The Liar's Key
The foreman came over, keeping a wary eye on the axe in Snorri’s hand. He glanced at the faded and water-blotched ink work on the parchment and reached out to tap a nail against the wax seal. He let his gaze fall to the dirty rags adhering to my body. “You don’t look like you own a mine, Prince . . .”
“Prince Jalan Kendeth, heir to the Red Queen, and don’t try to pretend you’ve not heard of her.” I raised my voice to the near-shout that works best when commanding menials. “And I look like exactly the sort of man who would own a played-out, worthless hole like Crptipa, which hasn’t made a profit in six years.”
The foreman paused, teeth against his wizened lower lip. I watched him weighing up various odds behind his eyes, the sums evident in the furrowing of his brow.
“Right you are, yer majesty. I’ll take you down presently. The night shift will be up within the hour and then—”
“We’ll go now, no guide required.” I started walking toward the cavern mouth. The others joined me. The distant baying had started to grow rapidly louder.
“But . . . but you’ll get lost!” the foreman called at my back.
“I doubt it! It’s my mine after all, a man should know the way around his own mine!” A guide would only try to keep us in the company-controlled areas and wouldn’t know how to navigate Kelem’s caverns any more than we did.
“You’re not even taking lanterns?”
“I . . .” Swallowing your pride is always difficult, especially if it’s as indigestible as mine, but fear of the dark won over, and executing a sharp about turn I marched back to collect three glass-cowled lanterns from the hooks beneath the hut’s eaves. I stalked across to the others, my dignity demanding I take my time. A dog’s howl, the kind they give when sighting prey, chased away all traces of dignity and I sprinted toward the mine entrance, lanterns clattering together in my hands.
• • •
Rickety wooden ladders, lashed together with salt-crusted rope, vanished down the rocky gullet that opened in the cavern floor fifty yards back from the entrance. Directly above the shaft an ancient hole of similar diameter pierced the roof, a blue and dazzling circle. I shoved a lantern at Snorri, another at Kara. “No time to light them! Down!” And fear of the hounds had me leading the way, pulling Hennan along behind. Not even the ominous creaking of the ladder beneath my weight gave me pause. I climbed down in a fever and let the darkness rise to swallow me. Up above I caught the sound of snarls, of claws on stone, and Snorri’s roar, as fearsome as any beast’s. Something plummeted past me. A dog I hoped. I felt the wind of its passage. A touch closer and it would have plucked me from the rungs.
An age later, hands raw and unbearably parched from the salty rungs, I jolted down onto solid ground.
“Are you coming?” My words lost in the void overhead, its darkness pierced by a single patch of sky impossibly high above me.
“Yes.” Hennan, high above me.
“Yes.” Kara’s voice. Closer to hand. “Do you have the orichalcum?”
I backed from the ladder to give her space and fished for the metal cone. I stepped into foul smelling mud, slippery under foot, and almost lost my balance. The orichalcum eluded me and I became convinced I’d lost it in the river, until my fingers brushed against the metal sparking such a response I half blinded myself. The pulsing illumination revealed several facts: firstly, the curves of Kara’s behind as she descended the last few rungs, secondly, the splattered remains of a large dark-furred hound, and thirdly, that what I’d taken to be mud was actually the innards of the aforementioned dog, the beast having burst on impact. The fourth and least welcome fact proved to be that this wasn’t the end of our climb, rather a narrow ledge from which a new set of ladders descended, the whole thing being less than six square yards and mostly coated in mushed dog. My heels rested perhaps an inch from the dark and endless fall behind me, and the shock of realizing it set me slipping once again. Both feet shot out from under me and skittered over the edge. The orichalcum flew from my grip. My chest hit the stone with a rib-crunching thud, arms reached out, driven by their own instinct, fingers scrabbled for grip and for a trouser-wetting moment I hung, with the corner of the ledge under my armpits, body tight to the cliff, feet seeking any hold on offer.
“Got you!” Kara threw herself forward, hand encircling the wrist of my right arm in the heartbeats before the orichalcum glow died.
We hung like that for what seemed an age, me too winded to undermine any claim to heroism with cries for help or pleading with whatever gods might be watching. Eventually, as air started to seep in past bruised ribs, I heard the sound of flint on steel and a lantern flicker into life. Snorri and Hennan stood by the ladder, Kara lay stretched out through the dog’s wreckage, one foot hooked around the bottom rung, the only connection keeping us both from a fatal plunge.