Ilbei pulled back a few steps and turned to his companions. “It’s a gold mine all right, fertile as a womb. And them harpies is slaves to it, weren’t no doubt. They all been butchered like that one we seen back in the creek, and now put to the slaver’s whip.”
“But, we’re north of South Mark by a hundred measures still,” Meggins said. “There’s no way we turned down that far south. Not in the two days since we came into the mountain. It’s not possible.”
“You’re right about that,” Ilbei agreed.
“So, Her Majesty would never tolerate such a thing. Not even harpies. At least I don’t think she would.” His voice trailed off a little at the end. He glanced at Kaige, then back to Ilbei, adding, “Would she?”
“She damned sure wouldn’t,” Ilbei said. “This here operation is somebody’s secret, sure as kissin a colonel’s wife.”
“Well, then we’re not likely to be given directions to the front door,” Mags said.
“No, I don’t reckon we will. All the same, that poor devil what seen me didn’t seem to give two coppers I was here, so I expect we can make fer an exit if’n we find one without them harpies standin in our way.” He crept forward again and once more surveyed the scene around the bend. There were no openings at ground level in the opposite wall, and none on the far end beyond where the fires were other than the low, narrow passage through which the water ran out. He noticed as he looked that a basketful of ore was thrown right down onto one of the harpies working the heap, knocking him flat, face forward into the pile. Steam began to rise around him. Ilbei shook his head.
He glanced up to see if any of the people, the humans, up on the railed platforms were watching, but none were turned his way, so he risked a look down the near wall, right around the bend, hoping for a way out. Again there was no sign of an exit or passageway. That left only the stream.
He took a second look at where it exited. It ran out through a narrow opening that had clearly been cut into the wall for it, just as the shafts above it had been. It wasn’t very large, and it obviously would lead them farther down.
He turned back, shaking his head. “Well, folks, we got ourselves into a bit of a fuss. Only way out and up I see is them platforms what come through the roof. Otherwise, we’ll be goin down again, either followin the creek we don’t know or goin back to the one we do and takin our chances bein spitted by the Skewer.”
Meggins stepped past him and peered around to see. He spent several long moments looking up and down, then came back and nodded that he agreed with Ilbei’s assessment. “Any chance one of those caves up that far wall leads out?”
“No. Look at how they’re all straight angled. You can see by the slant of the roofs. They’re all cut in by hand.”
Meggins went back and looked. After a few moments, his head jerked, as if he’d gotten a jolt of some kind, and for a long time after, he watched, shaking his head. When he came back, his voice was filled with awe. “You should see how much gold they just threw into baskets out there. Some pieces big as my head.”
Ilbei was nearly trampled by Kaige as he went to look, Jasper and Mags right behind.
Sure enough, Meggins had been on the mark, and they watched as the last chunks and shovelfuls of gold gravel from the bottom of the flumes were piled in two very large and very sturdy-looking baskets. The baskets were dragged beneath another opening in the ceiling, where they were then attached to a pair of hooks at the end of a rope that had been lowered down. When the baskets were secure, they were raised up into the darkness by someone unseen above. No sooner had the baskets vanished, both the platforms were hauled up into their respective shafts as well.
“Well that’s the damnedest thing I ever seen…,” Ilbei began to say, but he let it die off as all the harpies turned and ran back toward them again.
Just as before, all in a wave, the harpy slaves rushed out of the area where the pile of broken rocks lay, all but one harpy anyway, the one upon whose head the stones had fallen. He remained motionless but for the wisps of steam rising from him. The rest ran past the corner, again unconcerned by the fact that anyone looked on—even the harpy that had seen Ilbei earlier did not bother to look back again. They stood together, staring expectantly, and their scrutiny prompted Ilbei and the rest to follow the line of their collective focus up to the ceiling. Ilbei realized there was a large hole up there that hadn’t had a platform lowered from it, not quite so large as the others, and closer to the back wall. In the time it took him to make the assessment, a gush of flame blew out of the opening, straight down in a rush, as if the bottom of a barrel full of dragon’s fire had broken loose.
The blazing column of fire, at least thirty paces thick, burned and burned, roaring almost deafeningly, the heat blasting them as they observed, just far enough away to be at the edge of bearing it. Even at that distance, beads of sweat broke out on all their faces, only to be instantly evaporated. Kaige and Jasper wiped at the salty dryness upon their brows as Mags dabbed unconsciously at her upper lip with the back of her hand.
They watched and waited until the fiery deluge stopped, three minutes or so, Ilbei gauged, and then as abruptly as it began, it was gone, the roar, like the flames, retracting up into the hole from whence it had come. The heap of ore glowed bright red, pulsing as if it were the molten heart of this strange place. A heart of gold, in the most literal sense, and Ilbei suspected an evil one. Ilbei shook his head.
The harpy wave, caught in the tidal beat of that heaping glow, rushed back as the platforms were lowered again. The men upon them once more pushed out the lengths of tubing until the nozzles were clear of the platforms, which hung like dangling balconies over the nightmarish scene. One by one, the tubes jerked, then spewed streams of pungent white vinegar. The men washed the pile down systematically, the hot rocks hissing steam, spitting and crackling, ejecting splinters of stone while many pieces cracked and fell apart. Clumps of gold fell away sometimes when the rocks broke open, as if separated by invisible hands, and rolled down the pile.
When the hissing steam stopped and the red-hot glow was gone, the harpies once again clambered up the jumble and set themselves to crushing the rest with their hammers and picks. Shortly after, the other harpies up in the caves along the back wall once more emerged and began throwing down ore. Somehow most of it managed not to hit anyone below, and Ilbei wondered if that was intentional or simply luck. He thought as he watched that, were he one of those maimed wretches out there beating on that pile of rocks, the kindest thing that could have been done to him would be for one of those harpies above to simply cave in his skull with a load of rocks. He thought the harpy that had been struck down before the last fire blast was likely the luckiest one of the lot. A glance proved that particular harpy was no longer in evidence, his corpse vaporized by the column of flame. Ilbei harrumphed, disgusted. He’d seen a lot of mining in his day, but never anything like that.
He pulled his people back and pressed himself into the shadows with them. “We’ve got to get news of this to Hast,” he said. “We need to get word of it to Her Majesty. This here is intolerable.”
All were nodding as Kaige asked, “So how do we get out of here, Sarge? We gonna climb up on one of those hanging things?”
“We do that, we’re like to end up with that fire comin right down on our heads while we try. Even if it don’t, I don’t expect them fellers is gonna sit idly by and let us up neither, so I figure our best bet is to keep on like we have been and follow the water. Seein as this here cavern ain’t filled up yet, that water is gettin out somewhere. Eventually.” He couldn’t keep the discontent from his voice. He didn’t fancy the idea of having to go down into the mountain, but there wasn’t much to be done about it now.
“There’s a lot of open ground between here and there,” Meggins pointed out. “They’ll see us if we run across.”
“They take a little time after the fire to come back down out of the hole,” Mags said. “But I’m not sure I can run fast enough to cover the distance between here and that opening.”
“Well, I certainly can’t,” Jasper said.
“Why doesn’t Jasper use one of those fog spells?” Meggins said. “I’ve seen that used before.”
Jasper scowled at the suggestion and rolled his eyes. “Jasper doesn’t have one,” Jasper said. “Jasper had to leave his trunk up on the cliff because Jasper can’t climb cliffs with a huge box of magic on his back, and none of Jasper’s cohorts could be bothered to assist after Jasper’s sergeant insisted Jasper ‘travel light and with only what he could carry on his back.’”
“Ya don’t need no fog,” Ilbei said. “Besides, how’d that look down here? And we don’t need nobody to run fast neither.” He pointed with a motion of his chin, his beard directing their gaze. “Didn’t ya see how them harpies pay us no mind? We’ll just go easy as ya please out there amongst em when they come near again. Walk straight across. Kaige, you’ll need to bend down some so ya don’t look the lone redwood in the walnut grove. We’ll sidle on through to the far side, and when the fire dies and they all run in, we’ll just run right on down the stream and into that there tunnel.”
“You’re sure giving those harpies a lot of credit for playing along,” Meggins said. “It may be they haven’t done anything to us because they haven’t all noticed us yet. Maybe the one that looked at you hasn’t got the sharpest beak in the flock, so to speak.”
“Well, I won’t make none of ya do it until I try it first, because there is a risk, I’ll grant. But I don’t see how it’s much worse than goin back and tryin to jump through one of them lances that bastard Skewer is shootin.”
On that they were all in agreement, so the plan was confirmed. They waited for the cycle to repeat itself, and soon enough, the fire shaft blew down its hot column just after all the harpies ran away. All together, the five of them slipped in among the harpies, Kaige doing as instructed and trying to hunker down. The reality was, he couldn’t hunker down enough, for the harpies were to a man, or to a bird, all slight by comparison—by natural stature, certainly, but also by privation. They were to the last among them all shorter than everyone but Ilbei, and built hardly more powerfully than Jasper was. But there were so many of them. And oh, how they reeked.
Sweat ran in rivulets through the mire that caked their flesh, and it brought to life the stench of the older sweat that had been layering there for who knew how many months or years. Some smelled like death itself, and there were more than a few whose wing stumps seeped pus and gore. These looked the sorriest. Though they were all bent and nearly broken with the toil of what must have been endless-seeming days, the wretches with the oozing wing bones were feverish and teetered on the verge of collapse. They looked out through rheumy, pink-rimmed eyes, the tracks of their endlessly flowing tears black against their gray flesh, streaks that shimmered in the firelight.
Not one harpy, not a single bird-man or bird-woman in the group, gave them more than the barest movement of their eyes, as if the simple act of looking up might cost them the last of their strength. Ilbei didn’t know why they didn’t all break for it through the tunnel to which he and his company were bound. Which, of course, gave him pause. He certainly hoped there wasn’t some very, very good reason for that.
The fire died away, the absence of its bright glare darkening the chamber by a large degree, and in the shifting light, Ilbei led his people out of the harpy mass and to the far wall, wading across the creek to get there.
Once they were clear of the harpies, they crept along the stream, as quickly as possible, pressed against the wall and hoping to pass unnoticed by any of the men that were surely on their way back down by now. As they passed beneath the opening, they could hear the pulleys from somewhere high above, the squeaks and creaks echoing down and sending the intruders scampering like a line of rabbits toward the only exit available to them. The heat coming off the pile of just-heated ore struck them like a blow, and they all gasped as they ran past.
Ilbei glanced down into the flume as he ran and saw that it glittered almost solid with gold despite having just been cleared, the dust apparently too inconsequential to be bothered with for all the larger golden stones. There was an unbelievable amount of wealth in that alone. It was all he could do not to stop and grab up pockets full. But he didn’t, nor did the rest, and soon after they were once again in the dark and narrow confines of a subterranean waterway.
“This is my last torch,” Mags said as she pulled it from her pack.
“Well,” said Ilbei, “then let’s hope this here cave is short.”
Chapter 30
O
nce they had a torch lit, Ilbei took the lead again, taking them away from the noise and glare of the chamber where so many harpies labored on that glowing heap of ore. The passage was narrow enough in places that Ilbei and Kaige had to turn sideways, and it was low enough in others that they all had to crawl for a time. Ilbei thought the passage had been made hastily, but he noted that it had been braced with thick wooden beams, set properly at even intervals. It was not the work of inexperience.
The tunnel cut fairly straight through the stone, the slope consistent, and it was only a matter of half an hour before they saw light at the other end. They could hear the water falling into a pool or lake beyond and a rough, dull churning, like wheels of wood, the sort of sound one associates with a mill.
Ilbei crept up to the edge to investigate. Below, no more than Kaige’s height at most, was indeed a rather large pool of water, filling up the bottom of another cavern. It appeared to have at one time been a high, narrow natural crack, but someone had come in and widened it since its natural beginnings. Three long wooden forms, built in the style of wine barrels—but each of a length like forty barrels stacked one atop the next—angled up from the water and disappeared into a wide, low cave that spread like an arcade halfway up the cavern wall. Each end of the wooden constructs was open, like great wooden pipes, and it was from the lower part, where they dipped into the pool, that the milling sound issued. At the base of each, where the open end of the barrel dipped into the water, a ring of stairs was mounted, looking rather like a waterwheel mounted onto the end of a very fat, hollow axle. Upon each of these wheeled staircases trod a pair of harpies, one following the next, the two of them stumping up the stairs as the ring rotated in perpetuity.