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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“Ahearn,” asked Umkhira in a low mutter, “what will it take for you to believe me?”

“With all respect fer yer roots,” he muttered back as they re-formed after entering yet another empty chamber, “I’ve had more time in tunnels than you have, Lady Lightstrider.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “you have. But tell me: have you seen any of the signs—or spoor—that the Bent would leave in such a place?”

Ahearn paused; it was strange hearing her speak of “the Bent,” inasmuch as her own people were typically included in that unflattering label. But it was the only term that included all the denizens of the Under, whether or not they were a species of urzhen. His other reason for pausing was his reluctance to concede her point. “No, there’s no hint that any underkin dwell here at all. But that’s no reason not to treat every room and every corner as if we expect it to be held against us.”

“I can think of one,” R’aonsun observed unhelpfully.

“Well, don’t wait for me to coax it out of yeh.”

The dragon’s avatar yawned expansively. “Boredom. There are only so many times that we can gird our loins—a more meaningful phrase now that I have loins to gird—before it becomes dull rote, rather than poised readiness.”

Ahearn bit his lip, because he had felt no less. “What do you propose, then?” he finished with a glance toward Varcaxtan.

The Dunarran shrugged. “S’ythreni and Umkhira have the eyes for this place. They could take turns walking ten yards ahead, relieving each other every ten minutes or so. Or perhaps Elweyr would be so good to affine with the next rat we encounter.”

Ahearn frowned at both suggestions. “I’m loath to ask Elweyr to expend any manas before it is absolutely needed. Nor am I one to ask others to take on the danger of leading us at a distance if I don’t as well.”

Elweyr shook his head. “I have a philter for the affining. I wouldn’t need to draw upon manas.”

“But it will cost us a precious resource!”

S’ythreni leaned toward him. “Ahearn, you’re not scrabbling after every bit of kit that might help you escape the Under anymore. It’s been three years.”

“And I should become a spendthrift, instead?” But even as he said it, Ahearn felt the truth of the aeosti’s observation settling in his gut. Survival no longer depended upon hanging on to every rusty scrap.

“Is it profligacy to expend supplies to ensure that a band of warriors remains alert? Would that not be the mark of capable leadership, instead?” R’aonsun asked mildly.

Ahearn shook his head. At himself. “It’s a fair point. All of ’em are, in fact.” He looked up. “Of Uncle Varcaxtan’s two suggestions, we’ll use the philter.” He tried to make his tone light-hearted. “Easier to replace a bit of mancery than a few comrades, I suppose.” But the words came out as sardonic drollery that just barely cloaked the surge of worry beneath it. Ahearn had never been with any group for so long, nor risked mates on such an uncertain journey. The thought of losing any of them was, well, unthinkable.

Varcaxtan answered with a serious nod. “No shame in erring to the side of caution where the safety of your followers is concerned.”

Ye’re calling this lot my followers? Are yeh daft, Uncle? But all he said was, “Elweyr, where’s the last place you saw or heard rats?”

Elweyr was peering toward the chamber’s far wall. “There’s at least one right over there.”

“Just like old times. Be about making friends with it, then. Then join us for a quick sit, sip, and bite.” Ahearn leaned toward Varcaxtan. “So, you agree with Umkhira? No Bent hereabouts?”

Varcaxtan shrugged, staring into the darkness as they all sat in an outward-facing circle. “I suspect you and she have more experience detecting them than I do. But it’s true that they’re not common on Mihal’j, particularly in the desert.”

“Well, nothing is particularly common in the desert, is it?”

The Dunarran smiled. “I’ll rephrase: they find it especially difficult to survive in this desert.”

“Because it’s the hottest? Driest?”

“No: it’s because there’s almost no workable metal.” He answered the group’s puzzled stares with a question. “You all inspected the weapons and tools in Pawnkam’s suqs, yes?”

Ahearn frowned, thinking. “Anything iron was very dear, copper and bronze not far behind. Most were made from what looked like horn. From a supragant of some kind, if I remember a-right.”

He nodded. “It’s called an ishart. Treating its hide is a closely held secret amongst the guild masters who handle it.”

Cerven nodded. “The mountains in this part of the continent have very few veins of ore.”

Ahearn nodded, trying to remember casual remarks he’d heard about that. “Comes back to me now. Not so much absent as all mined out, if I recall.”

“That’s the guess,” Varcaxtan agreed, “but Couriers who’ve seen those tunnels say it’s as if the metal just vanished. They tell of open creases where there had once been pure veins. What started as mixed formations looked moth-eaten, as if the metal had evaporated right out of the stone.”

Ahearn stared at him. “Any idea how that came about, because it certainly doesn’t sound like mining.”

“It surely doesn’t. But the only other explanation I’ve ever heard is that it’s the work of tiny insects called iron mites.”

“Y’mean they ate the metal? That’s daft!”

Cerven cleared his throat deferentially. “And yet, there are precedents.”

“Such as?”

“In Tvedraand, it is said that mining is, in part, carried out by the action of what translate roughly as lithophages. It is unclear whether they are fauna or flora, but they reduce rock, leaving metal behind. The description of iron mites suggests that they are simply a reverse of those creatures: consumers of metal, instead of rock.”

Ahearn nodded at the rough walls around them. “And it’s a certainty that a pickaxe made of hardened hide wouldn’t last an hour at tunneling in this rock. Weapons wouldn’t be much better for long use.”

Varcaxtan nodded. “That’s why the eastern desert has so few walled towns: almost no Bent. And they never go a-Hordeing. Besides, the local jahi—leaders—frown on fortifications of any kind. Well, except ones built by those of their own class.”

Elweyr returned, a rat scrabbling devotedly behind him. “Let’s go,” he said. “The affining doesn’t last for more than an hour.”


“According to what S’ythreni just described,” whispered R’aonsun, “she and Umkhira saw a dry-man.”

Ahearn wished he’d caught a glimpse himself. “You’ve actually met them?”

The dragon-avatar nodded. “One or two.” As if anticipating the flood of questions that might cause, he added, “That was several millennia ago. What our two scouts describe is somewhat different. And no, I have no useful knowledge of the species. They have little use for other races and their aims were just as unknown as their origins.”

Umkhira nodded. “I had thought them nothing more than myths with which to scare the young.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and looked meaningfully over her shoulder. “And if I recall correctly, they were said to have hearing almost as keen as Iavarain.”

S’ythreni scowled, but gestured them to fall back around a farther corner, putting them over thirty yards from the dry-man who’d been guarding another opening that led into the chamber they’d seen. “Legend also says their eyes are more sensitive to light than humans’.” She took a periapt from around her neck—a personal gift from Tharêdæath—and, removing one gauntlet, held it in the palm of that hand. As if warmed by her touch, it glowed faintly: just enough to see nearby faces or read if held over each successive word. Elweyr nodded, uncovered the much dimmer glow-glass crystal that they had taken from the leader of the bandits they’d ambushed three days south of Kœsdri’yrm.

Varcaxtan nodded back toward the intersection from which they’d withdrawn. “How certain are you that there was another entrance on the far wall?”

The aeosti shrugged. “It was either that or a very deep alcove. I did hear echoes of other, similar voices, but they were more distant.”

“Do you think they were from behind the guard or elsewhere in the chamber?”

“The chamber. The echoes weren’t the kind that come out of a tunnel. They were the kind that echo up high in a big cavern, which goes with what we saw: those slowly curving walls went up beyond where we could see.”

Elweyr appeared disgusted. “Anybody else recall a situation very like this one?”

Umkhira grunted. “The first intersection of tunnels we came upon in the Undergloom of Gur Grehar. That was a fearful moment.”

“Aye,” Ahearn agreed, rubbing his chin, “but we had a good plan, didn’t we?” Assenting murmurs arose. “Maybe something similar might work here.”

Umkhira nodded hesitantly. “Here, as there, the sentry is almost certainly guarding the limit of a tribal territory. So the great balance of their forces are probably well back from his position.”

Ahearn nodded. “And if these dry-men are anything like the Bent, these sentries are just trip wires: a challenge that says, ‘just try and come at us, yeh bastards!’”

“Yes, and if anyone does,” pointed out Elweyr, “those guards will surely summon any reinforcements that might be lurking around the corner behind them.”

Cerven glanced at Ahearn. “Is that typical?”

The swordsman shrugged. “It can go either way. Sometimes the guards are but a nervy bluff, but sometimes, there’s a dozen more just a few feet behind ’em, ready and eager to charge into a scrap.”

But Elweyr was shaking his head. “Back in the Under, we knew that because it’s what we experienced there. And the last time, we had a guide: Kaakhag. He knew roughly where we were, what tribes were in the area, and—most important—which of the tunnels led to our destination.” He shook his head. “Here, we have no way to know how our enemy will react, or if any of those openings aren’t just dead ends.”

“We have not found any other path into the deeper rock, where the repository is said to be,” Umkhira countered.

R’aonsun shrugged. “Which could mean that we must go through, not around, these dry-men. That requires a plan that is focused on attack, not avoidance, of their forces.”

S’ythreni’s tone was sour. “Fight them? What if the whole dry-man nation lies between us and what lies beyond?”

Ahearn shook his head. “Fight doesn’t mean bulling our way through them, High Ears. If it’s a whole nation we must face, then we draw their warriors after us, back toward the surface. And as we whittle away at them, we stay alert for a way to take a prisoner who might be persuaded to tell us the way down. Or if they’ve lost so many that they’re spread thin in the tunnels, that’s when we might find a way to slip through.”

“All that assumes there is a way down,” Elweyr sighed.

Ahearn pushed back at him. “Look: we know that not long ago, fortune-hunters made it beyond this point and returned to tell of it. We’ve tried every other tunnel branch and still haven’t found any way down. So if we can go forward, we will, and if we can’t, we’ll go back. But here’s one other thing of which I’m absolutely certain: every moment we stand here wagging our jaws about what to do is another moment that more enemies might show up, either to the front or the rear of us.”

“And that,” Varcaxtan followed promptly, “is why we talk tactics. Now.” He turned to Umkhira. “The sentry: how close was he hanging on the tunnel he was guarding?”

She shrugged; her light leather jack emitted a creaking rustle where it bunched against the fine mail she wore beneath it. “Never more than a yard into the chamber, never more than three back from it. And there could have been two; there was no way to be certain whether it was one guard moving back and forth, or two trading places.”

Ahearn sucked his teeth in frustration. “So no hope of making quick work with a single bowshot, then.” He thought. “Do they have bows?”

S’ythreni shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not at the ready, at least.”

“Not much use, perhaps, if their eyes aren’t much better than ours.”

“Perhaps, but that is only a guess, and I’d rather not discover otherwise by suddenly sprouting arrows.”

Varcaxtan waved away the discussion of bows. “If we are forced to attack around the corner, it is unlikely we shall be able to silence both of them as swiftly as we must. It is likely that they will have time enough to raise an alarm, or that the combat will be loud enough to bring reinforcements.” He looked around the group. “We must find a way to bring the two guards out so we may take them silently.”

Elweyr almost groaned. “As I said: just like Gur Grehar.”

But Cerven was frowning slowly as he asked, “And how did guards in the Under react if they heard unfamiliar sounds?”

“Such as?” Ahearn asked.

“Such as, say, a few rats.”

Umkhira matched the young man’s frown. “A few rats they would ignore. Anything else? It would depend on the nature of the sound. Or the numbers it suggested.”

“So… if they heard a lot of rats?”

Umkhira shrugged. “I suspect they would send at least one guard out to determine if it was any cause for alarm.”

Cerven nodded meaningfully at her, and then glanced at Ahearn.

Who smiled, understanding. “I think we have the beginnings of a plan.”


Huddling close against the wall of the tunnel that led into the chamber, Ahearn patted Varcaxtan on the shoulder. The Dunarran swallowed the philter he’d uncorked and, standing behind the kneeling S’ythreni, used that hand to pull a waiting shaft from his quiver. As he drew the bow held fast in his other hand, the arrowhead caught the faint glow of S’ythreni’s periapt, now held by Cerven. Poison glistened on the tip.

Ahearn glanced behind. Elweyr was tucked into a cleft on the same side of the tunnel, repeating the syllables that kept one construct active in his mind, and another poised on the cusp of completion. Behind the thaumantic, Umkhira kept a hand on Cerven’s shoulder; he had the light, but she had the eyes that could see far ahead without it.

At the rear of the group, R’aonsun sighed and hissed, “And what, exactly, are we waiting for?”

Around the corner they were all watching, the dim torchlight darkened briefly. “That,” Ahearn answered. The guard that had checked around both corners within the past minute was walking farther back into the tunnel, momentarily blocking the unsteady yellow glow. “Elweyr—”

But the mantic had seen it, too. The affined rat scuttled from alongside his boot, its claws scratching the stone floor as it approached the tunnel mouth. The thaumancer’s face relaxed slightly, and his syllables rose to a climax.

S’ythreni lifted her crossbow, sighted along it as the faint sounds of the sentry’s booted feet reversed. The torchlight failed again as he began to return…

Just as the rat scuttled past the tunnel opening, and Elweyr completed the second thaumate with a relieved sigh. Ahead of the rat that was now racing toward the other opening they’d spotted, sounds of dozens more arose.

A wiry shadow pushed out beyond the mouth of the tunnel; it was a dry-man, its isharti scale mail rattling dully as it leaned out, its head pitched forward as if squinting after the rat.

As soon as the silhouette’s back was fully exposed, S’ythreni discharged her ironpith crossbow. Ahearn gripped his hand-and-a-half and leaned forward on the balls of his feet, ready to charge.

The figure fell forward, limp; the tremendous power of the crossbow had killed the dry-man outright, before the poison could take effect. As the scraping and scratching of hundreds of nonexistent rats receded toward the farther opening, another set of footsteps approached. Hearing that, Varcaxtan stepped away from the wall, aiming at the tunnel’s corner.

Another silhouette—shaped like the first—leaned out, but stopped suddenly: he’d probably just seen the body of his comrade—and then the fins of S’ythreni’s quarrel protruding from its spine. The form started to draw back in haste.

Varcaxtan’s composite compound bow sang. Despite the power of the Dunarran weapon and the skill of the wielder, the shaft barely caught the adversary before he successfully ducked behind the corner; it had lodged in his forearm, eliciting a curse.

Which Ahearn barely heard as he charged forward to finish the work, trusting that the inconstant torchlight wouldn’t erode his aim overmuch.

But even as he swept around the corner, he saw that he’d only need to deliver a coup de grace—a mercy, given the spasms wracking the narrow, almost haggard warrior before him. Ahearn’s two-handed cut hit at the juncture of the neck and shoulder. His enemy’s isharti scale resisted the blow… which sent it skittering straight into the dry-man’s jugular, and clean through his throat and spine.

Ahearn jumped for the torch, preparing to dash it from its crude cresset—but froze.

A third dry-man was hunched against the wall, bound and blindfolded—and, significantly, utterly silent.

Behind Ahearn, footfalls thudded across the tunnel’s entry. “What are you doing?” Umkhira hissed, weapon in one hand, Cerven’s shoulder in the other. He was holding the periapt aloft as she steered him toward the same patch of darkness where the sound of rats had been but a moment earlier. The hasty steps of the others followed close behind them.

Except for one more measured tread which closed on Ahearn as he dragged the dry-man up to his feet. “Taking him is a risk,” Varcaxtan observed over his shoulder.

“Isn’t everything?” Ahearn countered, and removed the dry-man’s blindfold. Orange-hazel eyes glared out of wrinkled, leathery sockets. “We go down,” Ahearn said in Commerce; there was no response. And as there’s not any time to try other tongues—Ahearn jabbed his finger repeatedly at the floor.

The dry-man’s eyes narrowed, then he nodded and held out his tied hands.

Ahearn drew one of the curved knives they’d taken from the thieves outside Pawnkam, used the base of the blade to slice through the rawhide wraps, and then held it up so the point was directly between their eyes. Its tip had a syrupy sheen. “Obey or die.”

Either the man understood those words or knew a poisoned blade when he saw one; he nodded again and led them around the corner, following after the others. As they plunged into the darkness, the periapt bobbing ahead of them like a firefly drawing them into an abyss, the dry-man motioned toward the head of the group. Ahearn locked one hand on his captive’s arrestingly thin arm and hustled him forward until he was alongside Umkhira.

She looked over as they fled downward, eyes wide in fear, loathing, or both. “We are to trust him?”

“For now, yes.” Dim voices and running feet echoed down from the chamber behind them. “He could betray us.”

“Or he may need to run away from his folk even more than we do. We’ll find out which soon enough.”


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