Under Fragile Stone

by Oisin McGann

  ‘Harprag. I’d know ’is work anywhere,’ he chortled, draping the chain around his neck, adding it to the collection of heavy jewellery on his broad chest. ‘So the Myunan’s come callin’, ’as he? Whaddaya think o’ that, Pappy? That a fine piece o’ ornamentation, or what?’

  ‘Don’t trust them Myunans,’ coughed his father, who was sitting in another chair to his right, a sour-smelling pipe between the last of his teeth. ‘Yer eyes don’t tell ya nuthin’ about them.’

  Ludditch III nodded sagely, but wished that his pappy would agree with him just for once. His father was no longer the great chieftain he had once been. The bone-rot had got him good, his elbows, wrists, knees and ankles so swollen and painful that he could no longer walk on his own, reduced to looking out over his land from the porch of the house at the top of their hill. He still tried to play the twangoe, but his arthritic fingers could barely pluck the four concentric rings of strings on the wooden bowl. It was sad to watch, and worse to listen to. It broke Ludditch’s heart to see his pappy like this.

  Ludditch now, he was a different matter, he was in his prime. Powerful arms and shoulders carried arms with bunches of corded muscle; his slightly hunched back was still strong. There were no signs yet of the bone-rot that plagued all the Reisenick clans. His flat, wide skull and bulging features came from his father, as did his wily cunning. He had all but taken over the running of the clan from Learup Senior and he was determined to make his patronage of the land one that would be talked about around the supper tables for centuries. The Noranians, for instance, had been making eyes at his territory for years and he wasn’t having that. They were already at Absaleth by all accounts. They might get away with pushing the Myunans about, but they would get a lesson in manners if they tried marching into Ainslidge Woods. The Reisenicks would die before giving up their lands to the northerners.

  ‘Learup?’ a voice interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘Yup?’ he and his father said in unison. Ludditch Junior scowled. He was supposed to be in charge now. He added: ‘What is it?’

  Spiroe, one of the Cruddip boys, stood at the foot of the steps, hat in hand. His knees were bent backwards in that Cruddip way and his words cut up by teeth that were too large for his small mouth. The sinewy woodsman was a mite green-skinned for a Reisenick, but Ludditch was sure the rumours about Spiroe’s grandmother and the Traxen were just malicious gossip. Spiroe was pure-bred.

  ‘There’s a priest on the border, wants ta see ya.’

  ‘A priest ya say? What about?’ Ludditch Senior asked gruffly, much to the annoyance of his eldest.

  ‘Won’t say,’ Spiroe replied. ‘Kalayal Harsq’s his name. Ornery type, only wants to speak to the chieftain.’

  He was careful to direct his remarks to both Ludditches. Senior still demanded respect, but Junior was head of the clan now and everyone who knew what was good for them knew it.

  ‘Bring ’im up,’ Junior jutted his goateed chin out. ‘Let’s see what the boy has to say.’

  Two trucks had drawn up on the road at the foot of Ludditch Hill. The eshtran was led up the steep steps to the house. Harsq took a breath of purified air from his canister as he took in his surroundings. Among the cobrush trees, a single-storey house made of tanned animal hides overlooked the misty valley. Small crude windows glowed with a warm light. On the porch sat two more Reisenicks, one a clenched-up skeleton of a man clutching a twangoe, the other a tall, powerful-looking young man in rawhide jerkin and trousers, with a marrowshanks pelt draped over his wide shoulders. Harsq immediately saw that the clan’s power rested with the younger man and after a cursory greeting to the father, addressed the rest of his remarks to the son.

  ‘My compliments to you and your clan, sirs. I am a humble pilgrim on a holy mission to cleanse this land of a wicked bane. I would like to a make a proposition to you, one that would benefit both our causes in the fullness of time.’

  ‘What’s this bane?’ Ludditch III asked. ‘And why have you come on our land to find it?’

  ‘I’m talking about a malevolent ghost, sir. A shade of pure evil that will rest at nothing until it has returned to the seat of its power.’

  ‘And where might that seat be?’

  ‘Absaleth, the cursed mountain,’ Harsq clenched his raised fists. ‘Cursed no more, since I drove the ghost from its depths, but that spirit has a will like I’ve never seen. It has found new ground in which to root its evil and it will not relinquish its grip until I deal it a final blow.’

  Ludditch’s eyes widened.

  ‘You did an exorcism on Absaleth? And it worked?’

  ‘I freed it from its curse. But I was merely an instrument of Brask’s will.’

  Junior caught a sharp look from his father. If this was true, it could only mean that the priest did not understand what he had done. Or what he meant to do still.

  ‘And you think the mountain’s soul’s moved out here?’ Ludditch pressed the eshtran.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ Harsq nodded. ‘Somehow it evaded me and has now infected this land. I can feel its presence in this forest. And that is why I need your help. It could have run to ground anywhere. I can’t find it in this wilderness, but you can. And I can make it worth your while to do so.’

  Ludditch snorted, suppressing a laugh. The priest had no idea what he was saying. If his claims were genuine, then it would be a dream come true for the Reisenick clans. The fact that they might get paid into the bargain was sugar on the pie.

  ‘What you offerin’?’ he asked, eyeing the priest’s fancy clothes.

  ‘A down-payment of five hundred drokes.’ The eshtran folded his arms. ‘And another five hundred when you find it.’

  ‘Any man who’ll pay a thousand drokes to catch a ghost’ll pay two thousand,’ Ludditch stuck his chin out and took his pipe from his pocket.

  ‘This thing will haunt your land as it has haunted Absaleth … one thousand two hundred.’

  ‘Seems to me that this is personal.’ Ludditch took a pinch of tobacco from a pouch and tamped it down into the bowl of the pipe. ‘If we needed your services, we’d ask for ’em. One thousand seven fifty.’

  ‘One thousand five hundred.’ The eshtran raised his bid.

  ‘I see desperation in your eyes, Mr Harsq. And desperate men pay. One thousand seven hundred.’

  The eshtran’s lip curled.

  ‘All right, one thousand seven hundred. May Brask have mercy on your soul. Seven hundred in advance, one thousand on delivery.’

  Ludditch nodded, took the stem in his mouth, struck a match against the wooden post of the porch and cupped the other hand around the bowl of the pipe as he lit the tobacco. He shook the match out and tossed it in the darkness.

  ‘And what are we lookin’ for, just out of interest?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but there will be signs of its presence that can be read by the enlightened eye. Wherever it has taken refuge, there will be an unholy, unnatural aura. I will have to see it with my own eyes to identify it, but tell your people to bring me word of anything they find in the forest that is strange or out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Forest is full of strange things – not least some of our people.’

  Harsq gave him a dry look.

  ‘Then bring me news of anything that doesn’t belong.’

  Ludditch sucked on the stem of his pipe and blew a smoke ring.

  ‘Now, that we can do.’

  * * * *

  Nayalla frowned as she tried to recall the details of the legend she had seen narrated on the scrolls in Emos’s workshop.

  ‘Long before the Myunans walked this land, there was another race which lived here, a race of alchemists, called the Tuderem, I think. They came here many centuries ago and found a country that was rich and fertile, but suffering from some kind of curse. They somehow used their ability to change elements to release the land of its bane and made their home here. But the peace did not last. They had been here for decades, living in prosperity and contentment, when the Bari
an hordes came to the area. They laid waste to the alchemists’ towns and villages, killing and torturing thousands.

  ‘This was in the time of Gorskin Rax, the Brain Eater, when the Barian Empire was at its peak. It covered everywhere south of Guthoque and west of the esh. The Tuderem who survived the slaughter were facing an existence in cruel slavery, like so many other races that had fallen to the Barians. They had wandered ever eastwards to stay clear of the hordes, but now there was nowhere to run. North of what is now the Reisenick territory lay the Gluegrove Swamps, a death-trap to anyone who did not know the paths, and beyond that marshland, the Barians ruled. All the plains to the south and east, and the mountains in the west, were also under their heel; the alchemists had nowhere to go.

  ‘Except for Absaleth. In their day, there was a cave entrance at the foot of Absaleth; it led into a network of caverns and it was the last Tuderem outpost. Faced with slavery or death at the hands of the Barians, they decided to take one last desperate step … and sealed themselves into the caves. They blocked up the entrance, using their sciences to form a seal even the Barians could not break through, and that was the last that was ever heard from them.’

  ‘By the gods,’ Noogan breathed. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I had always thought it was a legend,’ Nayalla said. ‘There are so many about Absaleth. It has always inspired stories. But Myunan writing is different from yours. We use pictograms. In Myunian, this is the symbol for Tuderem.’

  She drew a simple figure in the dust with her finger. It had a large head, short legs and a pair of hands at the end of each arm.

  ‘Begs the question …’ Paternasse put in. ‘If your story’s true, did they ever get out?’

  ‘If they did,’ Nayalla looked at him. ‘It’s a part of the legend that I haven’t heard.’

  ‘Of course they got out!’ Dalegin exclaimed, his voice a little too high and a little too loud in the stone room. ‘What kind of lunatics would seal themselves up forever?’

  ‘You’re right, Dal,’ Paternasse reassured him, concerned about the hint of hysteria in the younger man’s voice. ‘They were smart. They’d have made sure there was a way out.’

  Dalegin stood up and waved his torch around. The light caught the branched shapes around the edge of the room.

  ‘They had trees! How did they grow trees in a cave?’

  They all turned their lights on the trees. Mirkrin was the only one who did not approach them, one look at them told him they were artificial and he preferred to stay in the open space in the centre of the room. There were no doorways in this room. He held up his light to peer further up the stairwell.

  Paternasse touched a bough on one of the trees and the decrepit limb dropped off, shattering into powder as it hit the floor.

  ‘It’s wood,’ he said. ‘But it’s not a tree. It has no grain. It’s uncanny though. It doesn’t look like it was carved.’

  ‘It was moulded,’ Nayalla told him. ‘Cast and put together as if it were metal. It’s beautifully done. Even a Myunan transmorpher couldn’t manage this – create wood that has no grain. Some of them still have what look like leaves on them. These have been transmuted, made in one material and then changed into another.’

  ‘They made trees.’ Noogan shook his head in wonder. ‘It’s like they knew they were never going to see them again.’

  ‘Well, we are,’ Mirkrin’s voice said, tightly. ‘There’s nothing for us on this floor. Let’s keep moving.’

  ‘Bloody right,’ Dalegin joined him at the foot of the shaft. ‘Who gives a damn about some old fossils? They’re dead, and I don’t mean to join ’em.’

  The ceiling was lower in this room, and Nayalla was able to reach the rim of the next floor by putting her foot in Mirkrin’s cupped hands and hoisting herself up. She found more columns, tied the rope to the base of one and dropped it over the edge. While the others climbed up, she took a look around. It was another round room, but this one had doorways leading off it. Six doorways, all with stone doors, all standing open. She held her light up into the shaft above them. There were at least three more floors.

  Paternasse was the last to come up the rope. As he lifted his elbows up onto the edge of the floor, a shudder ran through the room and then grew in intensity. The room echoed with a deep rumble. Paternasse lost his grip on the edge and dangled precariously from the one hand that clutched the rope. He got his other hand on it, but the shaking was bouncing him around and he slid downwards. Noogan dived forwards, grabbing hold of the old man’s wrist. Dalegin and Nayalla caught hold of Noogan and between them, they hauled Paternasse up. The room was shaking violently and Mirkrin was crouching on the ground, holding onto one of the rusted columns, his face tense with fear. A section of wall fell away to reveal bare rock behind and cracks appeared across the ceiling.

  ‘Get in the doorways!’ Paternasse roared over the chaotic noise.

  They rushed for the reinforced frames of the doorways, Nayalla pulling Mirkrin’s arms from the column and dragging him with her. More chunks of stone fell from the wall and dust burst from some of the fissures appearing across the ceiling. The air filled with the stone powder, choking them and getting in their eyes. The shaking died down and they moved cautiously out from the doorways, coughing and wiping the dust from their faces. Nayalla stayed close to Mirkrin. She could feel him trembling, holding tight to the doorpost. Her knees were shivering too, from the adrenaline, but she knew that the tremor had terrified her husband, even more than the rest of them. He was reliving the time he spent crushed beneath the rock of the mine tunnel. She coughed and put her arm around him.

  ‘It’s over – come on, it’s over.’

  He prised his fingers from the stone and opened his eyes.

  ‘Never knew I had such affection for architecture,’ he sniffed self-consciously.

  He stood up straighter, ashamed of his fear, but the miners were busy studying the damage to the room.

  ‘Haven’t seen anything like this in the other rooms,’ Paternasse was saying. ‘Apart from things that have fallen apart from rot and rust, the place has had no structural damage at all. And now this. I think these quakes are a new thing, something the mountain hasn’t seen before.’

  ‘We don’t get earthquakes in this area,’ Nayalla told him. ‘I don’t know what these are, but they only started after the exorcism.’

  Paternasse nodded gravely. He put his hand on the wall, his eyes raised to the ceiling above them. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the damage being done in the rock above them. Stress fractures would be weakening the structure of the stone, causing it to settle under its own weight. This would cause pressure below, pressure that the rock would try to release in any way it could. The caves were an inherent weakness in the mountain and all this space offered a means of releasing the pressure through the walls and ceilings. If weakened enough, the rock could keep collapsing in on itself until it had settled as far down as it could go.

  ‘The place is weak, without its soul,’ he muttered. ‘We need to get out from under it. This whole mountain could come down around our ears.’

  With no idea which door to take, they replenished the powder on their torches and split up, each trying a different way. Three of the doorways soon turned out to be dead ends, leading into smaller rooms. One went through to another well, a waist-high rectangular wall containing a black pool of water. Two others led to corridors that ended in closed doors, their silvery white metal curiously free of corrosion. Noogan and Dalegin attacked one and then the other with their pickaxes, but the metal was barely scratched.

  ‘Try some wedges lads,’ Paternasse said as they battled with the second door.

  The gap between the jamb and the door was too thin, but a few blows of a pickaxe made enough of a hole to get a wedge in. Dalegin drove the wedge in harder with a lump-hammer, but the door did not budge. Nor could he get the wedge out. They tried hammering in two more, but with the same results.

  Paternasse stepped forward and ran his finge
r down the door, sticking the tip of it in his mouth and swilling the taste around.

  ‘It’s metal, but not a type I know.’ The old miner hawked and spat. ‘Harder, denser too, strong like steel, but it’s not steel. I can taste rutile or ilmenite. These doors are barricades, made to keep something in … or something out. They’ll take some shiftin’.’

  ‘We have to break through,’ Dalegin snarled. ‘We have to.’

  ‘It’ll take days to get through this door.’ Paternasse shook his head. ‘Even then, I’m not sure we could do it. Let’s see what else is around.’

  ‘I’m starvin’,’ Noogan said abruptly and as soon as he said it, they all realised how hungry they were. And cold too. The search for a way out had distracted them from their bodies’ demands, but the events of the day were catching up on them.

  They sat down where they were, propping up their torches, and took out all the food they were carrying. The miners had their packed lunches, pasties and biscuit and some apples; the Myunans had bread, cheese and a spicy pork paste. They all looked glumly at the collection of food.

  ‘We could stretch this out for a day, maybe two,’ Mirkrin said. ‘But that’s it. And we need to check the water in that well – my canteen’s almost empty.’

  It was true for all of them. They had all been sipping at their water since the first cave-in, but their thirst was growing and their water supply dwindling. Thirst would kill them long before hunger broke them down, but the water in the well could deal out death even faster if it were contaminated.

  Nayalla clutched her empty belly. She should have been making dinner for her family around now; she thought anxiously of her children, and one look at her husband told her he was sharing her concerns. With all that had happened, she had had little time to worry about them. She felt a rising dread at the thought that they might have fallen foul of the Noranians, or the skacks. Mirkrin squeezed her hand and shook his head. There was nothing they could do for them now but hope.

  ‘There are no cave openings on Absaleth,’ Nayalla told them. ‘The nearest caves that I know of are up north. This place may connect up to them somewhere. We should try to head in that direction if we can.’