Exploring places no one had ever seen before. Or dragging the thick snaking hoses down into the icy pools then calling out for the men on the pumps to get started, and in the candle’s fitful flickering light he’d watch the water level descend and see, sometimes, the strange growths on the stone, and in the crevices the tiny blind fish that — if he could reach — he slid into his mouth and chewed and swallowed, so taking something of this underworld into himself, and, just like those fish, at times he didn’t even need his eyes, only his probing fingers, the taste and smell of the air and stone, the echoes of water droplets and the click-click of the white roaches skittering away.
Earlier this morning he’d been sent down a crevasse, ropes tied to his ankles as he was lowered like a dead weight, down, down, three then four knots of rope, before his outstretched hands found warm, dry rock, and here, so far below ground, the air was hot and sulphurous and the candle when he lit it flared in a crossflow of sweet rich air.
In the yellow light he looked round and saw, sitting up against a wall of the crevasse not three paces away, a corpse. Desiccated, the face collapsed and the eye sockets shrunken holes. Both legs were shattered, clearly from a fall, the shards sticking through the leathery skin.
Furs drawn up like a blanket, and close to within reach of one motionless, skeletal hand was a rotted bag now split open, revealing two antler picks, a bone punch and a groundstone mallet. A miner, Harllo realized, just like him. A miner of long, long ago.
Another step closer, eyes on those wonderful tools which he’d like to take, and the corpse spoke.
‘As you please, cub.’
Harllo lunged backward. His heart pounded wild in the cage of his chest. ‘A demon!’
‘Patron of miners, perhaps. Not a demon, cub, not a demon.’
The candle had gone out with Harllo’s panicked retreat. The corpse’s voice, sonorous, with a rhythm like waves on a sandy beach, echoed out from the pitch black darkness.
‘I am Dev’ad Anan Tol, of the Irynthal Clan of the Imass, who once lived on the shores of the Jhagra Til until the Tyrant Raest came to enslave us. Sent us down into the rock, where we all died. Yet see, I did not die. Alone of all my kin, I did not die.’
Harllo shakily fumbled with the candle, forcing the oiled wick into the spring spark tube. Three quick hissing pumps of the sparker and flame darted up.
‘Nice trick, that.’
‘The tube’s got blue gas, not much and runs out fast so it needs refilling. There’s bladders upside. Why didn’t you die?’
‘I have had some time to ponder that question, cub. I have reached but one conclusion that explains my condition. The Ritual of Tellann.’
‘What made the evil T’lan Imass! I heard about that from Uncle Gruntle! Undead warriors at Black Coral — Gruntle saw them with his own eyes! And they kneeled and all their pain was taken from them by a man who then died since there was so much pain he took from them and so they built a barrow and it’s still there and Gruntle said he wept but I don’t believe that because Gruntle is big and the best warrior in the whole world and nothing could make him weep nothing at all!’ And Harllo had to stop then so that he could regain his breath. And still his heart hammered like hailstones on a tin roof.
From the Imass named Dev’ad Anan Tol, silence.
‘You still there?’ Harllo asked.
‘Cub. Take my tools. The first ever made and by my own hand. I was an Inventor. In my mind ideas bred with such frenzy that I lived in a fever. At times, at night, I went half mad. So many thoughts, so many notions — my clan feared me. The bonecaster feared me. Raest himself feared me, and so he had me thrown down here. To die. And my ideas with me.’
‘Should I tell everyone about you? They might decide to lift you out, so you can see the world again.’
‘The world? That tiny flame you hold has shown me more of the world than I can comprehend. The sun. . oh, the sun. . that would destroy me, I think. To see it again.’
‘We have metal picks now,’ Harllo said. ‘Iron.’
‘Skystone. Yes, I saw much of it in the tunnels. The Jaghut used sorcery to bring it forth and shape it — we were not permitted to witness such things. But I thought, even then, how it might be drawn free, without magic. With heat. Drawn out, given shape, made into useful things. Does Raest still rule?’
‘Never heard of any Raest,’ said Harllo. ‘Bainisk rules Chuffs and Workmaster rules the mine and in the city there’s a council of nobles and in faraway lands there’re kings and queens and emperors and empresses.’
‘And T’lan Imass who kneel.’
Harllo glanced up the shaft — he could hear faint voices, echoing down. ‘They want to pull me back up. What should I tell them about this place?’
‘The wrong rock, the white grit that sickens people. Foul air.’
‘So no one else comes down here.’
‘Yes.’
‘But then you’ll be alone again.’
‘Yes. Tell them, too, that a ghost haunts this place. Show them the ghost’s magical tools.’
