Paul Thompson - Riverwind

“It is forbidden!” added Karn. His hand moved toward his sword.

Riverwind and Catchflea exchanged a glance. “You will forgive me, yes?” the soothsayer said. “I did not know.”

Riverwind noticed that while Vvelz was agitated, the diggers pushed the wagon faster. Somehow his will acted like a spur to drive them on. Some of the diggers stumbled trying to keep up. The plainsman saw Di An, the smallest elf present, slip from her handhold as larger diggers outstripped her effort. She grabbed futilely at the handle as it tore away. She fell. The diggers behind her trod mindlessly over her.

Riverwind vaulted over the side and ran ahead of the iron-shod wheels. He shoved his way through the diggers and snatched up Di An mere seconds before the front right wheel would have cut her in two.

Vvelz halted the wagon. “Is she hurt?” he inquired.

Riverwind brushed grit from the girl's face. She was feath-erlight in his arms. “Bruises only. I will put her in back.”

“No,” Karn said sternly. “Diggers do not ride with warriors.”

“Then I shall carry her.”

And he did. The diggers reformed and fell to heaving the wagon again. Riverwind strode alongside with Di An cradled in his arms. Shamed to ride, Catchflea stepped down and shuffled ahead to keep pace with his companion.

“If you walk, tall man, I walk,” he said.

Di An groaned and stirred. She came to, and when she saw where she was, she thrashed wildly.

“Please! Put me down!” she cried.

“It's all right,” Riverwind said gently. “I have you.”

“No! I must pull with my brothers!” She squirmed out of his grasp.

“You were hurt, child. Take your ease a while, yes?” Catchflea said.

“I cannot! The High Ones command us serve, and I must-” Tears streaked her face. “You're hurting me.”

Riverwind opened his arms, and Di An dropped to the ground. Before the astonished men could say anything, the elf girl was back in her place, hunched over the trace pole of the heavy wagon.

“You see,” called Karn from the wagon, “Hestites know their place.”

Catchflea grabbed Riverwind's arm. The plainsman was taut with barely suppressed anger. “Be prudent, tall man,” he hissed. “We are strangers in a very strange country. Let's listen twice before we answer once, yes?”

Riverwind nodded curtly. “You're pretty wise for a fool who talks to acorns,” he muttered. Riverwind put a hand on Catchflea's shoulder and, together, they walked on toward the underground city of Vartoom.

They Rolled across a spacious plain, wider than the previous cavern and with a much higher ceiling. Clouds actually formed in the upper reaches, muting the light from the enormous brazen sphere that blazed at the peak of the cavern's vaulted roof. The plain was carpeted with floury gray soil and, most remarkably, grass and flowers. They were not like any plants the Que-Shu men had ever seen before. Their stems and leaves were a listless gray-green, and the flower petals were brilliant shades of orange, pink, and yellow. After receiving a nod from Vvelz, Catchflea plucked a gaudy pink blossom and put it to his nose.

“No smell,” he said.

“It doesn't look real,” Riverwind remarked. He rubbed the petals with his thumb. “I'd swear it's painted!”

The way was carefully laid out by fitted blocks of gray granite, so old and worn that the wagon's wheels fit neatly into ruts in the stone made by countless wheels before. The smoky smell was much stronger on the plain. It was enough to make Riverwind's nostrils burn.

“What is that odor?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Is there an odor?” Vvelz replied lightly.

“The giant smells our foundries,” Karn said contemptuously. “They displease his delicate nose.”

“Do you have many foundries?”

“Indeed, yes. We make everything we need of metal or minerals,” the sorcerer said.

The grassland ended. On each side of the road, dwarfing wagon, elves, and men alike, were great conical piles of broken rock and cinders. These were mine tailings, Vvelz explained. This was the unusable residue that remained after the ores were fired to give up their metal.

“So much of it,” Catchflea marveled. The tailings rose one hundred feet and more, and were over twice as wide at the base. Hundreds of piles crowded alongside the road, sometimes spilling over onto the granite pavement. The diggers tramped on, even when the glassy cinders cut through their flimsy copper mesh sandals. Riverwind saw the bloody footprints and said nothing. He ached to up-end the wagon and its haughty occupants. His hands clenched into fists. But no, Catchflea was right. Prudence demanded he keep his temper in check.

The tailings went on for miles. Hour after hour they traveled, and Riverwind felt oppressed by the dismal scene. It was so poisoned, so lifeless. While the soldiers and Vvelz sipped from silver bottles, the diggers' feet churned up a cloud of thick gray dust. It powdered their black garments. Where sweat ran down their skin, dust collected, streaking their arms and faces with noxious, gritty paste. Legs aching, Riverwind longed for the clear blue sky and fresh breezes of the upper world.

Around a bend they came upon a gang of diggers adding to the mine rubbish. A slab-sided hopper on iron wheels was being tipped forward by a dozen elves equipped with long metal rods. They braced their rods against the top lip of the hopper and pushed. The car swung up, axles screeching. A shower of blackened clinker poured out on the side of a mound, which was already fifty feet tall. Other diggers swarmed over the half-emptied hopper. Riverwind and Catchflea stared at the filthy laborers as they walked past. The diggers returned the gaze with blank, humorless faces. To his dismay, Riverwind noted that there were at least twelve more hoppers brimming with dirt and ash lined up behind the first one. The diggers had many hours of sweaty, back-breaking labor ahead of them.

The region of tailings abruptly ended with a high stone wall. There was no gate to block the road, only a wide opening in the wall. The wall itself was easily sixty feet high, and ten feet thick at the base. All sorts of stones had been used in its construction.

“A strange rampart,” Riverwind said. “What does it defend?”

“Nothing,” Karn said. “The Hall of Arms protects Hest with sword, not with stone walls.”

Vvelz cleared his throat. “The giant asks a legitimate question. Tell him what the wall is for.”

“I see no reason to tell our business to any overgrown foreigner who asks,” Karn snapped.

“It isn't a state secret,” Vvelz said dryly.

“It's to hold back the dirt, yes?” said Catchflea. “The remains of your mining?”

Vvelz nodded. “Precisely. In times past, the tailings crept too close to the city. Our springs were poisoned and our crops endangered. Then the wise master of the Hall of Light, the venerated Kosti, decreed that a wall be built to hold back the debris.”

“And when was this?” asked Riverwind, looking back to survey the piles of tailings.

“One thousand, six hundred and forty-two years ago.”

Catchflea tripped in the wheel rut, he was so astonished. Riverwind steadied the old soothsayer. “I had no idea this place was so long settled,” he said.

“Ah, we are a very ancient people,” Vvelz said. Karn folded his arms and made growling noises.

Inside the wall, the scenery was brighter. They were almost directly under the great bronze lantern that lighted the entire cavern. Another wall loomed ahead, lower and thinner. This wall was dotted with nasty spikes along the top. As the wagon drew abreast of the gap in the second wall, Vvelz halted the diggers. They shuffled to a stop and lay over the wagon handles, gasping for breath.