The Tears of Sisme

by Peter Hutchinson

  Berin hesitated. He was scared of going down. The thought of walking through all the empty tunnels by himself was eerie enough, but to do it knowing that the roof might fall on him at any moment would be very frightening. He was also worried about Tariska. If he was hurt or even killed in the mine, what would become of her?

  Sinkul interpreted the delay as incipient mutiny and reacted with ruthless simplicity.

  “Take the girl over to the shaft. Now, you worthless bag of shit, if you’re not at the bottom in two minutes, she will be.”

  After that there was no time for hesitation. The youth took a fresh torch from an overseer and launched himself down the ladder. With a last look at the daylight he moved into the largest tunnel. He was aware that what he was doing was completely senseless. Tariska was predicting some sort of movement in the earth; it hadn’t happened yet, so there was nothing for him to find. This was just a little drama Sinkul was laying on for the benefit of his supervisors. If there was a cave-in, he was only risking a slave who had cost him six sacks of potatoes. If nothing happened, it would be hard for any of them to refuse to go back to work.

  Berin sighed and stepped over to a small niche to sit down. He might as well spend the time thinking as walking around aimlessly. Things could not have gone much more wrong. Caldar and Rass, if they were still living, were probably working as virtual slaves aboard a ship somewhere. He and Tariska would be lucky to come out of their present situation alive; if there was no collapse in the mine, Sinkul would make an example of his clerk, that was certain. Only Idressin and the Tinker remained at large. He wished them well in their attempt to find the Talisman, but it all seemed rather remote.

  Idly he flipped a pebble out into the main tunnel. It didn’t fall to the ground. Instead with a noise like a gigantic hammer stroke the floor leapt up to meet it and the chaos began. Huge splits appeared in the walls and with the roar of ten thunderstorms at once the roof began to fall. Berin was not only terrified, he was also disoriented. He cowered back in the furthest corner of his niche, only to find that the solid rock of his refuge was moving and shaking as well. With a groan and a bang a wide cleft appeared right behind him and then closed with a frightful grinding sound. Huge blocks of stone were smashing together scant feet away and the debris first of all walled off the alcove and then inexorably began to push into it.

  The noise, the dust and the tremendous shock waves of the destruction all around left him stunned and blind and it was some time before he realised that the stone surface beneath him had stopped moving and that the thunder of falling rock was diminishing.

  He was still alive! But the niche was now half it’s original size, choked completely shut by the roof fall. True, he was only fifty paces from the shaft, if that was still open. It might as well be five miles. It would take weeks of labour to reach him, and no one would bother anyway. No, he was utterly trapped and he might as well accept it. He had not expected to end this way, but then who did expect his own death? As he had heard Idressin say, the most certain event in people’s lives so often came as a surprise.

  Despite the silence his ears still rang with the shattering roar of the earthquake. It was a good ten minutes after the last falls when he picked up a new sound, running water. A quick investigation revealed the flow gushing down inside a triangular shaped hole in a back corner of the alcove, falling from darkness above to darkness below. At least he wouldn’t die of thirst.

  The next half hour he spent in a long reverie about his life, mostly about his childhood at home with his parents and with Hamdrim. It all felt very far away, almost as if he was watching someone else. At the same time he recognised well the small scared boy who was inside him at this very moment. Then, like a revelation, he realised that the quiet mind which was observing it all had been present throughout his life. Something profound clicked into place in him, union where there had been separation, and he felt very much at peace.

  After a while he began to get cold and the torch was showing signs of burning low. Discomfort and curiosity impelled him to look around his stone prison for the twentieth time. At the end his eyes came to rest on the black triangle in the corner. Dismissing small holes and cracks no wider than a finger, it was the only aperture visible. He stepped over and squatted beside it. With sudden excitement he saw that it was deceptive. The lower side of the hole was a good hand span forward of the rest; there might almost be enough room for him to squeeze through.

  At first it seemed impossible. Then with a struggle he got his head and shoulders through with one arm pushed out ahead of him. But the space beyond was much larger, where the water rushed down to unknown depths, and he had the unnerving feeling that he would slide down with it if he went an inch further. He fought his way back and tried again feet first. This was more promising and before long he was out, braced precariously across the water chute, not daring to let go his last handhold on the edge of the niche.

  Although he had taken great care, his torch had been doused by the stream. Having nothing with which to rekindle it, he reluctantly left it in the niche, let go of the edge and started to work his way upwards in complete darkness. The fissure was not far from vertical, and greasy with a fine coating of mud. His hands and feet were soon chilled into total numbness by the water and only bracing his back hard against the wall behind him stopped him from slipping from the small ledges that supported him.

  He battled his way up, catching every slide with a wrench of tired muscles and beating feeling back into hands when he had a secure foothold. A mere fifteen feet above the niche he bumped his head on a roof of rock. He explored it cautiously in the darkness. The roof ran right across the width of the fissure and the stream flowed down from a long crack only three fingers wide. There was no way out.

  *

  Above ground, as the last echoes of the ‘quake’s thunder died away, the scene resembled a massacre. All the buildings had collapsed. In the open space between the ruins over three hundred bodies lay prostrate at all angles without sound or movement. Then heads began to lift and talk began, rising quickly in a crescendo of congratulation as people realised they were still alive.

  “What are you going to do about the clerk?” The engineer had shouldered his way to Sinkul’s side, followed by the large Dendrian slave.

  “Why don’t you go and look for him yourself, before you get off my property. I’ve got a business to get restarted.”

  “Maybe. Let’s go and see.”

  The three of them went over to join the gathering crowd around the shaft. All that remained was a distorted hollow, six feet deep. On the floor of shattered rock which plugged it the girl was sitting, rocking to and fro and weeping.

  The owner stared unbelieving at the sight. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

  “Aye, so’s the lad. He and that girl of his saved us all.”

  With Sinkul apparently oblivious to everything except his own loss, the engineer swung round to address the Dendrian carrier and found himself facing a complete stranger. The man was clearly well-to-do, expensively, yet soberly dressed, probably an official.

  “And where is ‘the lad’? the newcomer enquired in cultured Belugins.

  “Down there somewhere.” The engineer nodded grimly at the choked shaft. “He and his girl there warned us the ‘quake was coming, so we pulled everyone out. Then Sinkul, the owner, sent him back down to check it out, because …"

  “...he wanted to get everyone back to work.” The stranger finished off the sentence. “Ah well. Owners are much the same everywhere. Now. . .” he waited for the engineer to supply his name, “Now, Tagon, you obviously know the workings well. Choose ten good men and bring them to me and we’ll decide what to do. But first can you get someone to take that girl somewhere safer. Another shock could bury her if she stays there.”

  “Hey, just a minute.” Sinkul had woken from his trance to find an unknown man giving orders in his domain. “Who are you? And what right have ….”

  Again the newcomer did not
wait. He had turned slowly at the first word and fixed the owner with an icy stare. Now he broke in, “The right of common humanity, although I suspect that that might not apply in your case.” Sinkul’s face began to mottle with anger, but the next words replaced rage with dread. “I am an Imperial Inspector of Mines, come to investigate illegal practices reported from this mine.”

  What had they found out? Probably his evasion of Imperial Taxes. Karkor’s control might have slackened a little recently, but the Tax Department was relentless and brutally effective. Who could have been spying on him? The owner’s mind raced frantically through the possibilities and an awful suspicion began to dawn on him. The clerk! The slave who amazingly knew High Balotins and Shattun. How could he have been so blind as not to suspect such accomplishments? Then he remembered, the clerk was dead. Perhaps he could persuade this man that all his records had been lost in the ‘quake also, so there was no way to pursue an investigation.

  As if reading his thoughts, the chill voice cut in again, “Have no doubt, my friend, we already have enough information to arrest you. And if no records or witnesses are available to us, we use other methods to gain our evidence.”

  Sinkul shivered and edged away, as the man turned his attention back to the engineer. Tagon had listened to this brief exchange and now hurried off, overjoyed at having witnessed the owner’s discomfiture. In a few minutes he had assembled a small group of engineers and slaves around the Inspector, and a grim discussion began as to how entrance could be effected into the mine quickly enough to save the clerk, assuming he had survived the earthquake.

  The mine was neither deep nor large, the longest tunnels only a few hundred paces, but taken together with the side-tunnels it added up to several miles of workings. These men knew them well enough to be able to trace them out on the surface with reasonable accuracy, and Tagon sent them off in groups to study the ground and discover if the upheaval of the ‘quake had opened up any fresh points of access.

  The next suggestion from the Inspector startled him. “Ask the girl if he’s still alive. After all, if she’s got the Sight, she may know.”

  On reflection the obvious practicality of the idea appealed to him. The girl was sitting against a boulder looking utterly exhausted by her distress, but she responded immediately to his question with an emphatic nod. Tagon knelt down beside her, wanting to thank her and reassure her as well. The huge eyes turned and looked at him, and the words died in his throat. How could he offer a bland lie to someone with truth, however stark, shining in her face? With a muffled “We’ll try: by the gods, we’ll try,” he stood up and went back to his hopeless task.

  An hour later there was another slight tremor. Most of the work force had been moved onto flat open ground away from the mine, but the search groups were still out in potentially dangerous places. So when Tagon heard the shouting in the distance, his heart sank. More casualties, when by a miracle there had only been one up till now? He began to run.

  Blocked by the rock roof and disheartened, Berin began the long descent down to his alcove. He was almost back, when his feet slipped, his numb hands failed to hold him, and he plummetted down the chute. He hardly had time to register that he was falling when he landed in water so cold that it shocked him into a galvanic effort to scramble out. He knelt on a wide ledge next to the pool, shivering from cold and reaction to his fall, until his common sense warned him to take action, while he was still capable of it. He stood up and moved gingerly along the ledge in the direction the water seemed to be flowing.

  Progress was very slow. He was afraid of hitting his head on unseen projections and of falling back into the icy stream. Gradually he worked out a system of exploring the air ahead of him with his arms and the ground with one foot. Later when the roof came lower, he crawled. And when the ledges petered out on both side of the stream, he took a deep breath and waded forward in the stream bed.

  Suddenly he realised that he could make out the dim shape of the cave ahead. Light. There was daylight ahead from somewhere and he began to slosh forward at an increasing pace. Rounding the next bend he could see it, an aperture on the right wall of the cave with a cone of fresh debris below it. The slope was desperately slippery, but nothing was going to stop him now. He literally clawed his way to the top and came panting to a halt in bitter disappointment beside the slit, a bare handspan wide, through which the daylight flooded in. It looked hopeless, but he was learning not to accept first judgement of such things. So he waited to get his breath back before examining the hole more closely.

  “Dunno. Some of these old bell-pits go down deep enough, but we’re way off the main tunnels.”

  The voice was very close, Berin was so excited that his first call was just a croak. The second was a good loud “Hey. Help. I’m in here.” He pushed an arm through the crack and waved, shouting “Here, here.” Footsteps crunched on pebbles outside and a moment later he could see an eye and part of a face. It beamed at him and said, “Well, well. We struck lucky. Looks like we won’t need a new clerk after all. Hang on; we’ll have you out in no time.”

  There was another tremor just as the face disappeared, but it only served to cover the youth in a fresh layer of dust and grime. After that it seemed an age before anything happened. Then a whole team of men turned up with picks and crowbars and set about widening the hole, warning Berin to keep out of the way. Fortunately the rocks were fractured and unstable, and in ten minutes they were pulling the youth out.

  The friendly engineer was there, slapping him on the back with all the others, and then unbelievably a well-known voice said just beside him, “You look more like a bedraggled sewer rat than one of my men. Get yourself cleaned up and you can give me your report as we ride. I have a tight schedule.”

  The tutor’s stern expression creased into a faint smile as he added, “I am of course glad both personally and professionally that you survived. It would be difficult to replace you.”

  Berin caught the veiled humour and smiled in response. He felt so joyful at his release that it was as if nothing needed to be said. Reading his thoughts, Idressin told him that Tariska was alright, at the same time managing to convey the roles they were supposed to be playing.

  There was no sign of Sinkul. The tutor had a long conversation with Tagon and the other supervisors, then commandeered a pair of the mineowner’s horses. The huge Dendrian slave lifted the girl like a feather onto the saddle behind Idressin and with Berin leading the spare horse, they set off at a gentle trot down out of the hills. Berin had been over the whole story by the time they stopped for the night, making up for Tariska’s silence. She smiled for the first time when she saw the proper beds they were going to sleep in. Although it was sleep not food she craved, she was too nervous to stay in the bedroom by herself; so the tutor had them bring supper upstairs, and he and Berin ate and talked while the girl fell into an exhausted slumber.

  “You’ve heard most of our story, Idressin.” Berin pushed his seat back with a sigh of contentment. “I’m going to fall asleep in my chair soon. Come on, tell me how you found us.”

  “Well, it wasn’t easy. It looked like trouble at the border as soon as I spotted Pak and there were two other men who made straight for me, so I disappeared into the crowd as quick as I could. There was no time to warn you. I just hoped I might be able to draw them off. I saw Pak ride away towards Sostenaar, but it took me quite a while to shake off the other two. As soon as I could I doubled back to the border post and pretended to be a police official following up the same report as Pak. It was a shock to find you’d already gone, and like a fool I believed the guard commander’s story about police from Razimir picking you up.”

  “So that was the little plot they hatched. Clever.”

  “Your horses and packs were still there” Idressin continued. “They would have sold them off at the first chance, so I took them and followed the false trail back towards Razimir. Within a couple of days I knew it didn’t add up. Police would definitely have used the main h
ighway and although I was pushing really hard, I came on no such party.”

  The tutor stopped and took a deep pull from his tankard. “It wasn’t difficult to act angry when I got back to the border post. I’d wasted best part of a week and your trail was growing cold. The guard commander was feeling quite pleased with himself, having deceived Pak as well. He was appalled to see me back and wilted at once when I said I was a Special Forces investigator. He told me the truth then: but slavers are a secretive bunch and I had to ask a lot of questions along the way before I traced your band to the staging camp. As you might expect, no one there could remember particular slaves; but I got the names of all the customers who had bought from them in the previous week. Wicca Ridge Mine happened to be well down the list.”

  “I didn’t think you were ever going to find us. Did you use that Mines Inspector trick all the time?”

  “Oh no, they weren’t all mines. I just acted as an Imperial Inspector of whatever it was that suited. It never ceases to amaze me how many guilty secrets people have in a society ruled by fear. You only need to pretend to know what they’ve done wrong and they start confessing.”

  “Yes, Sinkul didn’t waste much time disappearing, did he? I wonder what he was guilty of.”

  “Probably fiddled his taxes, among other things. The authorities have very unpleasant ways of reminding people not to do that.”

  “What will happen at the mine now? There’s a lot of people to feed and no mine to work – and no one in charge.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt if Sinkul will risk going back to a mine that’s caved in. There’s nothing valuable enough there for him to risk being caught for tax evasion or whatever he’s done. I suggested to Tagon and the others that they could sink their own shaft beyond the present workings and work back towards them. Start up their own mine in effect.”