Douglas Niles - Measure and the Truth

“Pop?” asked Mikey, climbing into his lap. Sally and about a hundred others were sitting or lying nearby; the place near the mouth of the center tunnel was one of the widest spaces in the network of tunnels. They had been eating and sleeping there since the siege began.

“Yeah, Mike?” Dram said, forcing a jovial tone into his voice.

“Go outta here?” The little tyke pointed a chubby finger toward the massive pile of rocks blocking the mine tunnel.

“Well, you see Red and Beebus over there? And Damaris? It’s their turn to dig now, and when they’re done, it’ll be my turn again. And sooner or later, we’ll have all those rocks gone and go outta here.”

In truth, the excavation was far more involved. Three diggers worked shoulder to shoulder, sometimes standing, other times kneeling, or even lying down to pull a stubborn piece of debris out of the way. Other dwarves loaded those rocks into mining carts, while still more trucked those carts deeper into the mine, where the excess rock was unceremoniously dumped into plunging, unused shafts. The same work was going on in the other two tunnels, Dram knew; there were side passages connecting all three mines, so in effect the whole town was sheltering in a network of tunnels that formed an underground fortress.

But it was a fortress with very limited food supplies. Originally they had provisioned the mines with enough victuals for the approximately three hundred children and their caretakers to survive for a month. There were four times as many dwarves in there as originally anticipated, with most of them needing significantly more food than a child. Dram had ordered the food to be strictly rationed almost immediately after entering the mines.

At least they had fresh water from several natural streams descending through the interior of the mountain ridge and enough air for them to breathe comfortably, thanks to some long ventilation shafts extending to the top of the ridge. Considering the fact they had no way to get out of there, their fortress was more of a prison-which was all right temporarily, as long as it didn’t prove a tomb.

Easing Mikey down to the floor, Dram got up and went to check on the progress of the work. “How much farther?” he asked Red, who had been one of the miners who originally excavated the tunnel.

“I’d say eighty feet,” the hill dwarf, nicknamed for his long, fire-colored hair and beard, replied. He wiped his brow, studying the chisel marks on the wall that served as calculations. “They really sealed us in.”

“Need more help?” Dram offered.

“Not for now. Sit down, take your rest. There’ll be plenty of work for you later.”

Dram went back to his place and sat down, grateful when Sally slipped her hand into his. Mikey sat between them, slowly drifting off to sleep. Swig Frostmead came over, his face locked in a frown. He was on the verge of some loud complaint when he noticed the sleeping lad.

Glumly, Sally’s father sat beside Dram, watching the workers. Finally, he leaned over and whispered into his son-in-law’s ear.

“Why didn’t you think to store a few kegs of spirits in here?” he wanted to know.

Selinda was aware of voices. She tried to move, to speak, but no noise came from her lips. For a panicky moment, she feared that the hateful Lame Hale had poisoned her with another lotus drink. The sounds around her were vague and indistinct and did nothing to refresh her memory, to enlighten her.

But after a while, straining her ears, the voices started to make sense.

“Ten prime diamonds, and a large bottle of the potion. That’s a fair price for this merchandise, I agree.”

Selinda recognized Lame Hale’s voice, and her throat constricted at the thought that she was the “merchandise” at the heart of the negotiation.

“I agree as well.” The second speaker’s voice was muffed, as though he spoke through gauze or something.

The princess tried to open her eyes, but the lids refused to move-almost as if they were glued shut by some gummy substance. Frantically, she strained, trying to move, to speak, to see.

“Now get her out of here!” Hale said. “It makes me nervous, and she’s been here too long already!”

“I intend to.”

Selinda heard someone come close, felt a presence-like a cold, black shadow-loom over her. Abruptly a cold, clawlike object brushed her hand, and a painful shock pulsed through her body, forcing an involuntary scream.

Immediately her eyesight cleared, and she found herself looking up at a faceless man, an image of darkness that utterly terrified her. After a moment she realized that it was a person concealed by a black mask, but that only added to her fear.

“Get up, my dear,” he commanded in a clipped tone. “You will find that your limbs are quite capable of functioning again.”

Wiggling her fingers, lifting an arm, Selinda was surprised to see he spoke the truth. She forced herself to a sitting position, swaying dizzily. The man was standing very close to her, and she nearly gagged on the stench of foulness and decay that seemed to permeate his black robe.

“You aren’t going to take her out the front door, are you?” asked Hale, alarmed.

“Of course not.” The masked man stared down at her. She felt like a mouse under the keen stare of a circling hawk. “Stand up,” he said.

She did so, still dizzy, bracing herself against the bed. A momentary thought of flight entered her mind, but she banished it just as quickly. Even if she were steady enough on her feet to try to make a getaway, she sensed power in the man’s voice and knew that she couldn’t resist if he simply ordered her to stop. He must be some kind of wicked priest, she deduced, but she couldn’t guess which god he served.

“I know you have powerful friends,” he said to her, mildly amused. “So you must forgive a little spell that will mask you from magical detection.”

The priest pulled a dirty black powder from his pocket and sprinkled it over Selinda. She wanted to shake her head, to lift her hands and brush it away, but her body would not obey her mind.

“That will suffice,” he said. “Now we go.”

He swirled his hands around himself and circled Selinda’s head while muttering a deep, glottal chant. Almost immediately the room filled with gray haze, so thick Selinda couldn’t see the walls or floor; then she realized that the room itself had disappeared. She felt the sensation of standing in an immense space, but she could see nothing beyond the tip of her nose.

She experienced that clawlike touch again and gasped as the priest took her hand. Every fiber of her being compelled her to pull away, but once again she felt powerless. “You do not want to escape me… not here,” said the black-masked man. “You would wander for very many lifetimes and never find your way back home.”

Terrified, she felt herself pulled along, dragged and stumbling across some kind of smooth, hard surface. She looked down but couldn’t see anything except the gray haze. For a little while she tried to count her steps, but her mind was clouded, and the numbers swirled randomly in her head. Had they gone twenty paces, or was it two hundred? She had no way of telling.

“Now… here we are,” the priest said finally. The grayness vanished and she found herself in a wood-paneled room lined with books. There was a fireplace-cold at the moment-along one wall. There were great windows, and she could see that it was fully dark outside.

The place was vaguely familiar-no, more than vaguely, she had been there many times! Why was her mind so thick?

“I have her, my lord,” said the priest, addressing someone behind Selinda.

She turned and gasped out a single word. “Father!”

Then the contents of her stomach rebelled, doubling her over, forcing her to retch all over the expensive imported carpet.