestal, an object glinted in the faint light of the magma.
I approached the pedestal to find a ring. It was a simple gold band with a large, flaming red ruby set into its top. I picked it up to find that, curiously, it was chill to the touch despite the heat of the room.The ruby flashed and twisted in the light of my fireball torch, sending refracted red light dancing across the walls and ceiling of the tomb.
I turned to leave, but stopped as I had a thought. I turned to the symbol of Fire carved into the wall above the sarcophagus.
Slowly I approached the stone coffin. Seized by an impulse, I put the ring on my right hand. It was too small for my middle finger, but it fit perfectly on my forefinger. It felt right there, its cool touch soothing. Like an ice pack on a sore muscle.
I ran my hand over the edge of the sarcophagus. The man carved in stone was tall. Impressive. His bearded face was calm and stern. And I saw in the stone carvings of his hand that he wore the same ring, on the same finger.
“Thanks,” I said, before I’d realized I intended to speak. “We won’t let Terrence get his hands on the ring. I’ll make sure of it. Rest well.”
Then I left the chamber, heading all the way back up to the room below the furnace.
�
��Calvin!” I called up.
“Blade!” he said, sounding immensely relieved. “Thank God. We were worried.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine, but I need a lift to reach the lip of the rock.”
“Hold on,” Calvin said.
I felt the air beneath my feet go rigid, and slowly I began to rise. Then all of a sudden I was thrown toward the ceiling, slamming my head into the rock above me. Stunned, I tumbled back down to the floor. The ceiling was only ten feet high, but it still hurt like blue blazes.
“Ow!” I shouted.
“Sorry!” Calvin said. “How tall is the chamber?”
“It’s only like ten feet!”
“Oh, jeez,” said Calvin. “Sorry, I was thinking with Jada’s tomb. Hold on.”
Once again, an invisible platform lifted me. This time it brought me gently up until my arms could easily reach the lip of the hole in the floor.
I hauled myself up and crawled out from beneath the furnace. I got to my feet, my face flushed with excitement, to see anxious expressions from Calvin and Raven.
“How did it go?” Raven asked.
“Did you find it?”
I grinned and held up the hand with the ring.
“Whoo-hoo!” cried Calvin, pumping his fist in the air. “Booyah, baby! Team Fire, on the case!”
“Team Fire?” I said, laughing.
“Well, you’re the leader,” he shrugged. “It could be Team Fire-Air-Lightning, but that rolls a bit oddly off the tongue.”
“Such a dork,” I said, grabbing him around the neck and giving him a noogie. But a gentle one. “Come on, let’s get the heck out of here. We’ve got to find the others.”
We collected ourselves and got ready to leave. Raven made a point of dusting off my outfit, covered with black dust as it was. We let ourselves out of the door at the top of the staircase and back into the main forge room. Unnoticed, we went back to the loading bay and slipped quietly away from the building.
I was feeling pretty smug and satisfied until I heard the bells.
We began to hear them as soon as we slipped away from the building. They were rolling on and on without stopping, pealing from multiple locations throughout the city. Guards were rushing through the streets as we stepped into them.
Midrealm Page 43
