She angled her glide upward enough to get her feet and hands beneath her again, and she charged straight at him, arms wide, intent on carrying him off the edge, just as Ilbei had predicted she might do. Meggins, fleet fellow that he was, dove for the rope as she came at him. He caught it with one hand as she veered and struck him despite the dodge. He kept his grip, but his bow flung out into the air, a black arc turning slowly as it spun away from him and fell.
He too spun, and he slammed against the rock, barely holding on. He grabbed for the rope with his other hand as he started to slide, his knuckles grinding against stone. He squeezed the rope with both hands, braking with all his might. The friction burned into his flesh, but he managed to prevent his descent from being free fall, and eventually stopped himself. He wound a stretch of rope around his foot and leg and grimaced at his hands before continuing down.
“Keep goin,” Ilbei called, already at the cliff’s edge and peering over anxiously. Relief washed over him as he saw Meggins working his way toward the ground. “Go, go, go.” Kaige appeared at his side and added his encouragement to Ilbei’s.
Meggins let himself down as quickly as he could, the pain in his hands making him wince and grunt with each new grip.
The harpy wheeled round in the air above the cavern floor, her shrieks echoing loudly from the ceiling. Ilbei watched beyond her, certain that the scores of little figures in the distance would come running around the bend and attack them, ending the escape well short of Hast. But they did not. In fact, the fire blast was flaring up again, and all the little people seemed bent on watching the flames and nothing more. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed that only a few even turned to see her soaring there. If they had turned to watch, they looked away again right after. He supposed they were long used to her by now, though he couldn’t fathom why they tolerated her at all. That had to be their bones in that nest, at least someone they’d known.
She flew toward them again at terrific speed, this time coming across at an angle that would bring her parallel with the cliff, a pass across the ledge. She dove down and made a grab for Kaige with her taloned feet, causing both Ilbei and the big man to dive back into the cave.
They rolled right back to their feet when she’d passed, and they rushed to the edge again. She was already banking steeply and coming back for another try. She angled lower, and Ilbei realized immediately that she was going for Meggins this time. “Meggins!” he shouted, pointing at the harpy diving down.
Meggins looked up, saw Ilbei, then turned and saw her. He waited until the moment before she was about to strike, and when it came, released his grip, just enough to let himself free fall for a bit. The sound he made upon catching himself, upon sliding to a stop, made Ilbei and Kaige both wince, the pain he suffered made obvious by the ferocity of the sound he held back between clenched teeth. The harpy swooped out and began a long turn again, gaining no altitude and clearly bent on trying for Meggins again. Ilbei ran back into the cave at full speed. He clambered up onto the harpy nest, dust flying all around him in a rancid cloud. He snatched one of the eggs, finding it heavier than he’d expected, and then had to roll out of the nest, unable to climb out as its sponginess gave way beneath his boots like snow—dry snow, but in places slick with a creamy wetness that had a reek so foul it burned his eyes and turned his throat against itself.
He waded out of the last of it and ran back, gagging and choking, just as the harpy made another pass. Meggins slid down as far as he could, but the pain got to be too much, and he lost his grip, plunging the last four spans to the ground. He landed hard, but he managed to get his feet under him and roll as he hit.
The harpy swung round and came again, bent to set herself on him anyway.
“Here, here!” Ilbei shouted at her. “Look what I’ve got, ya reekin old witch. I’ve got yer nasty get right here in my hands!”
She looked up at him as she glided toward Meggins, Jasper and Mags, barely a man’s height off the ground. He saw her eyes grow large, the narrow black spots suddenly like orbs of onyx glaring hate at him.
“That’s right, ya ornery cow. Now get off of my people, and this here won’t get broke.” She pulled up, banking sharply and climbing with long beats of her filthy wings. She flew right by him, up from below, skimming so near to the cliff it hardly seemed possible. She grasped for her egg with long, viciously taloned toes.
Ilbei snatched it away. “Not bloody likely, you,” he snarled. “Now go on and leave us be.” He turned to Kaige. “Get down the rope, son. Be quick about it.”
Kaige set himself straight to the task. He grunted as he lay flat and pushed himself over the ledge, the starting of the descent the hardest part. He went down hand over hand, his long arms devouring the rope a span at a time and his movements effortless. Ilbei kept his eye on the harpy as she circled on high, all the while holding her egg above his head, ready to dash it on the ground if he had to. She circled around and around, watching, the sound of her outrage a shrieking, hissing rasp of absolute contempt that rained down on him like acid. He listened to it less than he listened to the sound of Kaige’s descent, the big man’s boots buzzing against the rope as he slid quickly down.
Ilbei chanced a glance down when the sound stopped, and he saw that Kaige was at the bottom at last. This final bit was going to be tricky, getting himself down. “Ya all need to cover me,” he called as he looked up at the harpy again. She was still circling. A second glance below revealed Kaige holding Meggins’ old bow and Mags wrapping Meggins’ hands. That was not reassuring. “I’ll do my best, Sarge,” Kaige called up.
The harpy sounded something that might have been a laugh, a sound that was part cackle and part shriek. She swung around, still watching Ilbei, her eyes glaring black like poisoned darts.
“I’m settin it down right here,” Ilbei called up at her, as he squatted and placed the egg on the ledge. “I didn’t do it no harm, nor the other inside. No sense we can’t do this peaceably.”
Again came the cackling shriek, and he knew she was daring him to climb down. But there wasn’t much for it at that point. He had to get down. With another glimpse down the cliff, at which Kaige raised up the old bow reassuringly—or so he intended anyway—Ilbei set himself to the descent.
No sooner was he over the cliff than she began her dive. Ilbei had seen Meggins do it, and he was ready enough to let himself go sliding painfully down as well. He let himself down another span, then stopped, waiting for her. He knew he had to time it right. He gritted his teeth and prepared to drop. She was almost on him. A blinding flash crackled, and a line of lightning split the air. A hot blast of moist air hit him, and all his hair stood on end, his beard puffing like a blowfish. He had to blink to clear his vision, and when he did, he saw the harpy spinning toward the ground like a wounded dove, wings limp and partway folded, her cries silent.
He shook his head and blinked a few more times, squinting down to the cave floor. His ears rang something fierce. Jasper was waving a scroll at him. “Lightning,” he called up. “I told you I had one.”
With a grin that was half relief and half pleasant surprise, he let himself down the rest of the way, taking his time given that the jolt he’d gotten made it hard to close his hands properly.
When he was down, he looked off to the left. In the shadows near the cavern wall, he could see the dim gray shape of the harpy where she had crashed into the rocks. He wondered if she was dead. If it wouldn’t have required the work of scaling a steep jumble of broken stone to get to her, he might have gone and seen to it that she was, but she wasn’t moving, so he let it go.
“Meggins, how are yer hands?” he asked.
“They’re fine, Sarge. I’ll be okay till we buy some space and time for one of Jasper’s jiffy scrolls.”
Ilbei turned to face Jasper square. “Nice work, Jasper. Fer a feller what near washed out of caster boot camp, ya done good. That lightnin spell worked fine.”
“Well of course it did. Why wouldn’t it have?” Jasper said. “I already informed you that the only limitation of the lightning spell was one regarding visibility. There’s enough light coming from all that over there to meet the visual requirements of the spell, even to the ceiling. To be honest, my only concern was whether or not there would be an issue with grounding, because, as you know, lightning can—”
“Son,” Ilbei injected, “ya done good. But we don’t need ya to write the book about it as we stand here listenin. Let’s get on our way, and hope some of them folks up yonder will direct us to the door.”
“Well, I wasn’t writing anything,” Jasper said. “I was talking. And I really don’t think there is going to be anything as simple as a door.” But he fell silent after, looking completely put out. After depositing the blank parchment of the spent lightning spell in his satchel, he did, however, fall in line with the rest. None of them, not even Jasper, was willing to protest a command for them to get out of that cave and into the light of day.
Chapter 29
W
ith the noise they’d made, and the fact that they were now on the ground level of the cavern, Ilbei didn’t want to linger longer than they had to. They retrieved Ilbei’s helmet and pickaxe, found Meggins’ bow and then set out immediately for the bend around which they’d seen the little crowd run out when the fiery light flared. Using the relative shadows along the base of the cavern wall, they crept along as silently as possible, Ilbei with his weapon out but the others with theirs put away. The sight of a man with a pickaxe ought not to seem out of keeping with the situation, but a war party would arouse suspicion for sure. Ilbei suspected he and his people would do that anyway, but it was at least worth a try to avoid trouble if possible.
The pounding of many picks, hammers and iron bars beating on stone grew louder and louder as they approached. Ilbei held up a hand, signaling a halt as they were nearly to the corner. He crept closer, intending to peek around, when came the abrupt cessation of the clatter. The pounding of picks and mashing of hammers stopped and was followed immediately by the thumping of feet. Right after, the wave of figures they’d seen from the far end of the cavern passed by, close now and perhaps a hundred of them, though Ilbei didn’t try to count. All of them were as naked as could be—naked but for the feathered portions of their legs and the dangling bits of feathers at their backs, which were stained and filthy, hanging from the sawed-off stumps of what had once been wings. The whole lot of the “people” they’d observed from afar were harpies, or what remained of harpies.
The two harpies nearest Ilbei looked over as the bright light flared, which was accompanied at this proximity by a furnace-fire roar, loud and thunderous. The nearest of these maimed creatures, a male, saw Ilbei standing there. For a moment Ilbei feared the harpy would call out and bring the whole flock of them upon his little band, a swarm of bashing picks, shovels, rakes and bars. But the harpy did not call out. He simply stared at Ilbei with a hollow look in his black eyes, the skin beneath them sallow and lined. The whole of him was shrunken, with barely enough flesh to cover his bones, the lines and angles of which were visible beneath, though none so visible as those two protrusions where his wings had been cut off and the stumps cauterized.
The harpy saw Ilbei, seemed to be aware that someone was looking at him, and then turned back and waited for the bright flames to die down. When they did, he ran with the rest back beyond the bend.
Ilbei turned to his companions, bewilderment apparent. He shuffled forward a few moments after and tilted himself so he could look around the bend.
There came a loud hiss as he did, and he saw that men, human men up on railed platforms, had been lowered down through openings high above. They held long, flexible tubes that dropped down out of the holes from which the platforms had descended. The men directed spouts of clear liquid down onto a heaping pile of broken rock on the cavern floor. The stone, glowing red in places, hissed and spat when the liquid splashed upon it and cooled it rapidly, so rapidly that some of the larger pieces split open on contact. For a moment Ilbei assumed it was water they used to cool the pile, but only for a moment, for right after, the smell of vinegar assaulted him in a hot, humid wave.
He jerked back behind the cover of the wall, pulling in clean air, or at least better air, and then tipped back out to look again, holding his breath this time.
The stump-winged harpies fell upon the heap like a pack of wolves on a fresh kill, and once again the chamber was filled with the sound of iron on stone. Some of the harpies beat upon the jumble of rocks while others raked down the pile, dragging the crushed ore to a long sluice that had been made in the creek, which ran along the far wall. More harpies worked the sluices themselves, and Ilbei could see them pulling out gold, which glinted in the light of the lamps that hung everywhere up and down the walls. The harpies working the troughs were a line of constant motion, bending and raking with short rakes, plucking out chunks of gold, then turning to toss them into baskets before turning back and raking again. They never straightened. They just worked and worked, like machines made of skin and bone.
Ilbei looked up to where the men who’d sprayed the vinegar down were drawing the long tubes back onto the platforms, piling them in great coils. As he watched, movement at the end of the cavern caught his eye. Small tunnels cut into the rock face now yawned out lines of more wingless harpies, all of them running two at a time to the open mouth of a tunnel and dumping ore down onto the pile by the basketful. Thin gold veins like threads sparkled as the pieces fell, and much more of it flashed as chunks rolled down the pile after some harpy’s hammer smote apart the bigger rocks. Gold was everywhere.