Juliet McKenna - The Gambler's Fortune

“Can we get through?” asked Sorgrad, arms full of Aritane.

I paused to ease my back. “Is she stirring?”

Sorgrad shook his head in the uncertain light of the spell.

“Not yet, but I’d rather be out of these tunnels when she does.”

“The thassin should keep her sweet even if she does come through the tahn.” People chew it to forget grief, poverty, love and hatred, so with Arimelin’s grace it should tangle her wits for a while.

“There’s a space through here,” ’Gren called over his shoulder. I followed him down the glowing tunnel, keeping well away from fading walls now melted and molded like tallow for candles. The light of magic was still bright at the end where ’Gren was prying at the edges of a hole opening into nothingness. A jagged slab of rock dropped into the blackness and slid down some unseen gradient. I relit my lamp and held it out cautiously into the void.

“Where are we going now, Usara?” I demanded of the empty air. I was looking into a cleft heaped with jagged boulders, a rustle of water somewhere unseen below. I squinted up and wondered where the roof might be and if any rocks intended falling on our heads.

A golden tracery shone on the far wall, the pattern spreading like ripples in a pond. The light revealed the full extent of the broken stone we’d have to cover and I grimaced. “Better tie her ladyship to your back, ’Gren. You’re going to need both hands and it’s not a climb for Sorgrad with a load as well as his armor to unbalance him.”

I looked in frustration at my lamp, blew out the candle and clipped it on my belt. I needed hands more than light for this climb. Sorgrad unslung the coil of rope from his shoulder and I knotted the creaking hemp securely around my waist. Sorgrad looped his end around arms and back. I grinned at him and moved out cautiously onto the irregular stones. Getting a footing, I tested my weight before moving my other boot, taking a hold, then another, both hands secure before I moved a foot, both feet solid before lifting a hand to feel for the next grip. I concentrated on the familiar skills that have taken me up more walls and houses than I care to recall and firmly refused to think of unseen, bottomless pits that might lie beneath any one of the tumbled boulders I was trusting myself to. A sibilance of water in the depths or maybe something worse came from between two cracked slabs. Ignoring unwelcome recollection of the wyrms in ’Gren’s songs, I moved slowly on. Fingers and toes were cramping with effort by the time I reached the far side of the cleft and I sat on the ledge polished by Usara’s magic to get my breath.

“It’s awkward, but you just need to keep going straight.” I unknotted the rope and looked for some way to secure it. If ’Gren slipped with Aritane on his back, the weight could drag me off my ledge. A little amber light flared beside me as I pulled fruitlessly at a chunk of gray and yellow stone, a spinning circle of magic boring into the mountain. The sorcery faded to muted gold with a hot smell of hearthstones, leaving a hole as thick as my wrist clean through the ledge. Smiling, I threaded the rope through and had it secure in moments. Usara most assuredly had his uses.

By the time ’Gren reached me, I had my lamp relit and the homely flicker shone on the sweat slicking his hair to his forehead. “Get her off me.”

Sorgrad’s knots were the usual fiendish puzzle but I laid Aritane motionless on the hard floor eventually. ’Gren bent this way and that to ease his back and when Sorgrad arrived he took up the burden of the unconscious enchantress without comment.

I looked down the tunnel where Usara’s magic had been crumbling the rock while we’d amused ourselves in the cleft. The bright glow of the busy magic was some distance away now, the walls fading to orange and red and a final muted ocher as the sorcery moved on.

“Watch your footing,” I warned unnecessarily. “This is no time to break an ankle.” ’Gren and I pushed treacherous shards aside with our pry-bars to clear a path for Sorgrad, whose view of his own feet was obscured by Aritane. She’d better be worth all this trouble, I thought grimly.

“Wait.” I went ahead to a gold-rimmed opening and lifted a cautious lantern into a tunnel with walls unmistakably scarred by toolwork. “We’re back to a digging proper,” I told the others with relief.

“Which way?” demanded ’Gren. “Usara?”

A tinny echo of the mage’s voice came from Sorgrad’s lantern. “The working goes down a fair distance and then joins a bigger gallery. Turn to the off-hand when you reach it.”

We moved faster now; the floor couldn’t have been cleaner if my mother had swept it. The bigger gallery came as a welcome relief from the oppressive narrowness of the smaller workings and shafts unseen above gave fresher air. Finally we turned a corner and I squinted uncertainly at a smudge on the edge of my vision. Sliding the shutter across my lantern proved it was no illusion but the way out of the cursed maze. I heaved a sigh of relief.

“You two wait here.” I handed Sorgrad my lantern and moved forward slowly, tread silent on the bare rock. I couldn’t hear fighting, but that didn’t mean much. Back flat to the wall, jemmy ready in my hand, I edged up to the sharp corner and paused, letting my eyes get used to the night. As the featureless gray resolved itself into slope and turf and mountains beyond, I took three stealthy steps outside. We were well down the valley, I saw with relief. The fighting had moved up past the ridge and, although stragglers were looting the lower valley, we should get out of the mine unnoticed.

But the lowlanders held the bridge; torches lined it with men outlined against their smoky glow. Men with helms and pikes, militia from somewhere, not opportunist peasants we might rush past with a couple of swords and a jemmy. I skirted a bulge of grass-covered debris to try and see where the ford might be.

A step behind me clicked two loose stones together. I turned to tease whichever brother had been so careless but the words died on my lips. A gray-robed figure regarded me, face impassive in the light of the quarter moons, lesser waxing, greater waning.

“Where are your companions?” it demanded from the shadow of its cowl. I saw two other shadowy figures emerge from the darkness behind it.

I fixed my gaze on the Sheltya, determined not to look at the mine entrances and began to recite the charm I’d learned against the Elietimm under my breath. “Tror mir’al, es nar’an, tror mir’al, es nar’an.”

“You need not fear I will search your mind without cause!” The Sheltya sounded positively insulted.

“It’s happened to me before,” I retorted before considering the wisdom of my words. “The Elietimm don’t waste any time.”

“Alyatimm—” The Sheltya’s contempt was cut short by a word from one of the others who came down the slope, putting back his hood. His head was shaking slightly and I recognized the old man we’d met at the Hachalfess.

“You’re Cullam, aren’t you?” I wasn’t sure how knowing his name might help, but I didn’t see how it could hurt.

The old man nodded. “There are no persons inside either of those workings,” he told the first Sheltya, deference in his tone.

“And that one is blocked.” The third Sheltya to arrive was the one from the fess, the younger man. He gave me a hard stare. “Where is Aritane? I cannot find her mind!”

I silently repeated the charm over and over to myself, telling myself to believe in it.

“What happened in the fess?” demanded the younger one. “Is Aritane dead as well?”

“Bryn!” Old Cullam rebuked him sharply.

I steeled myself as the Sheltya in charge pushed back his hood. I saw a bald man in his middle years, with a cleft in his chin and fierce brows jutting in a frown. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought his eyes had slid into the blackness of Elietimm possession but then realized he had only blinked. His eyelids were painted black and, while relief weakened my knees, I wondered uneasily what that might signify.