<u>23</u>


    <u> </u>


    But as for Alexion, far away from the light of day and all but the faintest sliver of hope…


    There was a particularly nasty region of tunnel formed of a mostly-dead stone giant’s inward-most parts.  Bets and sly humor flew, over which bit of anatomy they were mining.  Some guessed heart or throat.  Others placed them all much further south.  Tough to decide, because the walls often flexed, while strange gurgling noises boomed through that dense grey rock.  They were certainly very far down and always in danger.


    Sometimes shadowy monsters with hooks chittered and struck from the darkness. The predators would drop from above or lure a miner away from the rest to be portioned and eaten within earshot of their teammates, who could do nothing to save them.  Worse, the creatures were mimics.  They would mock the victim’s terrified shrieks and last pleas for days afterward.


    The occasional rock-wyrm struck, mainly just gliding through on business of its own, tunneling luckless miners as thoughtlessly as it swam through stone.  Might not even have noticed those odd, writhing squishy bits in its normal substrate.  Just there and gone.  Impossible to predict or defend against.


    And always, there was the other side.  This deep in the under-realm diggings, they’d reached a constantly shifting border.  It divided that stone-giant carcass into two regions: hazardous, grinding servitude, and instantaneous death.  That border moved without warning, sometimes exposing great veins of mithral and glorious gems.  Things that the mine’s owners coveted far more than they cared for their slaves.  The miners were here for life, to be worked till they died of exhaustion, beatings, cave-ins or predation.  No one escaped.


    But… if a team was successful… if they dared venture into newly exposed territory, retrieving something of epic value… the whole group would be turned loose for a week, able to rest and carouse in Shanty Town.


    Zibeg’s Delvers were luckier than most.  Still alive (except for poor Zibeg, lost to a cave-in years earlier) still together and daring enough to go after those jewels that glinted in lamp-light and torch-flare.  They had an oath of fellowship that some of the other teams copied, and they’d twice rescued a strayed member from hook-monsters.  Food was shared, and they stubbornly reserved a few gems for those who hadn’t found anything on their own, that day.


    Their leader was always called “Zibeg” whoever she or he was (she, currently) and it was their leader who decided whether to go, how far and when to pull back.  Important, because the “other side” was a literal level of hell.


    Among their number at this time was a splendid brute of a high-elf.  Tall, muscular and battle-scarred, he was down there with the rest, though he bore the tattoo of a high-caste slave along with his “flight risk” burns.  No one questioned his presence, because “Yer past drops off when y’ enter the mines,” as the saying went.  He had shaggy brown hair and green eyes, and he never spoke but in drawings or… weirdly… through the voice of ensorcelled others.


    He was tough to figure out, but he’d brought the team luck many times.  Could make a fire in almost any circumstance, could tend and heal injuries, and was able to sense when the border was going to shift again.  He and Zibeg kept the team as safe as possible, down in the perilous mines.


    Like the rest, he’d been sent here to die.  Like all of the others, he wouldn’t discuss the cause of his sentence.  Nor did he share a real name.  He was just “Chatter” or “Bones” to Zibeg’s Delvers, and their only full elf.


    The current Zibeg was a grizzled and squinting female gnome covered in brands and tattoos.  There were too many ownership- and “escaped slave” marks to count, one of them marring her face.


    Just like nobody told what had gotten them sent to the mine, everyone tried to guess the crimes of their fellows.  Speculation ranged from “led a slave revolt” to “killed an overseer” for all four-foot-nothing of Zibeg.


    Chatter, they figured, had lost an important patient or been caught sampling his own potions.  It didn’t matter.  They didn’t expect to find out, short of Someday, when they scored big enough to purchase real freedom.


    So, two workdays previous, the border had contracted suddenly, revealing soul-gems the size of your head.  Glowing with inner fire and sorrow, these crystalized spirits were prized by the drow, who used them for light.  The gems were valuable to Zibeg’s Delvers because their shifting gleam betrayed the border’s presence, and because fetching one back would buy a whole drunken week up in Shanty.


    The border contracted, a section of cavern went suddenly clear, and soul-gems sparkled like sunlight on water.


    “Go,” shouted Zibeg, squinting across fifty yards of rock at a fortune in jewels.  “Anyone comes back without a sparkler the size o’ me ‘ead, does all the cookin’ till next year!”


    They went, spurred by lurid cursing and blistering threats.


    “Keep an eye on that border, Chat, or I’ll skin y’ alive and roll y’r fresh meat in hot-sauce,” growled the gnome, bag in hand, and already moving.


    He nodded rather than waste a “voice” saying yes.  Only three times a day could he speak through another, and one of those uses had to be kept for warning calls or relaying Zibeg’s commands.  He, too, rushed forward, sensing the borderline’s rippling pressure rather than seeing it.


    “Big strike!” hollered Zibeg, after giving her team a head start.  The mine-slaves had very little going for them, but one of those things was generosity.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    The tall, burly elf got across the cave in three strides, bag open, pickaxe ready for action.  Where the others saw only light, he saw a weeping, curled-up trapped soul in each of those beautiful jewels.  Like himself, the spirits were captives.  He felt for their plight… but, imprisoned in rock or up on a lampstand probably made little difference.  He tried to be careful as he chiseled and pried at a big one, though.


    Clang… chik… crack!


    And the soul gem came loose of its gritty matrix.  The elf shoved it into his canvas collection sack, then turned his full attention back to the borderline.  It was still drawing like a chimney, pulling backward in a way that created a sort of magical vacuum. He had time for one more, thought the elf, as other teams raced over to join Zibeg’s Delvers.


    Looking carefully, he spotted a shimmer of unearthly light through a crack in that prisoning stone.  Foolish to waste time he didn’t have, going after a phantom prize he stood no chance of retrieving… but the light was that pure, the gem no doubt incredibly valuable.  He couldn’t give up and just choose an easier target.


    Instead, the big elven mine-slave applied himself with muscle and fury, using his pickaxe to smash away layers of gritty dark stone.  Two… three… four… it came free on the fifth mighty smash.  The uncovered gem was only as large as his fist, but it sparkled with every color he’d seen or imagined, filling the cavern with a soft and radiant light.


    This was no mortal soul, but the pinioned husk of a fallen celestial.  Thus, the wheel turns.  He empathized but thrust that gem into the sack with the other, just as the border flexed outward again.


    The elf felt its motion as pressure against the skin of his face and overworked body.  Time to go.  He reached for Gump’s open mind, for the troll had big lungs and a very loud voice.  Through his fellow Delver, the elf roared,


    “<u>Out</u>, now!  Move!  Get whatever you can and take flight!”


    Everyone listened, having learned that Chatter’s life-saving warnings were accurate.  Zibeg grinned at him, shifting the scars and burns on her face in a truly horrible manner.  She had at least three soul gems stuffed in her very own rattling sack.


    The elf reached down to sweep her up in his free arm as he loped past. One of the <u>other</u> things Zibeg’s Delvers had going for them was that they never left anyone behind but the stupid or terminally unlucky.  As the gnome was neither, he gave her a lift to safety.


    The border hissed forward just inches behind them, enclosing the tunnel and gems like a surging dark tide.  He redoubled his speed, hearing shouts and panting, rattling gems and wild curses from all sides.


    For a wonder, they lost no one at all on that venture, and three mining teams scored enough to earn liberty over in Shanty Town.  There was a process.  At the end of the workday, before healing, eating or drinking their cup of ale, the miners turned in their finds (less those tucked away against dry days).


    He’d stood in line with the others.  Raised his tattered black hood and lowered his head as he brought the two gems to a scowling drow overseer.  Delivery was always a dangerous moment, for the dark elf was an abusive and vengeful whoreson, but “Chatter” needn’t have worried.  Yes, he was a cursed, nameless outcast, and even the drow felt that ban, taking full advantage of its invitation to punish the elf.


    …But the gems’ combined glow drove hatred and scorn clean out of the drow’s narrow red eyes.


    “By the eight limbs…” he breathed, standing up from his titan-bone seat.  “That is a find in ten-thousand!”


    No doubt Skarnralf would benefit, too, but the exiled elf didn’t care.  Just inclined his upper half in a very slight bow, holding out a gloved for his chit.


    A gold one, this time, meaning a month’s liberty for him… or a week for all of Zibeg’s ten miners, together.  That’s how he came to be “upstairs” in the lakeside cavern.  He, Zibeg and the other Delvers took up a whole table at the Poisoned Mushroom, Shanty Town’s least revolting tavern.  They’d rented a suite of rooms with hot-and-cold-running mates of every description (and possibly the only worse job than being a miner was having to bed miners, but Fate was an errant wench).


    They drank, gambled, ate better than usual slop and made increasingly stupid guesses as to each other’s crimes.


    “You shagged the viceroy’s pet firedrake,” hazarded Rowdy, a half-elf with a burnt away eye and a roving blue one.


    Bok spat her ale all over the stone table, but shook her head, no.


    “Not even <u>close</u>,” laughed the orc.  “Two chits, loser!  My turn!”


    Rowdy grumbled, but paid up, sliding two copper drink chits across ale-and-spittle wet stone.  The orc grinned at him.  Most of her teeth had been forcibly extracted and she was hamstrung on the left leg, never again to make an escape attempt.  Her will remained stubborn and fierce, though.  Turning now to stare at the hooded elf, she rumbled,


    “Drank y’r mistress under the table, then broke f’r freedom after raidin’ the storehouse.”


    Which… wasn’t that far from the truth.  Yes, he’d given Daazra a powerful sleeping potion, meaning to sneak out and join the boy; make for freedom.  And no, she hadn’t drunk it all. Just enough to sense what he’d done.


    By rights, she ought to have killed him for trying to drug her.  Had sent him to the fighting pits, instead.  Three failed escape attempts later, he’d ended up in the mines.  And the boy?  Kaazin?  He had no way to tell.  His curse prevented all magic, while the goddess could barely reach him this far below ground.  Her contacts were faint and few but they kept him alive and sharpened perception, feeding his torturous hopes for release.


    But the years passed, and it hurt too much to think about, except in his bedroll, during the watches between one long workday and the next.  It would have been bad luck to try and explain all that, so the elf shook his head, holding up a gloved finger to indicate how much Bok owed him.


    “One chit? I were close, then!” exulted the orc, flashing her ravaged gums.  “Y’ slaughtered the ‘ole blinkin’ ‘ousehold and made a fine stew o’ their bones!” she added, providing the standard deflection to ward off bad luck.


    The elf just shrugged and took a long drink of dark, lumpy ale.  That’s when it hit him, and everyone else: a double shockwave slammed through the shanty town, radiating from somewhere high up and east.  Karellon?  If so, things had gone terribly wrong.  First… Vernax the golden was dead.  Then, less than a quarter of a candle-mark later, his curse fell away, leaving him utterly free.


    The elf stood up in a clatter of bench legs on stone.  He yanked the hood away from his face as power, knowledge… his name… came flooding back.  Next turned and spoke through Zibeg, because he’d almost forgotten how to do anything else.


    “I am Alexion, once the son of Ildarion,” he said through the startled gnome.  “I have been freed and now, so are you.”


    A transport gate opened up at his back, bringing surface air, noises and light to the tavern. His manna had returned in a torrent, allowing the prince to port once again.  The other side of that gate could have been at the bottom of the sea.  It didn’t matter one bit.  An epic stampede emptied first the Poisoned Mushroom and then the whole town.  Prince Alexion was the last to step through it, feeling every stripe of the lash, every blow, every insult and curse… seeing each fellow slave he’d been forced to slay in the fighting pits… Kaazin’s tense, hopeful face as they made their plans for escape.  The baby he’d held only once. The goddess he’d loved and been torn from. Everything, all of it, too much to feel and stay sane.


    All of <u>that</u> headed for Karellon.