by John Daulton
“Well, I expect them didn’t smell quite like this here. Whatever it is, it’s worse than some rottin grape skins or vinegar. This here is somethin else.” Ilbei held the torch out and examined the wall all around. All told, the chamber wasn’t more than five paces across, and it wasn’t tall enough to allow poor Kaige to stretch himself. Jasper, next in height amongst them, could only stand upright in places, and those with his hair brushing the rock.
Ilbei went round the chamber twice, looking for where water might once have come in, but he couldn’t find any obvious cracks or openings.
He handed the torch to Mags and closed his eyes, trying to smell his way to where the source of the vinegar stench came through, but it was so strong that he couldn’t find any place stronger than all the rest.
Mags followed him around the room as he sniffed, the torchlight casting a long shadow of him up the wall.
“Well that don’t make no sense,” Ilbei said at length. “It ain’t comin from nowhere.”
“I’ll tell you what doesn’t make sense,” Jasper said. “Look at this over here.” He was leaning close to the rock and shining his bit of blue fungus up and down. “Mags, bring the torch, if you please. The blue light may be illuminating something.”
Mags brought it to him. He took it, stepped away from the stone and held the torch out near where he’d been. He squinted at the wall, then moved the torch to the left, once again squinting and scrutinizing something there. He went back and forth, then brought the torch near where he’d started. He raised it upward, then around, then down, until at length he’d described a roughly egg-shaped patch.
“Look here,” he said. “Come feel how rough this is.” Mags did as he asked, as did Meggins, who was standing closest by. “Now feel over here.” He brushed his fingers down the cavern wall near where the cave came in, a long swipe like a prolonged caress. Mags and Meggins did likewise. “Feel the difference?” He went to the opposite side of the chamber, where Ilbei stood. Again he swept his fingers down the wall. “It’s the same here. Smooth as can be. But not over there.” He went back to where he’d started, rubbed the stone and shook his head. “Definitely not the same.”
Ilbei touched the wall near where Jasper had been only moments before. It felt exactly like what he’d expected it would: cool, hard stone, slightly undulating but polished smooth by the passage of water and time. He went to the place where Jasper was leaning down close with the torch. Jasper looked up at his approach and pointed. “There, try it there.”
Ilbei did. It felt rougher than the other spot. More like brick than polished stone.
“Now how do you suppose that should happen?” Jasper asked.
“A cave ooze would do it,” Ilbei guessed. “I’ve seen small ones creepin around in mines and caverns before. They do somethin like that. They leach minerals out fer food—when they ain’t droppin on a man and suckin his juices dry.”
“I too am familiar with oozes. When I was thirteen, I wrote a paper on them and submitted it to the Royal Journal of Mining in Crown. It was rejected, of course, because I haven’t got a noble name, but the work was thorough as can be.”
“So with all of that there wind, are ya sayin we got oozes to worry about?”
“No, that’s precisely what I’m not saying.”
“Jasper, if Ilbei doesn’t come squeeze it out of you, I’ll do it myself,” Meggins said. “By the gods, just tell us what you mean.”
“This is a plug.” Jasper turned as he made the announcement and tried to cross his arms over his chest triumphantly, but holding the torch made it impossible, which he realized belatedly. An awkward moment followed, but he adjusted himself, turned sideways and assumed a haughty stance instead.
“Jasper,” Ilbei threatened, “get on with the rest of it, or I’ll let Meggins have at ya.”
“Oh, fine. You’re all perfectly fine running off into the darkness throwing pickaxes through people’s skulls or lurking around rearguard in the pitch black all alone with fancy magic bows, but when I do something of value, it becomes simply, ‘Go on, Jasper, just say what you mean.’”
“That’s right, son, it does. So, please, I’m even askin nice. What kind of plug do ya mean?”
Jasper was appeased by Ilbei’s “please,” so he went on as if nothing had occurred between his original statement and his next. “This is melded stone, and not done very well, I’ll tell you. A second-year student at the transmuter’s academy could have done a better job with only a rank of E.”
Ilbei hummed, low in his chest. “So the plug is where someone sealed up the hole where the water come through?”
Jasper rolled his eyes, but he said, “Yes.”
“Which side were they on when they done it?”
Jasper’s eyebrows rode high upon his forehead, and he stood tall, proudly erect, as he was finally being appreciated for his expertise. He bumped his head against the ceiling with a thud, which forced him to stoop again. Worse, after thinking on the question for a moment, he had to admit he didn’t know. He looked wounded when he said it.
“Well, how about ya go on and have a look through on the other side,” Ilbei said. “Ya got more of them seein spells, don’t ya?”
The young sorcerer’s pride was resuscitated by Ilbei’s continued need of him, and he went to his chest of scrolls, sifting through them for a seeing spell. He appeared to find one, but kept looking through the collection for a time after. “Oh dear, we’ve only got two left,” he announced.
“Well, get to it with one of em,” Ilbei said. “We need to get out of here while there’s still time.” He turned to Meggins. “Go on back a ways and keep an eye out fer that brigand with the spear-throwin crossbow.”
Meggins vanished into the darkness.
Jasper set himself to work reading his magical sight spell, and the rest of them waited impatiently. Mags closed the lid on Jasper’s chest of magic and sat on it, resting her head in her hands. Ilbei felt bad for her and knew she was likely still in considerable pain. A healing spell that reversed the type of damage she’d had likely didn’t set her body fully right in a single day, much less a day of tramping around in caves. Ilbei had been seen often enough by gifted army healers to know that even the best spells still required rest if the injuries were severe enough.
Jasper’s voice began to elevate as he read through the spell. At first none of them paid any attention to it, assuming it was normal, but soon it was clear that something was agitating the scrawny wizard, as his breathing became increasingly rapid with each passing word. It was as if they were watching him having a nightmare.
“Should I wake him up, Sarge?” Kaige asked, reaching out with a giant hand, ready to do it.
“No,” Ilbei snapped. “Ya might scramble his brains worse than they already are.”
Kaige jerked his hand away, his face drawn back as if someone were pulling hard at the back of his scalp. “Sorry, Jasper,” he whispered. He clapped his hand over his own mouth for fear of waking him with even that.
Shortly after, Jasper gasped and turned wide eyes around the room. “There’s a light,” he said. “And a creek falling down into a widening cavern. And I think there are lots of harpies in there. I couldn’t get this sad excuse of a three-copper seeing spell to carry me down far enough to confirm it, and there wasn’t quite enough light, but I’m sure I saw several lying on ledges along the walls.”
“Well, if’n ya couldn’t confirm it, what makes ya think it’s harpies lyin there?”
“Because there are two dead ones on the other side of that wall.”
Chapter 27
The stone Jasper discovered sealing the end of the tunnel turned out to be porous and easily broken through, or at least, easily when assaulted with the brute force and practiced hand of Ilbei Spadebreaker and his miner’s pick. Both were long acquainted with that kind of work. Once again Jasper enchanted Ilbei’s pickaxe blades with the Tooth of the Leviathan spell, the original cast having long faded away—the recognition of which
had, of course, set Jasper off on another long, rambling soliloquy about the poor quality of army-issue scrolls and how one day he would show Ilbei what a proper version ought to look like.
Despite Jasper’s discontent, it was only a matter of two short hours before Ilbei had beaten through the transmuted patch of stone and knocked enough out that he could squeeze through. He did not go in right away, however, for the vinegar stench was something awful on the other side, and added to it was the reek of another kind, the foul odor that none of them had experienced before, some combination of rotting flesh and raw sewage and filth of an inexplicable description. Before opening the wall, they’d only had a hint of it, mixing with the vinegar in a vague sort of way that ought to have forewarned them. But once Ilbei bashed out the last bit of separation with his pick, the odor was upon them in full. They fell away together, as if on command, all of them gasping and waving their hands before their faces in futile attempts to abate the acridity of the stench.
“By the gods,” Ilbei choked, fumbling for a handkerchief that he kept stuffed in a pouch on his belt. He pressed it against his face, his eyes watering, the putrescence filling the chamber with a palpable humidity like sweat when there are too many bodies in a hot room. “What can it be?”
“I already told you,” Jasper said. “There are dead harpies in there. How else did you think it was going to smell? And if there are dead ones, there are likely live ones nearby. And since we’ve already determined that none of you are fond of reading, you may not know that harpies nest in their own excrement, layer upon layer. The whole thing is porous, with each layer drying out and creating a sponge-like foundation for the next. Fluids run through to the bottom, and the whole thing compresses under the weight of the layer above in perpetuity, the outflow of effluence eroding the lowest layers but the uppermost layers replacing what is lost. That is why the odor is constant and fresh. It’s actually a very ingenious strategy, exemplifying great efficiency and conservation of resources, though I understand that the small bones of the creatures they eat are everywhere in the nest, and they tend not to pick them out, so they lie in them, which causes sores that often fester and add to the odious smell.”
Ilbei might have complained or cut the didactic mage off on that, but he hadn’t read any of it, and figured it might not hurt to know. “All right, so it stinks. Is it gonna make us sick? I ain’t keen on us dyin of some disease halfway across the Sandsea with no help to come. Ya said before ya ain’t got nothin in that there box of yers fer no harpy disease.”
“Well, if you’ll recall, I told you that I believe I can stave off any harpy diseases if we don’t let them set in.” Jasper made the ticking sound he sometimes issued when he was weary of inferior intelligence. His confidence had risen—and his abiding wariness of harpies inexplicably dissolved—in the pleasure of having been allowed to speak as an expert once again. “At very least, I believe I can hold off symptoms with what I have long enough to get us back to Hast. You really should pay attention more closely when I explain these things the first time.”
Meggins laughed as he watched Ilbei’s left eye begin to twitch. “Jasper, you got anything to stave off a pickaxe to the head?” he asked. Jasper glanced to Meggins, then back to the sergeant, and he realized that he’d let his mouth get ahead of his mind for a moment. Fortunately, Ilbei had moved on to other things.
Satisfied that disease was not an immediate problem, Ilbei set down his pick and went to the hole he’d made, the handkerchief firmly mashed against his nose. He wriggled into the hole and pulled himself through it far enough so that he could see what was beyond. It was just as Jasper had described: a distant light ahead and slightly to his right, the stream off to his left pouring over the ledge of an escarpment, and below the opening, at the bottom of the escarpment, lay two harpies, dead as an old pair of boots. But Ilbei didn’t think the foul odor was coming from them. With his head inside, and despite the overwhelming smell of vinegar, the other odor, the putrescent one, was worse, far worse, and well beyond the simple stench of death. His eyes watered, and it was all he could do not to throw up. He gagged a few times anyway.
He put the handkerchief away, as it did nothing to help, and forced himself to suffer it as best he could. He steeled himself and took a look around. To his immediate left, a waterway not much bigger than the one they’d been wading through the day before emerged through an opening in the stone and shot out over an abrupt drop. The drop was obviously man-made, which came as a mild surprise. It didn’t take a man of Ilbei’s groundbreaking experience to recognize that the stream had once bent round toward the hole he’d just unplugged, which was clearly the original, and natural, course for its flow. Someone had come and cut through the mountain and diverted the water away.
The hole Ilbei had widened allowed him to crawl along that upper edge to where the water plunged down. From that vantage, he looked out over the escarpment at a long, narrow cavern that someone had gone to great lengths to cut. It bent right, then left, ultimately moving off toward the dim source of illumination that seemed very far away. The stream itself jetted out from the opening near him, then bounced over and down a series of unnatural outcroppings, jagged ledges and crumbling stone heaps, all angling down, all of them forming a steep declivity that wouldn’t have occurred naturally and, therefore, had to be remnants of excavation. Whoever had cut the channel had been more concerned with speed and utility than symmetry or easy access to the water source. Despite that, the work had been considerable all the same.
The stream splashed loudly and steadily down the ragged slope as it fell away, its sound mixing with a faint but distinctive clang of metal on stone in the distance, the symphony of at least a hundred picks, shovels and hammers pounding against rock somewhere ahead, a song Ilbei was well familiar with. The water flowed toward the sound, dropping twenty spans vertically over the course of sixty horizontal spans before it flowed out of sight, dropping over a ledge and traveling off toward the faint light and the sound of excavation work.
Looking down the stream toward the dim glow, Ilbei saw a bright flare of golden firelight illuminating the farthest wall, the source somewhere around the bend. It came on suddenly and remained that way for several minutes, flickering but brilliant, like the breathing of a dragon in the distance. Whatever and wherever the source was, it had to be big and very hot. But then it was gone, leaving in its place the fainter but constant glow from before, the sort of glow that made Ilbei think of a distant town, though he knew it to be unlikely given where he was, so deep in the mountain. He watched for a while with that in mind, but seeing that nobody came around the bend, Ilbei turned back and motioned for Meggins to hand him his pickaxe. He crawled back along the ledge and looked through the hole to his companions. “Come on, people; I’m guessin this here is the way out.”
One by one, he helped pull the rest of the group up and through the hole. Once everyone was through, they began the treacherous descent, slipping over the edge of one blocky, black ledge to the next, stumbling down short slopes of loose rock, each drop made dangerous by the slicking mist that the falling water set upon everything.
As they climbed down, Ilbei noticed a gray layer along the ledges across the wall, a coating that lay upon the flat surfaces like ash. In the moments during which the brightest light flared and flashed, he thought he saw man-shapes on some of them, lying flat as if sleeping there. “I think there’s harpies over there,” he said. “A couple of em way up on that far wall.”
“Of course there are,” Jasper said. “I already told you I saw them there. Don’t you see the bed of excrement on the ledges? Don’t you ever listen to me? Someday you’re going to miss something important, and that will be the day when—”
“Pipe down, mage, or you’ll have the lot on us.” Ilbei growled the words, low and through gritted teeth.
“Jasper, you sure got over your fear of harpies fast enough,” Meggins observed. “You know, when we first got here, the mention of one of them nearly set you to
wetting yourself.”
“I did not wet myself,” Jasper protested. “And even if I had, it would certainly be understandable. Harpies are vicious, human-eating creatures riddled with disease and vermin, which also carry disease. Anyone in their right mind is afraid of harpies if they are alone in the wilderness, away from proper medical care.”
“Well, you had medical spells in your bag all along. So why did you suddenly find your spine now?”
“My spine was never missing, but if you must know, I find them much less intimidating without their wings.”
“Without their wings? You mean those harpies up there haven’t got any wings?”
“No, they don’t, at least not that I could see. Neither do these two, in case you didn’t notice.” He pointed to the two harpy corpses he’d spotted when casting the seeing spell. The company had descended far enough that they could see the bodies more closely. Meggins cocked an eyebrow, and his upper lip curled as he gazed upon the corpses, both with hacked-off wings and one with enough flesh rotted away that the remnants of its face sneered up at them. Jasper appeared burdened by having had to point them out.
Ilbei looked away from the ledge where he’d been contemplating the man-shapes and gazed upon the two corpses lying only a few paces away. Sure enough, they had no wings, like one of the two they’d found at first. Unlike that one, however, each of these appeared to have died with a sledgehammer in its hand. Ilbei jumped down and pushed the nearer of the two over, revealing a long steel crossbow bolt in its skull, the silvery shaft having been hidden beneath a film of dust. Searching the other revealed it also had one, a shot through its ribs that had penetrated deep enough to pierce both lungs. “The Skewer’s been in here,” he said unnecessarily. “I wish I knew what in the nine hells is goin on.”
